Marcus Hook Train Station

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace out.

Battle of Chicken Coop

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace out.

Voice of the Pope

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

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

Apologies to my Catholic buds.

Peace out.

Beltway South

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

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

Peace out.

Dispatch from the Internship

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

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

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

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

Peace out.

Heaven Forbid

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

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

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

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

Peace out.

Finger to the Moon

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

Peace out.

Speaking of chemicalroad

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

Peace out.

Time Lapse Photography

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

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

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

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

Peace out!

Documentary

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

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

Peace out.

The Atlantic City Decision

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

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

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

"Yeah!  Do it.  Go."  

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

Peace out.

Beth O'K for the First Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace out.

A Note on the Piano

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

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

Assholes.

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

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

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

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

Peace out!

A Wikipedia Read that Almost Made Me Cry

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

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

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

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

Peace out

Plato at the Hockey Rink

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

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

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

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

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

Peace out!

The Website is Down

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

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

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

Peace out.

Cutting the Floor

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

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

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

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

Peace out.

Cognitive Biases

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

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

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

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

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

Peace out.

Showers and Towels

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

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

Peace out.

A Sad Dream

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

Whew.

Peace out.