Trucks

I think I realized this weekend that truck radios and possibly radar detectors can mess up your car radio, which I never noticed before. Some sort of flat bed truck, I think, had something going on that really messed up my radio for about one second when I drove past its cabin. I realized it, and figured it was probably the truck. I was on my way home from Penn State, and passed a truck stop shortly after that, and the radio blipped again. It sounded like something was popping a metallic bubble in the car, if you can imagine that, and it happened far more strongly outside the truck stop than just beside one truck. It happened once more as I passed another truck, but not others. I don't know if something is actually causing it, or if I'm imagining it.

Peace out.

Thief

Yesterday I went to the student bookstore. I bought the full version of my textbook for my Linear Regression class on Sunday; it was enormous and cost $200. The next day I went to class and my teacher told us that we could buy a smaller version that was cheaper and cut out a lot of the information that we didn't need for the course. So I went to the store and bought it.

When I got to the register, it came up as $109, and I paid. I thought that it had said it was $89 for a used book, so I decided to go back and check the price tag hanging near the book to make sure it was right. I knew that I would be walking out without paying for the book again, so I assumed people would assume I was a thief. So, I walked around with the book open and the receipt clearly displayed on its first page. Suddenly I was acutely aware of all the people that were able to watch me - a man on the stairs, just standing there, I realized was a manager - whcih I had never been aware of before. I walked past him and one other older staff member on my way out, and then through the registers, where a young Asian girl said she could take me, but I told her I had already paid. I don't know if she believed me or not but I guess she had no choice. I went to the side to get my backpack back - they take them so you can't stuff books in them - and I realized the girl turned around twice looking at me. I don't know if she was suspicious or if she was just looking around.

The next day I returned the full version to the other bookstore, and bought a calculator, then proceeded to look for the HUB's computer store. I couldn't find it, and I made a big circle around the HUB and walked back in through a different place than I had exited, and the alarm went off. There were sensors lining the entrance, and they made loud beeps and red lights lit up at the top of them. I had the receipt for the calculator with me, and again displayed it clearly. I didn't know what to do, but I felt like I was about to be accused of theft by a manager, so I sort of just waited to be accused. No one came up to me. The only person I saw walking anywhere in my direction was the girl who worked the register when I bought the calculator, so I just walked away.

Peace out.

All-Male Dorm Floors

God's punishment for the non-believers.

Peace out.

Song

You won't know what I'll be feeling, 'cuz you've always asked for a needle and Novacaine
Someday you'll let down your guard; it comes from behind and it hits like a hurricane
I had said I'd wait but I realized that I don't have time for this heart made of cellophane
You said I can't know what you're feeling, but I looked in your eyes and they read like a weathervane

Possibly a chorus of a new song. Just felt like writing it.

Peace out.

Women and Children

It occured to me sometime last night that I'm leaving the group of "Women and Children" that get to jump ship first and don't get shot in hostage situations and am entering the group of "Fighting-Aged Men" that have to go down with the ship and get shot when no one wants to.

Peace out.

Blanket

This morning I woke up sometime before I actually wanted to get out of bed, which happens all the time to everyone I'm sure. I adjusted position, but I didn't realize where I was moving from - my elbow was putting weight on one part of my blanket that I've had since I was born, and my body was putting weight on the closer part of it. So when I moved my body back, my elbow held part of it in place, but my body took the other part with it, giving it a somewhat serious rip. I heard it and I was extremely sad. I don't know how much longer it'll make it. All the corners are looking pretty bad now. Some are worse than others, and I actually couldn't tell which one I ripped today when I look later, but I am afraid it'll all be apart soon.

Peace out.

Just Noticed

That I wrote as many blog entries in the short time between leaving home for Brown and the end of 2007 as I did in all of 2008.

Peace out.

Piano

Playing piano is a lot harder at college than it is at home where I basically have a "private" piano. At school there's one in my dorm room, but the walls are thin so writing a song is embarrassing still. There's one in a study lounge, so it's clear why I don't write there. The other is five minutes' walk away in a basement sound-proof room, which is sort of creepy and frequently occupied, making it usually not worth going. Thus I haven't been able to write songs nearly as much as I used to.

The February of my senior year I think I wrote about 4 songs in four weeks. I haven't written one is five weeks or so at this point (since right before Thanksgiving). I think I still can't write at home because I've lost the "habit" of constant piano playing because of terrible pianoing conditions at Penn State.

It makes me really frustrated, and I would do just about anything in the world to change it. I would kill a man to be able to write songs more frequently. I guess it's something I'll have to work on.

Peace out.

Windows

I've always been sort of afraid of the dark. Not really just darkness, but more like what you can't see because of the lack of light... which I suppose is really a more accurate labelling of being "afraid of the dark." When I was younger - and sometimes even now - I would run up my basement stairs when I turned the lights off at night, fearing something would grab my ankles and drag me down and torture/kill me if I didn't move quickly enough.

Currently my main fear is windows. I'm often afraid something sinister is beyond them. Sometimes when I'm in the basement, I fear a criminal peering into the windows above the pool table. When I put my cereal bowl away at night, I'm afraid that someone with a rifle is positioned in the woods, waiting for someone to stand at the sink to shoot. Right at this moment at this computer, there are two huge windows just to the right of me, and I had to completely cover the one I can see in my peripheral out of fear of something or someone jumping up to it and scaring me to death.

Peace out.

The Last Full Day

There was another false start today. We were told that we'd probably wake up early to go boating, but my dad ended up getting a boat reserved later - at 12:30, so we were allowed to sleep in for a while. At something like 8:30 I detected that something wasn't going to plan so I got up and asked my parents what was going on, informed them I was taking their bed, was informed I would be disturbed, and slept comfortably in a marshmallow until sometime around 10.

Then we just hung around until it was time to go. I had Cheerios, which is the only type of cereal we have. The bowls are very deep and always have way more milk in them than you think when you are done.

I've been entertaining myself in my down time here by reading a topic on the SomethingAwful formus I post at. It's title is "Creepy reads on Wikipedia," and it has people bringing up things anywhere from serial killers to unexplained sounds to things like Cossart to outsider art. By far the most interesting thing that was there was Henry Darger, the most celebrated example of "Outsider Art" there is. You should read the abstract of that Wikipedia article. Seriously, read it. Now.

Congratulations on reading it! Anyhow, I spent a LOT of time reading about all those things. Very informative, though not sure it was worth probably the 4 hours or so to read about all of them.

Anyhow, we went to the Marriott to get our boat (that's where the dock was). We stopped at a convenience store on the way. A guy in a truck that was towing some sort of trailer almost destoyed the car we were in while we were in the parking lot. I got a doughnut which was marked Krispy Kreme but was definitely from Dunkin - a disappointment. My brother and I carried the large blue cooler down the very long dock when we got there, and it took a long time to actually get out of the dock. There was another family there and it seemed they were all renting waverunners. The prep work on our boat wasn't all done by the time we got there and apparently the man that we communicated with had to put some oil in our boat before we set out.

We went out and got to fishing. I didn't really feel like fishing, so I just chilled out with my aviators on and didn't do a whole lot. They caught some small fish - Ryan caught a tiny little one. Then they caught some Jack - possibly the same fish twice? And we also caught some catfish, and they made strange sounds (so did the Jack). We tried a new spot after we drifted down our first path a few times, and we saw porpoises jumping (!) which was pretty cool. There were also other fishing jumping, more in the distance, however. There were a lot of porpoises and they seemed to get pretty close to our boat, but never closer than about 50 feet. Jessica was afraid we would catch one. She was also afraid that we all texted too much and that I wasn't actually a great photographer.

I saw a huge fish jump at the point of land near us at one point and told my dad, and he drove over there. We drifted down that once or maybe twice and caught some fish, my dad thought one was a Pompano but it was just a Jack again. At one point a Jack jumped very close to our boat, in and out of the water twice, the first longer than the second, probably about ten feet horizontal and then about four. It was surprising and I happened to catch it.

My mom made me take a picture of palm trees in our complex earlier because they "look like a mom and pop and child." She also made me take pictures of everyone on the boat, so I took really bad pictures on purpose, and then my sister and mom tried to take good ones, I'm not really sure which are which right now, oh well!

My mom wanted my dad to go somewhere crazy for not a very good reason and we kept running on shallow ground. The first time it was about to happen Ryan said, "You're about to run aground" and then my dad ran aground and was surprised and Ryan said, "Geez, someone should have said something." This happened multiple times and we gave up. We stopped to fly fish for a minute on the way back because we saw two people on one boat with a fish on at the same time, but I don't think we had any luck. There was another boat at our dock when we got back, so we waited a few minutes before pulling in.

There were two girls at the dock that were from the family renting waverunners from before. I was confused why they were there. The rest of the family wasn't there, and one of them had changed clothes but the other hadn't. Were they renting waverunners again on their own? I dunno. My brother and I took the cooler back and we all used the bathroom and drove back to the apartment. I took a shower and read about creepy things. I also had to look up weather for my mom (it will be windy but I lied so she wouldn't freak out) and order pizza from Papa John's because my brother and I didn't feel like Chinese (neither did my dad but he dealt with it). The guy from PJ's said it was very confusing here even for a New Yorker, and I agreed. His name was Doug and he made 3 deliveries, per the receipt.

We went to David's house for dinner again. I couldn't not-touch the guitar anymore, so I asked Wendy if I could touch it, tuned it a tiny bit and played it (I'm not very good though). Everyone else sat down for dinner, but Ryan and I were exiled because we already ate and there wasn't enough room. He watched Two and a Half Men and I read The Great Gatsby, which David is reading to Lucien. He tried it, at least, and said he also read "Be Prepared" to him, which is like a Boy Scouts guide of what to expect for a male who's about to become a parent. It referred to infant behavior that seems contrary to survival instinct as "a sort of baby-version of Jackass." (i.e. flying down stairs, sticking things in sockets, laying face down in every water source possible).

I joined the dinner table after some people left and Jess was mad that I didn't help clean up. I asked Dave about his reading to Lucien and he showed me Be Prepared. I think I went back to the TV area after that and listened to Jenn talk to my sister about marriage - Jenn was glad that she waited to get married because she changed a lot.

When we showed up at David's house, we heard a cat crying from behind a wall of hedges. We looked for it with our cell phone lights but couldn't see it but it kept crying. I told Jess to go to the other side but she wouldn't so I did and it turned out to be Scooter, and it crawled under the hedge into David's yard. Jess didn't even see it scurry away, it was lost in the night, although it came back inside later.

I headed to the kitchen area later and got some Gummi Bears, and then some more gummi bears, and then some more. I talked about the time Jenn accidentally ate the paper part of Fruit by the Foot, after asking Ryan and Jess what the name for that was anyway. We also talked a little bit about my going on Semester at Sea in 2010 and how I was going through "Pirate Alley." Some seemed scared and some thought it was okay, Dad said he only had $2 in the event of ransom and otherwise I was screwed. I said that they'd never been captured so it was okay, but secretly I hoped we were captured by 1600-style pirates, or maybe even 1700-style.

My mom went to print out boarding passes and I went and we talked about Semester at Sea and Barack Obama and his court cases about his citizenship and if David actually had to convince Wendy to vote for him. The printer ran out of paper and I printed my itinerary for SaS. My mom told David about draft mode on the printer, which I first heard about years ago on an NPR segment about sophisticated consumers.

Earlier, young David had made me give him a piggyback ride. I made space shuttle noises and so did he, and I was convinced I didn't want kids because I don't like playing things other than Facts in Fives and pianos.

Jenn and her family left so we said goodbye to all of them. My mom had given them their Christmas present earlier, but they already had the Pokemon DVD game, so we had to find out a way to return it and get them something else. I'm not sure how that was resolved.

Wendy was holding the baby now; Grandmom had it earlier when she was on the rocking chair with him. I showed Wendy where I was going for SaS and she mentioned some places she'd been and that I should get some leather in Alexandria (I think). She said that Hong Kong was like New York but with three times as many people, but I said it was okay because they were 1/3 the size, and she added "and all with jet black hair."

We went home after that and I read more creepy things 'cuz I'm a loser, wrote this, and am now going to sleep.

Peace out!

The Girl in Green

There was a girl at the Marriott Hotel the day we went there for lunch who was sitting alone at a table for a while (later with a younger brother) with black hair, a green bikini swimsuit, and interesting eyes, although I can't remember why. Maybe it was color, or maybe it was shape, but there was something uniquely intense about them. It wasn't particularly attractive or not, but it was striking and you couldn't help but notice if you looked at her. She was probably 18 or something like that.

She was behind me when I sat down at the table. The bar near the food area was playing music, including the song "Suddenly I See." I asked my sister about it; she didn't know who it was by but knew it was the same girl who sang "Black Horse in a Cherry Tree," which was a familiar name but not tune. While the song was playing, the girl in green walked up to the bar without me noticing, and on her way back she was lipping the words to the song. I just happened to be looking in her direction and made eye contact for a fraction of a second while she was lipping. She flashed a smile very very quickly, and then her face returned to normal and she stopped lipping, as if to say, "I mean, I don't actually like that song?" I didn't mean it, but I thing I looked angry at the time because it was sunny and I was squinting and I didn't mean to look at her so I didn't smile or stop looking possibly-angry, and I kind of felt like I ruined her fun for the moment.

Peace out.

Third Day in Florida

On the second day my Grandmom had a delusion that we were supposed to eat breakfast at her house, and we saw that she bought materials when we went to use her bathroom so we agreed to eat there the next day.

I woke up next to my sister and apparently my mom woke me and was wearing my green Brasil jacket (which contained my Aviators) and I just said, "MY JACKET" and apparently dreamed she had been wearing it the previous night. Then I guess I woke up and got ready to go, and we walked over at about 9:30. My grandmom said we were very punctual.

We were afraid she would make the batter too thick so I handled the batter with a little help from Jess, and Jess tried to cook at first but they kept getting burnt so I took over. They turned out all fine but I thought some of them were mushy in the middle and they were "wheat honey" pancakes rather than just plain pancakes, so that wasn't great. My parents came at the end of breakfast after we had helped clean up a little bit and talked to my grandmom about moving and her whole ordeal and basically ordered her to keep it colder in her apartment. It was weird. We were about to go shopping and Jenn and her family were going to come for a spaghetti lunch; Grandmom kept trying to leave with us but after a while we got it through that she had to stay to have lunch with the rest of them.

The walk to and from Grandmom's was very wet because it rained the night before. I walked barefoot through the grass and my dad said it could have lizards and snakes and he was serious.

We went to the stores a tiny bit later and my mom saw a jewelry store where she could get her watch battery replaced. It was decorated from Christmas and it had very gawdy jewelry that Mrs. Rock would have loved. The couple running the store was from Brooklyn and an old customer walked into their store down here and was surprised. They moved because of the weather (the owners, that is). We asked how long a drive it was to Kennedy Space Center - about 90 minutes, they agreed.

We kept walking by the shops. My dad asked what 3 Rednecks was because it was headlining one of the places; my sister and I figured it was a band or a show. It was very hot and I kept feeling tired and just a little bit sick to my stomach, and I was just not in a very great mood. We went into some stores looking for gifts or sunglasses and were mostly disappointed. One store we stayed in for a while was April Daze; I look at "Porn for Women" which had muscley men doing things like cleaning a cat litterbox with talk bubbles saying things like, 'Nothing better than cleaning up after the cutest things on four legs.' The shop owner said, "THAT'S SO FUNNY YOU'RE READING THAT MOST PEOPLE ARE AFRAID!!!" which drew the attention of my dad to the fact that I was reading Porn for WOMEN, which was a little bit awkward. I think my sister got some journals for her students there.

There was one shop with two very small dogs in it of the owners' and they were very cute, but we left quickly.

There was one shop with a peace-sign shirt that I liked but it was for girls. They also had things that let water fall down glass that you put up against a wall that I like so much, but they were prohibitively expensive, ruining my plans to line my entire house with them.

After that we looked for a place to get lunch. Burger King's broiler was broken, so we went to McDonald's, and I got chicken. I took a long time to eat because I took the fried part off, and I ended up not even being done eating when everyone else was, so I had to rush and eat a little bit of the fried part, too.

We were supposed to go to Sea World that day but it was a long drive and expensive and no one really cared enough to go, so we went to a local Florida Oceanographic Institute instead with Jenn and her family. We got in free. My sister spilled some soda on the car floor. We looked at sting rays and then went on a nature trail walk and I talked to Jenn about the movie Milk and things at Brown and politics and how people called her husband Dead an "Obamacan" and that she was proud to have converted him, which I thought was sort of funny. We walked back to the stingray pool to watch a program on them and then you had an opportunity to feed them because they had been de-barbed, but it was too slow for me so I lost attention and wandered to other things. There was a hermit-crab-finding-its-shell game, a starfish pool, and a help the turtle find its way to the sea game. We checked the gift shop and then I checked out the indoor part and then we left for the Shell Beach.

(We saw bathtub beach the day earlier; it was guarded by a shallow reef and had very calm water)

Shell Beach was largely eroded and had huge coral/rocks sticking out everywhere which was very painful. Richard danced on them which was dangerous and he didn't seem to understand why. We drove down to a nice beach while Jenn/Jess/Mom/youngkids walked to the nice beach, about a half-mile down. We hung out there for a little while and then went back to our hotel and showered and watched TV before going to dinner at a place called Dolphin Bar.

The wait was very long. First we went to the gift shop but there was nothing I liked, so I went back and saw my dad at the desk buying a giftcard for the Brandt's (since we're staying in their apt). He told me there was a lot of history and to check out the pictures, so I did, they were of people I didn't know, including some girl named Florence whose last name I forget (it started with an L) and letters from Ronald Reagan and an old couple sitting beneath a picture of Richard Nixon and lots of other people I didn't know. My mom made my dad buy her a really gawdy silver/stone beachy bracelet for her big Christmas gift since she's impossible to shop for and he hadn't gotten her anything big. She liked it, and liked that she got it cheaper than his website said it was worth (she checked at home). There was a book on the table of letters from kids in a JD Parker 4th Grade class to someone who got them a class subscription to Cousteau's Kids, which apparently had stuff about albino dolphins, beluga whales, and pollution in its September and October issue. The kids wrote well but used the word "elated" to describe their reaction to the magazine with surprising frequency.

I texted when I got bored. My sister was about to make us play the Name Game when our table was called (the one about people's initials) and my dad was getting really impatient. My mom didn't like the table so we got another one that she liked about 5 minutes later. I got chicken and chocolate cake, and we fed bread to a bunch of catfish that were hanging around the dock at the back of the restaurant. When I got back, I mostly read SomethingAwful's topic on creepy reads from Wikipedia, then came here.

Peace out.

The Second Day in Florida

Hint! Don't read this if you want me to have stories to tell you when I get back :-P

I slept on the couch the first night here. It has a hard-wood frame, but there are cushions on all three dimensions so I thought I might be able to sleep on it. My parents got one bed, my brother the only other, and my sister took the aerobed because I had been tired earlier and thought I'd be able to sleep on the couch. I remember watching some SNL before going to bed, including the episode where Ben Affleck hosted and played Keith Olbermann and apparently Obama actually made a guest appearance, but I was hoping to fall asleep long before he would actually be in the show, so I changed the channel to something else, though I forget what.

It turned out falling asleep was a lot harder than I thought. I had two blankets and an extra pillow, but I could not figure out what combination of them was right, and I didn't have my own baby blanket. I tossed and turned most of the night and didn't get a very good sleep.

We were supposed to get up and go see relatives and possibly fish at the beach at something like 8AM or maybe a little later, but I think somehow my parents could tell that none of us were very well rested. They woke me up when they got up because the couch is right near the kitchen and etc., and I said, "Do we have to go now?" And they said that the kids could sleep a while longer but they were going to go out until about 10:30, so I wrapped myself up (wearing only my underwear) in one of the blankets I had, trudged to my mom and dad's INCREDIBLY SOFT BED, and disappeared in the marshmallow-like mattress for the next few hours. Apparently my sister tried to find me in it and could hardly see me poking up between the folds in the mattress and pillows. I remember before going there, though, my mom said something about getting doughnuts, which I was pleased to find when I woke up for real. I had one (Dunkin Donuts), chocolate with sprinkles. My sister pointed out that the box spelled it "HOLIDDAYS" but we concluded it was to match with "DD" for Dunkin Donuts.

We got our sunscreen on and our swimsuits and went to the beach. It was warm outside, but it was windy and the water was a bit cold - probably high sixties - and wind+coldish water is never a very fun combination, so I didn't go in. My dad and his brother fished a lot, and David caught a few whiting fish. He was using shrimp as bait, which he said wasn't a great choice from an economic standpoint, but you got very fresh fish. They also used sand fleas as bait, which were little crab things they caught by skimming the sand in the shallows. David was going to keep the extras by boiling them for 45 seconds and them freezing them. Jessica tried to cast the rod a few times but was not very good at getting it far out.

Richard and David played in the water a lot, but not so much the older kids. It was a very nice day outside, incredibly blue everywhere. My dad chatted up a passing family with the bucket of sand fleas we had collected, it reminded me of how personable he can be if he feels like it. I took a picture of him chatting them up. We buried the youngest David (my cousin, not uncle) in the sand up to his head and he dug himself out and then rinsed himself off with my sister's help. My uncle David showed us how to fit a 13' fishing rod in your truck.... pop the trunk window open and close it lightly on top of the rod and hope it doesn't break.

After that, my parents took us on a tour of the island, I think it's called Hutchinson Island. It wasn't incredibly impressive, but it was nice, I guess. There's all different types of water everywhere - rivers, oceans, bays, inlets, whatever. We were looking for a beach called Avalon but we never found it, and just turned around to go back and maybe find something to eat. We ended up eating at the Marriott which, in this town, is just a RIDICULOUS resort with way too much space and its own golf course and beach and etc. When we showed up it was really busy, and one woman was reserving a number of tables for her party of 15, and my mom yelled at me to grab one table the second the party of four that had been occupying it left it. Even after we sat down, it took about 15 minutes to get a waiter, and ended up taking at least an hour to get our food after that. We came in at about 1:15 and didn't get out until 2:30, which was when we were supposed to meet our family at the pool back at our complex.

So we drove back there after food and showered off the salt and sand, but then we all needed to go to the bathroom, so my siblings and I went to our grandma's apartment to use the bathroom (she lives in the same complex) and then convinced her to walk to the pool with us. Then the kids all went swimming with Richard and young David. We played tag. My mom's camera had a lens error sometime during our swimming after my dad touched it, and my mom asked me to fix it but I couldn't, so I became her official photographer. We tried to throw Richard but it didn't work very well; Ryan could do it best alone. David didn't want to be thrown. We did handstands in the pool. After a while I got a headache and wanted to go back, but my mom made me wait until my dad could drive me even though we lived ten seconds away, so I had to wait for all the kids.

I took a nice long shower when I got back because it helps when I have this type of headache (sun and temperature changes and swimming/chlorine) and my mom and sister yelled at me for using hot water when we had a small tank, which I didn't know. We basically sat around until it was time to go to my uncle David's house for dinner. I can't remember what we did in between, I'm sure we just watched something on TV.

Apparently we stopped at a beach and I took some pictures when we drove to the tip of the island. I also remember unloading my pictures after my shower to clear up my memory card, since I think it's only 256MB.

The sky was really pretty when we drove to David's. We took my grandmom's car because we took her, so that was six people, which is too much for one car. When we showed up my mom made me show Wendy how to do things on her new camera, not against my will, but probably against Wendy's. My mom basically was like "HERE LET JEFF SHOW YOU COOL THINGS." It took a while but I figured out how to do color accent on her camera. I remember House was on TV. When I showed up, the first thing I did was pet their very very very very very fluffy and dark black cat named Scooter under their table for a while, and then Wendy gave me a cat comb to make it better. He rolled on his stomach; it was very cute.

We had dinner of Pompano fish, which my uncle David had said were great for eating earlier in the day and said he was really excited to cook for us. It was pretty good, and we all sat together at the same time, except for baby Lucien, who was sleeping, but cried at the very end of dinner. My sister took care of him, but then after a while Wendy's mom (Cathy?) took care of him instead. The conversation seemed to split in two then between men and women, but as usual, I favored the women. I think my dad and David were talking about fish, which I couldn't take. The women were talking about motherhood which was sort of interesting. Cathy also talked about the years people were born (Wendy, David and I are all year of dragon), and we talked some about music and math and a kid they knew named Leon who was an actuary and wealthy in Hong Kong. At some lull in the conversation we all went to the other room but I forget why.

Oh, we watched the Eagles game earlier and they destroyed the Cowboys. Also, I remember looking for the bread from dinner after dinner was over, and getting a cup of cold water dispensed from INSIDE the refridgerator, which was very strange. I also found out Wendy had a facebook and said I would friend her, which I did today.

When we went back home, I drove because I didn't drink anything, and after that I think we pretty much just watched Family Guy and House and went to bed. I slept with my sister this time.

Oh, my Aunt Jenn stayed in her hotel that day because she was very tired - her kids have tons of energy. Also, I was without sunglasses because I left them in my coat pocket, and I left my coat at David's house.

Peace out.

The Day We Arrived

My dad gave each of the siblings a $10 bill before we went to the airport because we'd get there around lunch time and he told us we should use it to get something to eat before we got on the plane. At about 11:25 I asked when the plane would board if we were leaving at 12, and it turned out it was boarding at 11:30, so we all got up to get food. I couldn't find much that I liked except a tiny candy shop with a small pack of three peppermint patties, so I bought that. I paid for it with my $10 bill and it cost $.89, so the change was $9.11, which was great, considering I was about to fly. My mom is TERRIFIED of flying and I considered showing her the receipt or telling her, but then decided against it.

Earlier in the day I had been texting Gina and we realized that it was the one-year anniversary of Sarah's after Christmas party, which was the day that we were blessed with the Best Txt Ever.

The man sitting next to me was old, very wide and big but not fat, had a full head of hair despite his age, and dark and somewhat leathery skin. His wife sat in front of him because US Airways separated them, as it had separated my family, so I also sat alone. I had a window seat, and the man had the center seat. He tried to take an empty seat by his wife, but then a commanding woman came from first class and said "Oh No, They Gave Me That Seat" and made the man go back and sit in the middle next to me. She was a jerk. The man didn't have much respect for my personal space and his elbows crowded me the whole time. His feet were in place but he spread his legs out at the knees, so that crowded me too. I spent the whole time reading Newsweek for the Hi-Q team but didn't even finish. We spent a lot of time on the tarmac, too. I also took a lot of pictures, and discovered that my camera DOES have a long exposure setting!

There were also some asshole teenagers on the plane sitting behind me, somewhere near my sister. Apparently they talked about some friend's mom being hot and made the mom in front of them angry, and she told them they were dirty-mouthed and inappropriate. Apparently there was a disagreement over the possible meanings of the word "stud." Apparently she talked to a flight attendent about them and that angered them even more (she sat right in front of them), and they accosted her further after that. My sister loudly said "THEY SOUNDED LIKE ASSHOLES" behind them as we walked off the plane and one of them heard her, which was the goal.

I ate all my peppermint patties on the plane, faster than I had expected. They didn't make a very good lunch so I was very hungry by the time we got off and it took forever to unboard. I bought a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos when we got off because I am a gross person.

My parents were sort of irritable the whole day, which usually happens. My dad really hates airports and my mom hates flying and she hates when things don't go perfectly according to plan, which happened when Enterprise didn't give us the kind of rental car that she asked for. Even though the Jeep we got is perfectly fine, she was still upset and angry about it. I wish that she wouldn't be like that, I wish she would be more like me, No-Drama Obama.

...

We went to a place called Shrimper's for dinner because my mom wanted fish dip, which my brother thought was hilarious. I got a chocolate milk so it was good. I wondered if I should still buy an apartment at PSU because of the market conditions, figuring a depression would completely sink me if I couldn't find renters. My dad talked about why he got out of the deal (on a technicality) for the property he had bought in Florida. We also caught my sister up on another divorce in the 'family'. My dad's brother is getting one, and my mom's best friend (who we call my aunt) is getting one. This is the one whose son drowned, if you are familiar. It's really sad, but apparently this often happens to couple whose only child dies, I don't know.

When we were at Shrimper's I took off my Brasil jacket and was wearing my Change We Can Believe In shirt beneath it. My sister and I went to the bathroom at the same time and apparently people were arguing about Obama at the bar, and my sister wondered if I had instigated it with my shirt. We had come across an Obama-mania booth earlier at the Philly airport, staffed by an Asian girl who smiled sheepishly at me when I did to her, after my sister pointed it out to my Obama-obsessed mom.

I took a picture of my food at Shrimper's because it was chicken tenders but I took off the tender and just ate the chicken, and by tender I mean the bread parts. My sister said I would post it on Facebook and it would be embarassing, but I never do that, but now I might and tag the picture with her so she'd be embarassed.

We were driving around Florida and talking about Christmas lights on the way to one of the houses (Fred's, where we are staying, or David's, my uncle whom we are visiting) and my brother and dad talked about white and blue christmas lights. They said it means you don't really believe, and my brother said, No, it's not like they spell it out. My dad said, "That's what blue lights spell if you really look closely, 'I Hate Jesus'." Which was out of character for him, and thus very funny.

Wendy plays guitar, which is really cool. She's my Uncle David's wife. The baby is really cute and my grandmom loves holding it, which is equally cute. Everyone liked my Obama shirt, which was very nice. Jenn, the sister of David and my dad, has apparently done a great job of liberalizing her children. They referred to Sarah Palin as "A STUPID IDIOT!!" and Richard apparently threw a baseball at her when she was on TV. For reference, he is 10 and his brother is 8. They were also disappointed that their public elementary school voted went for McCain when the kids were asked to vote.

We played tag outside and my uncle Dave talked about how this place is a blast from the past, telling a story about getting Wendy's very old knives sharpened at a blade sharpening specialty shop right from the 1950s. Her father was a butcher, or maybe grandfather. I tried to use my long exposure but the stars weren't shining strong enough, or the other lights were too strong.

Peace out.

---

My heart sort of sank when I turned off the Christmas lights on the tree just a minute ago.

Peace out.

Hurricane

Hurricanes come up the east coast all the time but it's only every couple of years that a good one makes it all the way up to the Jersey shore. When it happens, adults freak out and kids get all excited because the waves look crazy, the ocean looks angry, skies look dark and the wind is incredible.

In Avalon, we're doubly lucky because we have some safe spots to view the hurricane from on the North part of the island, near 9th and 10th street. As it turns out, streets with higher numbers were put underwater by storms long ago. So much for safe, eh? But anyway! There are public bulkheads at the east ends of those streets near the inlet, and there are beaches and large rocks beneath them. The tide from the storm always covers up the little beaches, and the fierce waves are then free to crash directly on the rocks below the bulkhead, sending walls of water over the solid metal guardrail. Whenever there's a good hurricane, kids gather at the bulkhead and wait for a good wave to come, crashing onto the rocks and sending a thick wall ten feet over the guard rail and then crashing down on the kids, who scream, get soaked, and run away. Sometimes reporters come and videotape it for the news. Sometimes the streets flood and parents decide it's time to go home.

One time a hurricane came up the coast and my mom suggested my brother go "parasailing" with its wind. In this context, that means taking two broomsticks, tying a bedsheet between them, putting on rollerblades, and letting the wind blowing into the sheet carry you at crazy speeds with no effort. So we actually did it - my brother and I were both pretty good skaters. We got two brown broomsticks and went out on one of the big, long, deserted streets in Avalon with our pink bedsheet sail and went probably twenty or more miles per hour on our blades. Stopping was always the scary part. "What do we do?!" I asked Ryan the first time we did it, totally scared. He told me, "Come'ere," and he put out his hand for my broomstick, so I handed it to him and he put them together, killing the sail and letting us come to a stop. We did it a few more times, and my mom might have a videotape of it.

Our friend McKenzie who lived in Avalon wanted to try it to, so she put on her skates and gave it a try with my brother. They went about as quickly as my brother and I had before, but she didn't know how to stop, and wasn't as good at skating as I was, and I think she fell and hurt her legs at the end.

Peace out.

Twister

When the movie Twister came out (a long time ago, I think I was in first grade or so), my whole family went to see it. If you're not familiar, the plot of the movie is basically that a bunch of different teams are trying to get their devices to the center of a tornado and prove that its the best for prediction purposes. So they basically just chase tornados the whole movie and get really close so they can put their inventions into them.

About halfway through the movie or so, I started having some sort of crisis. I don't even remember how it came on. In any case, I remember feeling like I couldn't breathe, feeling like no matter how deeply I breathed in I couldn't fully satisfy the need for air, and that (this is the weird part) the responsibility for directing breathing was consciously mine for the first time. I felt like up to that point, breathing was always automatic, and now it was up to me forever, and I wondered if I would die when I slept. I did have trouble going to sleep that night.

Anyhow, I started freaking out in the theater, though not loudly, but my dad sitting next to me noticed. I'm pretty sure I got off my seat and went to the floor with my panic - the cold of movie theater floors seems to make me feel better when I feel sick. Another time I got very sick in the middle of Castaway, and went to the cold floor of the theater minutes before throwing up in the bathroom. After getting on the floor in Twister, my dad just took me outside and we sat on the curb of AMC Painter's Crossing until the movie finished, and I suppose I told him I was afraid I couldn't breathe, and he told me that everything was fine.

The whole thing was just sort of surreal, that I actually had a moment where I realized that breathing was sometimes under conscious control and sometimes not, and I went into a panic about it. I also had a moment where I realized that the nape of your neck caves inward just a tiny bit for the first time when I was about five, and I freaked out, cried, and tried to blame the woman who had just cut my hair (thankfully I was home already).

My brother insists that I was just scared by the movie, but it really wasn't a scary movie.

Peace out.

Christmas Eve

When I was younger, I remember I asked my sister if people worked on Christmas Eve. She said yeah, and I remember being really surprised. Then I remember asking her if bosses asked all the atheists to work around Christmas so everyone else could celebrate, and then I also asked if it applied to anyone who didn't celebrate Christmas, like Jews or Hindus. For some reason, Dunkin Donuts is explicity tied to this memory, and I don't know why. I think maybe we went there around Christmas, or I assume everyone working there is Indian (terrible person, I know, going straight to hell) and therefore is an example of a place not effected by Christmas celebration.

I went to the mall today for shopping and was reminded of this because - terrible person going straight to hell - an Indian woman was working somewhere in Boscov's when we entered. Actually, today in general made me feel bad for all the people that had to work today. The woman that checked us out at B&N was clearly old enough to have a family and was wearing reindeer ears, and I would have liked for her to be with her family, I think. Same for everyone else (as long as they wanted to be). Jess pretty much summed it up when we were finding a parking spot on our way over and said "You know, Christmas pretty much sucks when you're an adult."

I guess it does but I like to think it'd feel better again if it would snow.

Peace out.

Money

For the first time, today I finally spent somewhat significant amounts of money (to someone my age) for gifts to friends, without doing secret santa or whatever. I guess I finally realized that I have more than I need right now, and I definitely don't have anything better to spend it on. It felt good, actually.

Peace out.

Soco Amaretto Lime

Chloe and I listened to Soco Amaretto Lime tonight when I was taking her home from Nicki's pit reunion. I had asked her if she heard it on the way there, but we didn't have time to listen until the ride home. I told her the story, about Baccalaureate and Pat Dawe singing it, and his friends standing up and singing later. I sang softly up till the end, because I wanted to sing but didn't want to ruin the song for her. I thought her eyes looked different near the end, but I wasn't sure until after the song was over. I told her the rest of the story, about the parties and singing at the end, and I teared up a bit too. I asked her if she was sad, and she said yes, about everything, and missing things, and I said I was too. I tried to make it a little bit better by remembering that at least we had something worth missing and being sad over. I suspect we were both still a bit upset by the time we got to her house, and it probably would have been nice just to talk to my friend a bit longer 'cuz what better is there to do but it was late and it seemed someone in her house was looking for her, ending a conversation a bit too early, I think.

Peace out.