The Glass Door

On Saturday, September 12th, 2009, my THON organization (Springfield) went on a "camping" trip. Basically, a girl in Springfield (my friend Sam K) has a cabin in the woods of a mountain right around Harrisburg, and we figure that's as good a reason as any to spend time together. Some people actually did sleep outside in tents, but a lot of people wuss out and sleep inside. I had slept outside when we went there last year, and was adamant on not sleeping outside again this time around.

Well anyway. My car ride down was pretty cool. The shotgun seat was taken by a kid named Alan, who was really easy to talk to and I had a really good time getting to know him, and Tanvi T and Rachael G were in the backseat being goofy and funny as well. There was a sophomore I didn't know named Ajay sitting in the seat right behind me, which is a hard place to engage someone in conversation from, and he unfortunately didn't talk too much in either of the car rides. I forget what we listened to most of the way there. Right before we got to the cabin, we took a pit stop to get some food (just in case) and I picked up some Tastykake mini chocolate doughnuts, because they're awesome, and I did last year. Note that this would be my eventual downfall.

So we continued on to the camp, listening to my Summer 2009 CD including Wicked which pretty much everyone seemed to like, and showed up at a closed gate thinking we had gotten there first. Service wasn't good, so I had to use Ajay's phone (only one getting service) to call Sam and ask if she was there yet. Apparently she was, and she'd opened the gate, so we were at the wrong place, and we headed down the mountain, only to find out we were going the wrong direction, and headed back on up. Eventually we got there, and we were preeetty much the last ones to arrive. Oh well, no big.

So I got my stuff out and put it on a bed, and left the doughnuts on the table inside the cabin and took a couple for myself. Kids outside were working on getting the fire started, but didn't have any kindling or anything. I went into the house to look for something to start the fire, and decided a phone book from like 1996 would be a pretty good place to start. Sam said it was okay to use it, so I handed to the fire starters and told them to use that.

I think it was right after this that I decided I wanted more doughnuts. So I started heading toward the house again, doing a sort of half-jog which you might do to pick up a Frisbee which someone had thrown too far. It's a glass door at this part of the cabin, usually with a cinderblock in front of it because it's about two feet off the ground. I forget if the cinderblock was there or not at this time. Well anyway, once I got about two paces in front of the door, I sort of realized Oh, crap, there's a door there, huh? Yeah, there is. And it's probably closed, isn't it? Yup, it's closed. Darn. So I tried to slow down. I knew that I wouldn't be able to stop in time. I didn't think it was going to be any big deal, I'd just bounce of the door and hopefully no one would notice, whatever.

No, wrong. I hit the door and the thing shatters all over me. I'm just completely dumbfounded at what just happened. There's spiderwebbed door all over the place, half of the front pane is missing, and it was really loud, to top it all off. I don't remember this extremely clearly, but apparently the first thing that happened was Laura R turning to me and saying, "Did that seriously just happen?" To which I responded, "Uhh... yeah, that just happened." Then I looked at my hand and noticed it was bleeding. Like, pretty seriously. Like you could probably slip a dime into one of the gashes on my hand. Fortunately I was wearing a jacket and jeans, so my arms and knees were safe from anything getting to my skin there. People started to see the blood and I think picked up it might be pretty serious, so we started to consider taking me to the ER, or calling an ambulance. I thought I was doing pretty okay, so I walked over to where all the cars were (the other side of the cabin) to wait for someone to be able to take me. Someone brought me paper towels to help control the bleeding a little bit.

I wasn't feeling any pain at all, which means that I had gone into shock. Pretty neato! It remained pretty neato until my body was not in shock and decided that it was a bad idea for me to be able to stand up, and insisted on bringing me to the brink of passing out every time I attempted to do so. The first time that this happened, Katy P was walking me to the deck to make sure I could get to a seat safely, and I got really upset, which pretty much never happens with me. I said angrily to her, "Call. A f***ing. Ambulance." She told me that people were in the process. Sam was on the phone with her dad, and I couldn't hear anyone on the phone with an ambulance, so I was getting pretty frustrated, especially since I thought I just might die if I passed out. Or that it wasn't that I was about to pass out, but that I was about to die.

Eventually I realized that I would be pretty much okay as long as I could sit down, and it was decided that Katy would take me to the ER in Harrisburg rather than call an ambulance. Mike H decided to come along too. Katy is studying medicine/emergency care and Mike is a very well-trained lifeguard, knows CPR, might have been an EMT, stuff like that. Dana also came along to be official hand-holder, pretty much. Mike had been to the hospital before, but never from this direction, and had a general idea of where we were going, but we had to guess at a couple of points where we were supposed to go. We ended up getting there in about 40 minutes. The bleeding had mostly stopped by then.

Dana and I got out first at the ER while Katy and Mike found a place to park. I registered with them, told them what was wrong, and was asked to wait for triage. Most of the other people in the waiting room didn't have anything visibly wrong with them, which made me way more worried than if there had just been blood all over them or something like that. There were probably 4 kids in the room that night all wearing the same purple and yellow football jerseys. Eventually we were called into Triage, and we all went in together. One nurse asked me when I had my last tetanus shot, and I said I didn't know, and she laughed at me and said, "Yeah, probably today." I think it was after this that we took a new set of chairs, and Mike started to read a magazine for people over the age of 70 and actually got pretty interested in an article about some harmless old man who rode his bike all over the world. I tried to read through it too, but we got interrupted.

We watched TV while we waited, also. There was football on. Mike and Katy were interested in it, Dana and I not so much. We got called back to the last registration part pretty quickly, and the woman kept talking about how tired she was, which made the whole thing feel pretty sketch. She asked me "Can you sign here?" at one point on one of those credit-card swiping things, which you can't even sign with your good hand when it's function. I laughed and was like, "No. I can't sign." So I picked up the stylus with my left hand and put a happy face on the signature line. The receipt printed with the happy face as my signature. We got called back to the room pretty quickly.

The woman there said that only two people could come with me. We were agonizing over the decision for a little bit, but eventually she said, "Oh, hell, just everyone come." So we celebrated to ourselves and all went back. First she had me try to clean the wounds myself, but then put my hand in a solution that clears out dried blood from the skin. At one point somebody referred to us as "friends," and we talked about that later, and how all the weird things we'd been through tonight alone definitely made us friends. That felt nice.

Eventually an attending physician came and said that things really didn't look too bad, and a nurse came after a little bit and took me back to get X-Rays so we could make sure no glass was inside my hand. That didn't take long at all, and soon after I came back to the room where my three friends were waiting, the physician came again and said that the x-rays showed no glass. She said she would just need to wrap my hand, and I'd pretty much be good to go.

Before she did, I asked her if the one gash on my hand would need stitches, and she said no. There was a pretty big flap of skin hanging from it though, which was clearly not doing anything productive, and she was fiddling with it. I asked her if she needed to get rid of it, and she said, "Yes, can I?" So I said yes, because I'm totally the kind that picks at my scabs. She slowly tore it off, and it was WAY more painful than I had anticipated. Like, holy crap. Farewell, skin! It was the only pain I experienced the whole night, and the bleeding resumed in that spot for a while afterward. She wrapped up my hand, I got a few band-aids from the nurse, and we headed out to wait to be dismissed. The nurse that had me try to sign the credit card thing came out a few minutes later and told us we were free to go, so we left.

I apologized a lot to Mike and Katy and Dana for screwing up their camping night. We did go to Sheetz on the way back, however, and ended up taking WAY longer than we anticipated there and getting a lot more food than we had thought. But even that was nice, actually, and we got to brag about going to Sheetz. They all said they didn't mind though and that they actually had a good time anyway, and we got back to the camp by 11, so they still had a good amount of night left to enjoy with everyone.

Everyone asked me how I was doing when they saw me. Some people who hadn't shown up yet asked me what the hell happened. I felt a little dumb saying the story, but it's no big deal. I told everyone I was doing fine. I gave my remaining mozzarella sticks from Sheetz to Gabby and one other person, who were the first to come to the car when we returned. Someone made me take a picture prominently displaying my wrapped up hand, which I think is now on Facebook. People laughed at all my dirty jokes we told around the fire later and Meg asked me to sit on her lap, I think. I wondered if people were just being nice to me because I was an incurable dumbass. Hannah told a really good dirty joke involving OB/GYNs and numbing things, but it only works in real life.

Peace out.

Car Crash

It was Sunday, December 21st, 2008, the Sunday just before Christmas. I was home for Christmas break, save for the time that I would spend visiting my Uncle David and Aunt Wendy in Key West. I hadn't seen Bobby D, Stefan S, or Rory H for a while, and somehow one of them told me that all three of them would be at Rory's house that night, so I decided to go. My mom said that it might be icy so I should take her car, so I did.

We hung out, we played pool, some video games, I took pictures of M&Ms, we played fooseball, talked... not really sure what else we did. At one point I left to visit a couple other people, who were partaking in drug use, though (as always) I did not partake.

Anyway, I left sometime shortly after 11pm. Rory lives in a neighborhood right off of Mattson Road. In the section where he lives there are a lot of neighborhoods perpendicular to the road, often at crossroads, and they always have stop signs and Mattson doesn't. So I was driving down that road, past some neighborhoods, keep going, past some neighborhoods, keep going...

I remember there was CD on at the time and I was flipping through it with the control on the steering wheel. I saw a crossroad coming up and thought that I didn't have a stop sign. I was going about 40MPH, maybe, on a 35MPH road.

I did have a stop sign. I recognized it when I was maybe 10 yards in front of it. It was definitely too late to stop in time. The car was too big and clunky, and if I tried to stop, I would have just been sitting in the middle of the intersection. I didn't have much time to consider what to do, and it's a pretty lonely road, so I thought it was best to just spend as little time in the intersection as possible and if I run a stop sign, fine, I run a stop sign, at least I'm safe.

No.

I was not safe.

As soon as I made the decision, I saw headlights approaching from the driver's side. God damnit. I didn't panic, it's not like I made a decision not to panic, it's just that you don't panic in situations like that instinctively. I remember thinking very quickly that I was probably going to die, and regretting being such a terrible driver, and feeling very scared because I was pretty sure I was going to die. Like, quite sure.

I think I should emphasize that I was really very sure that I was going to die.

Not knowing what else to do, I sped up, hoping to get out of the way. At the very last second, the other driver swerved to the right and slammed his brakes on, too, to try to avoid hitting me, although there wasn't much he could do. His car slammed into the read driver's side door of my mom's car. It was incredibly loud, and the airbag went off, and it felt like a shotgun went off in my ear while I was getting tackled by an NFL linebacker at the same instant. The car did a 180, or even more, and ended up on the other side of the intersection, facing back on the right side of the road toward where I had just come from. I took it forward for just a moment to try to let other people on the road pass.

The important thing that I realized very quickly was that I had survived. Hooray! Life!

I turned the car off. I got out and apologized to the other driver. There was a ringing in my ear that didn't subside for hours, I went to sleep with it that night, the window was smashed and the car was cold as I waited for my dad and the police, and I apologized to the other driver. My mom told me more about her miscarriages that night that I had known before. The police officer asked me if I was drunk or if I was high, she said my eyes were bloodshot, but no, I'd ever drank or smoked in my life and I guess she believed me because she didn't even Breathalyze me.

The other kid's car was totaled. He knew some kids in Garnet Valley, and I think he said that he was just getting back from a concert that night, or something along those lines. He didn't show up at the court date so I never even got a ticket for running the sign.

The point is, I'm alive.

Peace out.

Note

The sky takes on every color except for green, but we still say "The sky is blue."

Peace out.

An Aggressive Gambler

You start out with $100 in your pocket, and you start betting on coin tosses of a fair coin. You bet heads every time, so you win $1 if it comes up heads and lose $1 if it comes up tails. You tell yourself that you will stop the first time that either (a) you have $0 remaining, or (b) you have $300 total.

What's the probability that you end up with $300?

I'll do something awesome for anyone that answers this with full solution.

Peace out.

My Primary Skills

1. Curiosity

1a. Test-taking

2. Keeping in touch

Peace out.

Here's My Irrationale

The guy that runs the club roller hockey teams at PSU is a guy that we lovingly call Dyke. It's part of his last name. His first name is actually Brian or Bryan. But anyway, he's quite a big guy - probably 6'3" or so - and he has a little bit of paunch going on, short hair, often wears glasses. He's a really funny guy, although his humor is a little bit mean and you have to have thick skin if you want to hang around him, even if you're just playing hockey together. I should also note that he's extremely good at hockey. I think he's easily the trickiest player/most finessed player I've ever played against personally.

Well anyway. We were all playing together a week or two ago, maybe, at the rink at the Y. We had a goalie and 8 skaters, so we were pretty much good to go, and then a kid came and started messing around at the rink. No big deal, people don't mind. After a while he shot his puck out, and when he was coming back in, he called to Dyke and said, "Hey, can I play with you guys?"

Dyke put on a sort of fake surprise face and said, "What's your name?" (The two didn't know each other)

The kid said his name, and Dyke immediately screamed at him, "HELL NO."

The kid's face was totally shocked.

"No I'm just kidding, of course you can play with us." And he did.

//

To some extent I've been waiting to use that line. I would kind of like for someone to come to me when I'm playing piano and ask me to play quieter or something so I could use it then. An Asian girl came to Dana&Louise's room the other night and asked us to be quiet and I could have done it then. A girl in my Math 484 class turned to me and said "Can I ask a question?" and that would have been a perfect time, if we weren't in the 2nd row of seats in the middle of a lecture.

//

My thumbs have been messed up recently. My left thumb got messed up on (I think) the first Tuesday that I was here. I was playing hockey against Chas - I think playing defense against him - and I took a fall and hit my thumb when I got to the ground. My knee was also a little messed up but nothing bad, even though I had no pads on. Anyway, my glove should have been guarding my thumb, but it's hurt pretty bad ever since. For a while I couldn't turn the lock on my door with my left hand because the thumb hurt too bad, and I couldn't get a strong enough grip on my markers to remove the cap with my left hand. I think it's pretty much better now though.

The right one just got messed up recently because I was biting the nail and definitely took a little bit too much off. I think I tore some of the skin open at the front of the base of my nail, and maybe from playing piano or hockey or something, I dried it out some more and I could see it turning very red the past couple days. I think it's getting better now though. I had to put a band-aid on it for a while there though.

//

I've been drawing a lot recently. I bought a sketchbook like right before I came to college (it's 100% recycled and 100% recyclable!). I honestly didn't think that I would use it a whole lot. I thought it would be one of those things that I always wanted to do but never got around to doing. That was not the case, as it turned out. In the first weekend alone I filled like seven pages with sketches or something. I think I'm up to something about 40 right now.

I'm not very good at drawing, but the ideas behind them are okay enough that it doesn't really matter. Sometimes people laugh at them when they see them, which is a good sign.

Sometimes I put them up on my whiteboard, or sometimes I put things that I put on my whiteboard into my sketchbook.

I remember there was a speech a while ago when Obama was talking about hope, and how we need it, and that if we didn't have hope we would have looked to the moon and thought, "Nope, too high. Can't go there." I really liked that line, in particular, out of everything he's ever said. I was walking to my friend Malinda's room the other day and there was a whiteboard that was undecorated, and that image was running through my head, so I just stopped and worked on the whiteboard that was there. I drew a crescent moon in the top right corner, then a line at the bottom with some lines for the grass, and a larger man and a smaller man with their heads tilted up toward the moon, and the older man says, "Nope, too high. Can't go there."

I liked how it ended up looking a lot, so when I got back to my room I put it on my board, but this time I filled the sky with stars as well, and I used a quick move of the marker on the whiteboard to make a shooting-star effect once. And this time it wasn't the man speaking to the child, specifically, the words were just sort of on the whiteboard to get the idea across more generally. I liked the way it turned out, again.

I kind of wish I had a picture of it.

Cavon, a guy across the hall, said that he really liked that one in particular. It made me like him a lot, because I think most people just like the funny ones I put up, but I think this one was better than the rest, as well.

// EDIT //

Here are some pictures of the board and the sketchbook for you. Click for full-size.

Peace out.

The World Will Thank Me

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This is my attempt to close all unclosed "sets" of parenthesis in writing up until this point.

You're welcome, planet Earth.

Peace out.

John Mayor

How many ways can n objects be split among m kids, with the rule that each kid gets an integer amount of candy, x, where x > 0?

This many ways:

Oh damn.

It turns out that you could also just do (m + n -1) Choose (m-1).

Heh.

Christ on toast do I love math.

And yes I did put off all my other homework to spend 3 hours or more solving this problem because I like thinking about it, and also because my teacher will give me $1 if I get it right.

Peace out!

I'm Bad at Parties

Last night there was a Springfield social (Springfield is the organization I'm a part of that raises money for Penn State's THON charity) at the apartment of Gabby, our social chairwoman. I thought it would be a good way to meet some of the new people joining Springfield and see if there were any particularly cool newbies, but I knew there would be dancing and drinking and loud music and stuff, so I figured I'd try to go early before any of that started.

It was supposed to start at 11pm, and I showed up at about 10:40pm, which I figured was safely before any real partying would begin. However, as soon as I got to the third floor of the building (where her apartment was), I could hear the party coming from all the way down the hall and around the corner. I thought it was another party at first, but no, it was the party I was headed for. There was loud music, people were drinking, there was alcohol set up outside for people to take, and there was a game of beer pong happening. Some people started dancing a little bit later.

I said hello to maybe two or three people, including one of the RAs in Simmons, who had to leave early because she didn't want to be seen drinking/partying in front of her residents. Meg saw that I was just sitting/standing around and not really digging it, and made a sad a face at me. As Dana put it a long time ago, "Meg has this disease where she has to make sure everyone around her is happy." It's not a bad disease to have, but it sucks when you're in a situation like "At a party with Jeff," where it turns out I can't be happy. I left after maybe 15 minutes. Most of those 15 minutes, I had this image in my head.

I was sort of frustrated with myself when I left. I just sort of realized that back in high school, I could totally work the social scene. Whatever kind of party kids in high school were having (at least ones I was invited to), I could find a way to make myself happy and I think even help other people have a good time, too. I honestly don't think that's happened once at a party at college. I just thought through all the parties I can remember, and I still believe that it's accurate. I've never enjoyed a party at college, ever.

That sort of sucks.

I wish I liked the things that people did here. I want to like it and I want to enjoy being around people while it's happening. But I just don't. I just want to leave and play piano or draw or drive or listen to NPR.

Peace out.

Another Great WHYY Quote

"Nazis-in-hiding must be high-fiving each other because genocide is being rebranded as a benefits program."

Robin Young on Here and Now commenting on the current health care coverage.

Peace out.

This Problem Will Keep You Awake at Night

Say there are 5 guys at a party and they're all wearing silly hats. They decide to trade hats, and so they all throw their silly hats into a pile in the middle of the room. Then they close their eyes and randomly all grab a silly hat from the pile at the same time and put it on. How many ways can these 5 guys pick hats such that none of the 5 guys have picked their own hat?

How about for 10 guys?

How about for n guys?

The best part about this is that there's pretty much no way to Google the answer, or even to Alpha the answer, or even Maple the answer. Doesn't it feel a little weird to be asked a question like this where you can't just say "I don't know, but Google does?"

Peace out.

[[ It took me about two hours to figure this problem out, just sitting and thinking. Major props to you if you figure it out faster than that - you should consider a math major ]]

GED

I took my second actuarial exam (financial mathematics) on August 13th of this year at the Curtis Center in Philadelphia. Believe it or not, I actually didn't use my own Pilot G-2 .5mm mechanical pencils this time because I was afraid of them saying I was cheating. I was also forced to leave my cold sore medicine (for what, I believe, was not even a cold sore) outside, and had to leave my test for a minute to put some on with about an hour left.

Well anyway, after I left, I had a bit of trouble finding the bathroom, and decided to just forget about it for a while, and headed for the elevator back down to the first floor. There was a man in the elevator with me, who I believe was taller than me, with a little bit of paunch, older, whiter hair and balding. He saw that I was holding something like a study manual in my hand (the Actex manual that I had been using) and asked me if I had just taken a test. I said yes, and he asked me if I passed. I told him yes, and then I asked him if he had taken one too, and he said yes, he took the test for the GED, and he had passed. He seemed very, very content to have passed. He even gave me a high-five when we stepped out of the elevator and wished me the best of luck with everything. It made me extremely happy to see how happy he was that he'd passed his test.

Peace out.

Molly Bloom

I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

//

I would kill for a book filled with something like this. Maybe someday I'll just read the last chapter. And that one other chapter that's supposed to be really good...

Peace out.

Text Messages

I always feel a little bit sad when I delete the inbox on my phone because it's full. I feel like I'm losing something.

//

I hate that I had to spend all my summers in my childhood at the beach away from all of my friends. I almost feel some resentment about it. I remember that my dad would stay at home all week and only come down to see us on the weekends, so he was alone all week from Sunday night until Friday night. I wonder if he feels resentment about that. I think that would probably be even worse.

Peace out.

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.