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!

Documentary

I'm currently in the process of making a documentary of my summer.  I'm not sure that I'll actually be able to follow through all the way, but I actually did edit a two-minute-or-so documentary of my drive home last night.  It's going to be way too much footage to wait until the end to edit, so I'm doing it as I go along.  Which is cool, except sometimes I think that the segment would be cooler if I had footage from the future.  Eh.  We'll see.

All the fish in the back yard died.  I went out there yesterday with my dad and had to take some pictures of it, in case he needed to sue the guy.  I was really glad that my parents hadn't put Gauss in there yet.

Peace out.

The Atlantic City Decision

It was dark outside, very cloudly, wet roads and a sky constantly threatening rain, though not always following through.  There were supposed to be more of us - maybe even five of us if Hannah, Devon, and Kate had found a way to come - but instead there was just Chloe and myself, and we decided that if that were the case, we would have to have an adventure.  We looked on the map for things to do, but nothing seemed to come to mind, except for a certain city in southern New Jersey.  I considered just getting out somewhere and going for a walk in the countryside and rural areas of New Jersey, but it didn't really look like the night for that.  I wasn't sure how committed Chloe was to the idea, so I thought I would let her decide.  I was almost ambivalent myself, slightly leaning toward going, but it was a bit later than I hoped, we were going a little slower than I hoped, and the weather worried me a tiny bit.

A little way down from the Wawa on 322, we came to the intersection.  The right form lead us to Avalon, the left side to the city.

"Alright, this is it, decision time.  Are we going or not?"

"Yeah!  Do it.  Go."  

So I turned left, and the moment we arrived, I knew she'd made the right choice.

Peace out.

Beth O'K for the First Time

I know that I met Beth sometime when I was in third grade, but I don't have a great recollection of exactly when. I remember that I didn't particularly like her a whole lot, but I don't really remember exactly why. We were in Mrs. Clarke's class together, but pretty much only for homeroom. We didn't really do a lot in her homeroom - we did some dumb activities like coloring, and making planets out of play-dough, and maybe learned a little bit about history once, and learned was unsafe touches were and crap like that -but there wasn't much real learning.

[I remember when we made planets out of play-dough, Mrs. Clarke would separate the colors when we were done and I was absolutely AMAZED that she was able to separate the green from the blue in the Earth that someone had made. I asked her how she did it, and she just said, "Oh, I just use a knife," and showed me a little plastic butterknife from the cafeteria or staff room.]

One day, I can't remember when, we were learning about Indians and the fact that they called corn "Maize." My guess is that it was sometime in the fall because that's when elementary schools usually teach about Indians. I was working in a group with Dennis O'N - I remember being amazed at his so-blonde-it-was-white hair - and Beth O and maybe some other people and we were coloring ears of corn and a stalk that we would staple/glue/tape the ears to. I remember Dennis made some comment about me thinking I was perfect and "running around naked with Adam and Eve," or something to that effect (he may have said "in the Garden of Eden." I have no idea where he got the idea to say these things).

We kept on working and I guess we were talking. I think Beth told someone to do something, or complained about someone not doing anything, and in all my witty glory I said, "Oh yeah, because you've been such a big help. ... NOT! ... I mean, SNOT!" I remember thinking that that actually was an out-of-this-universe ice burn, and I guess she thought so too because she started crying and told Mrs. Clarke I was being mean to her. I had to apologize. That is the first thing that I remember saying to Beth in my entire life.

Beth and I would remain enemies until sometime in ninth grade, when we jumped on the trampooline near Olivia's driveway with Liz Fin and Bobby D and I said something very stupid, at which point she probably hated me more, but somehow I fixed that for a while.

That is, the second thing I remember saying to her in my entire life was not much better than the first.

Peace out.

A Note on the Piano

After coming back from Fourth Meal tonight, I stopped by the piano lounge and saw a scrap of notebook paper on the piano right near where you would normally put sheet music that had written on it, in blue pen, something to the effect of:

" [large capital letters] Please don't play piano when it interferes with others' studies.  [normal print].  Thank you for your cooperation, Simmons."

Assholes.

I don't know who it was to, but I wrote back the following on the other side of the paper:

"[large capital letters] DON'T STUDY NEAR THE LOUD NOISY THING IF YOU WANT QUIET TIME.  [normal print] duh.  iilii.  Use the silent study hall near the mail room.  (or move the piano there)  Thank you for your cooperation, Simmons piano players."

Seriously, there are a million places to study in Simmons.  The entire basement is nothing but one huge silent place to study, especially after quiet hours.  And I should note, I never play piano during quiet hours (during the week) because I know it would annoy people.  Furthermore, the lounge is called the Simmons Piano Lounge, not the Simmons Study Lounge with a Piano in It.  No, it's the piano lounge.  You go there to play piano.  To study, you go to a study lounge, or to the basement study rooms.

Anyway, I'll keep on playing.  If they would rather move my piano than move their textbooks, I'm more than happy to let them.

Peace out!

A Wikipedia Read that Almost Made Me Cry

From the article on Andy Kaufman, in the section about his death:

Kaufman died in Los Angeles on May 16, 1984^[26] of kidney failure, caused by metastasized large cell carcinoma, and was interred in the Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, New York (Long Island). He was 35 years old.

Kaufman was survived by his daughter, Maria Colonna, who was born in 1969 and put up for adoption shortly thereafter. Colonna learned in 1992 that she was the daughter of Andy Kaufman, when she traced her biological parentage.^[27]

Because he kept the true nature of his health a secret—almost until the day he died—fans have, over the years, doubted Kaufman's death, thinking that he staged it as the ultimate Andy Kaufman stunt. Rumors that Kaufman was still alive go as far back as May 17, 1984 (the day after he died), when a caller phoned the Howard Stern radio show on WNBC in New York to announce that Kaufman's death was a hoax. Friends and family said that Andy almost never smoked, did not drink regularly, and was also a vegetarian. At the time, lung cancer was considered rare for non-smokers to contract, and it is also rare in people under the age of 40. Kaufman himself even said that if he were to fake his death, he would return 20 years later. On May 16, 2004, his surviving friends threw a 'Welcome Home Andy' party for him, which he did not attend.

Peace out

Plato at the Hockey Rink

If you've read The Republic by Plato, you'd get this.  Otherwise, all you need to know follows.  Plato and his philosopher buddies, while discussing the ideal nation, talk about its legal and justice system, but then realize they need to define what justice is.  After talking for a while, Plato concludes that "Justice is minding one's own business."  That's almost a direct quote from the English translation of The Republic.

Anyhow, I went to the hockey rink on Thursday before my class at 2:30 because it was a nice day and I want to get better at hockey and actually make my heart beat sometimes.  When I showed up, there was a family there.  The dad was wearing a white jersey and I think knee pads, and had short black hair.  There was an older son, maybe ten or eleven, with slightly longer black hair and a black shirt.  Then there were two kids, one was wearing a blue collared and buttoned dress shirt with blonde hair, and the other one I forget.

At one point I tried to shoot it on the net, but did something absolutely idiotic and shot it safely over the ten-foot-or-more chickenwire fences that surround the back of the rink.  I screamed an obscenity - sheepishly remembering a little later that there were five-year-olds in the rink with me - and then started looking for a way to get the puck.  It went out what I'll call the lower right corner of the rink, which is as far away from the pavement as you can get, so you'd have to walk through a LOT of mud and dirt to get the puck if you took the normal route.  I tried to open a door on that side of the rink (with the benches on it) to get closer to the puck, but it was nearly impossible from the inside of the rink.

So, instead I did the next best thing, which was to jump up on one of the benches on that side, hop onto the boards, and then use that to jump over the slightly-lower chickenwire fence that surrounds the benches.  This would keep me close to the puck and reduce how dirty my wheels got, but it was uncomfortable and I'm sure it looked weird.  As I was doing it, I suppose the little kids in the rink were watching.  One of them must have been focusing particularly acutely because I heard the older brother say, "Justice, mind your own business!"

I thought it was pretty funny, the exact combination of the kid's name and what his brother decided to say.  It was like the ghost of Plato was showing his philosopher buddies how clever he could be by bugging a kid at a hockey rink.

Peace out!

The Website is Down

On Friday night I stayed at the Rutherford's house between practices for drumline.  We were practicing in Quakertown both Friday night and Saturday morning and it's a 58 minute drive from there to my house, so I figured I'd just stay there since we ended Friday at midnight and started Saturday at 9am.  I should mention that Rutherford is the director of our drumline and staying at his house is sort of a tradition in our drumline.  His mom always cooks breakfast for everyone, and by everyone, I mean typically 15 to 25 people staying over.  People literally sleep on top of each other.

Anyhow, at some point once we got settled in, I got bored of the movie we were watching (mostly because I couldn't hear it) and went to see what else was going on.  Over in the corner of one room that had two computers in it, one per corner, some guys were watching some sort of video and were laughing really really hard.  I think Kyle (quad tech) and Bryce (his brother, a snare drummer) were watching it with Brendan, the bass tech.  I came over to check it out, and I joined right in with the laughter.  I thought it was really, really funny.  All I knew was that it was supposed to be some IT guy at a company dealing with stupid people that call him with problems, and he came to a very funny desktop arrangement and had fun with the person from there.  If you want to see it, go to www.thewebsiteisdown.com and check out the video on the left.

Anyhow, I remember almost like peeing my pants laughing at the video with them, and they said to check out the whole thing (I came to it with a couple minutes left, out of ten) because it was way funnier that way.  So I did.  I checked it out when I got back home, I think once by myself, and once by my friends.  I don't know why, but it didn't seem nearly as funny when I watched it again.  Even when I watched it with a group of people - which supposedly makes things funnier - we weren't laughing nearly as hard as we were at the Rutherford's house.  I have no idea why this is, but it sort of made me sad, because I wished I could have enjoyed it as much as I had the first time.

Peace out.

Cutting the Floor

Last night we had to work on the drumline floor again.  We've done it for each of the past three weeks, and I know that I'm getting very impatient with it, and I suspect some other people probably are as well.  Some people just don't even come anymore.  We have to go to the Blue Band Building, which is northeast of campus and pretty far from me, and load the floor into Kyle's (our tenor tech) green conversation van and then drive it to the Wagner Building, which is the building used mostly for the R.O.T.C. programs.  There's a huge "bay" in the bottom that we call the armory or the arms bay.  It's really just a huge open space where we can unfold our floor.  There are two gas grills on one side, a lot of picnic tables, and there are stone slabs in one corner that have answers to unlisted questions.  Some examples of things written on them are "Art can't save your woman" and "No, but it always has happened and always will happen."  Apparently they were laid out in front of the Forum earlier in the year with questions posted nearby, and people answered in chalk.  I don't know what the point it.  There are also at least three pull-up bars, and a very very high ladder in one corner.  Everything is very gray, very industrial, very impersonal, and boring.  There are a lot of windows on oneside and it is almost always very cold in the bay.  Sometimes R.O.T.C. people practice their drills when we're painting.  They're usually nice.

I came late last night - supposed to be there at 8:30 and got there at about 10 - and we were only just as I was walking in ready to make measurements to cut the floor.  I knoew this would happen; the staff didn't give us great plans and they apparently spent a long time figuring out exactly what they wanted.  Kyle was sitting in the corner near a table with his computer.  Mikey brought out some straight-edges and switch blades so we could get cutting.  Cass cut the first line at the bottom of the flap and that went fine for the most part.

I should say, we're cutting out flaps of an old floor so that we can tape them to our new floor and pull them back in the end of the show to reveal a new design.  Or something like that.

Anyway, we had to go up the floor a little bit to cut the other end of the flap.  Isaac was down with the straight-edge and blade doing the cutting, and Cass was standing nearby giving a little instruction.  He said things like, "I gotta see that bicep man!  Flex it!"  He was telling him to cut really strongly to make sure he cut through the tarp all the way; it's sort of annoying to try and not get it through.  After Isaac had cut through about a eighteen inches, Steve W noticed that our real floor was underneath where Isaac was cutting, and he was probably cutting right through it.  We pulled apart where Isaac was cutting, and realized that yes, he had cut the floor.  Not just through one layer, but two or three.  We were all pretty upset, but realized we could just put black tape on it or on the back and it'd be okay.  We did just that, and I believe it will turn out okay.  Somehow, throughout the whole process though, the blame shifted to Cass because he told Isaac to put pressure on it, rather than on Isaac, who actually did the cutting, or everyone else, who didn't notice that the floor was underneath.  We sort of owe our show to Steve.  We seriously almost slit our floor in like four places.

Peace out.

Cognitive Biases

Recently I stumbled across Wikipedia's List of Cognitive Biases.  Some of them are really intensely interesting, and I definitely suggest you check some of them out.  Some of the ones that blew my mind in particular were these:

Illusion of asymmetric insight - People perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them

Illusion of transparency - People overestimate others' ability to know them, and they also overestimate their ability to know others

Outcome bias - the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made

I feel like if we all had an active awareness of our biases, we would all probably be much better people overall.  I'm going to make a conscious effort to keep these in mind from now on.  Hoping it'll help me understand people a little bit more and be more sympathetic.

Peace out.

Showers and Towels

When I was younger, I used to not take showers very often.  But I'm not talking like baby-young, I mean like, up until fifth grade.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't until the end of fourth or sometime in fifth grade that I actually started to shower more often than like once every Sunday.  Looking back, I guess that's sort of gross.  But at the same time, I don't remember my hair being greasy, and I didn't often get dirty, no one ever told me I smelled, and kids don't even start to really sweat until they hit puberty.  So it's not that bad, is it?  I used to think it was ridiculous to shower every day, and honestly I still do, and often I take a shower every other day if I'm not disgusting, although I doubt I could get by other people showering once a week now.

I also used to not understand that you can reuse towels.  Every time I used a towel, I would put it in the hamper to be washed.  At one point, my brother or my mom talked to me about it and told me that I should use it a few times before washing it.  Instead of actually doing that, I sort of just decided to not put the towels in the hamper ever.  So for a long time I washed towels every time, and then for a long time I never washed them at all.  I think I'm striking a sort of happy medium now, but I'm not really sure.

Peace out.

A Sad Dream

I had a dream last night that Barack Obama resigned the presidency.  I forget exactly why, but it had something to do with him already having made a mistake that was absolutely irreparable and would stop him from doing anything productive anymore.  I was really really upset, until I woke up, and realized it was a dream.

Whew.

Peace out.

Ishmael Beah

I was at a speech last night by Ishmael Beah.  He was forced to be a child soldier during the civil war/revolution in Sierra Leone (West Africa).  He mentioned that oral tradition was very there and that his foster mom was a professional storyteller, so during Q&A, after talking about how this war and violence affected his life for 45 minutes, I asked him to share one of the stories.

Imagine a husband and wife telling this to their son.

So, son, you're out hunting one day, and you've brought your gun.  You're in the forest and looking through the trees, and you find a monkey who's eating a banana, or scratching his sides, whatever monkeys do.  So you think he looks like a good catch and you raise your gun to shoot him but then, he puts his hand up as if to say stop and he says, "Whoa whoa, hold your horses."  And, since a monkey spoke to you, you listen.

He says, "If you shoot me, your father will die.  If you don't shoot me, your mother will die."

[at this point, you turn to your son and ask] "Son, what would you do?"

Ishmael said that his response was always, "I would go to the bathroom!" (and maybe he would run to the bathroom).

Then he just started talking about the story, and he said, "Then when I was young, I didn't really understand the story, I was too young to understand what it was about.  But after I got older and I saw all these things and I was thinking about everything, I realized that the point is that there is no correct answer.  Once you've lifted the gun - once you've chosen violence - it doesn't matter what you do, someone is going to pay for it.  It's not that it's going to be your mom or that it's going to be your dad, it's that the choice is already made."

(I had gone back to my seat at that point, but he was still looking right at me, and I said thanks from my seat and he said "You're welcome" while looking right at me still.  It was pretty cool.)

Peace out.

Losing My Hat

I took my actuary exam this Thursday that just passed at 9 in the morning.  It's a big deal, apparently, and the testing centers are made to be extremely secure.  You're not supposed to have anything in your pocket at all and you have to put everything you came with in a locker, and they scan a photo ID of you and take your fingerprint six times before they let you start taking your test.

Well anyway, one of their directions was that they don't have perfect control over the climate in their centers, so you should bring a coat in case it gets cold.  I brought a coat - and my hat - for exactly that reason, but sometime during the testing a woman came through and said, "Here, let me take that for you."

I wanted to say, "No, I want it in case it gets cold," but I wasn't cold, so I just figured I'd let her go.  They also yelled at me for using mechanical pencils (which she called a "pen") and said that I wasn't supposed to have anything.  She let me use them though 'cuz they were just pencils, and probably because I gave her a look of "That's ridiculous and your pencils suck" when she mentioned it.  Their pencils really did suck.

Anyway, on the way out of the testing center, I meant to get my coat and forgot.  I also realized that I didn't know where my hat was, so I called my mom to ask if it was on the island at home, and she said no.  So I went back inside and went to the receptionist.

"Hey, I was just at desk 21 taking a test.  Could you possibly go back and check to see if I left a blue knit hat there by any chance?"  So she went back to check, and while she did, I took my coat from the coat rack, which I had also forgot.  I reached my hand into my coat pockets as I often do, and in the left pocket was my hat.  Damnit!  Oh well.  I felt pretty foolish, but she already went to look, so I just let it go.  When she came back I kept my hands in my pockets and said, "Alright, well thanks for looking."  I think I sort of noticed her looking at my hands in my pockets as I turned, but I'm not really sure, and you definitely couldn't have seen my hat anyway.

Peace out.

Things Like Other Things

If you take a big Zildjian cymbal - like 18" or more - and hit it softly and then let it vibrate until you can't hear it when you're standing three feet away, and then you put your ear half an inch away from it, you can hear a deep roaring sound, like a bass guitar.

If you bite your lip and lick it at the same time quickly in a certain manner for a little bit, like for thirty seconds, it tastes like snow.

There's a window in the basement of my dorm that has brown-paint framing that smells like pavement after a hot rain if you have your nose really close to it.

Peace out.