Our long national nightmare is over

No, not the election, silly. My last cliffhanger post, of course. The wait for the new post.

I accepted the job in Austin. I told them my start date would be Nov. 8th. They sent me their IP agreement, I made some substantial changes to it, they agreed to them (the substantial portions, anyway). Then I told them that I was declining the offer.

I decided all of this because I didn't want to leave law school, essentially. I was worried that I would feel like I had flunked out, and I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to go back to law school to finish. I would have always wondered what might have been. Going to Texas, I could with some definitiveness determine what my life would be like. Staying in law school opens up a world of possibilities that I wouldn't have in going back to work just yet. Another thing that really bothered me is that I could be laid off in 6 months, and then I would have left school to have a job that I didn't have any more. That would've sucked.

Another thing that weighed on me was the fact that while in law school, I still have the opportunity to do tech-related things. I'm currently getting paid $80/week to work on Jurist, I can work for credits if I want, and the whole site is going to get re-written. By me. So I think I'll have enough things there to keep me busy, and if I decide to do tech-related work once I get out of law school, I'll be keeping my head in that game by working on the site.

2 weeks later, I have to say that I'm pretty happy with my decision. While I was trying to make the decision, even though I was leaning towards taking the job, I didn't feel good about the decision. I had a few fitfully-slept nights before making the decision, and none afterwards.

Though now that I went through all of that, I have a lot of catching up to do. I basically didn't do my schoolwork while I was trying to make the decision, and it put me really far behind. So that's what I'm trying to do lately, with some success, though not as much as I might like. I'm still far too easily distracted by other things, still too "open to suggestions".

Sorry it took so long to update. In case anyone is still checking the blog.

Should I stay or should I go?

So for those of you out there who don't know, I'm debating leaving law school. No degree, just $30k down the toilet. In doing this, I would be taking a job in Austin for a salary higher, at least, than when I was at IBM. I haven't gotten an actual offer yet, we'll see what it actually looks like, but apparently I'm likely to get one.

Let's look at the pros and cons of staying here in law school:

Pros: Staying here with S Staying here with the dogs Not completely turning my life upside-down Getting my law degree Doing work on the jurist website.

Cons: Not really happy with law school Worried about not finding a legal job when I get out Worried that I won't be able to get a tech job then either (remember, this is 2 years down the road) Another 2 years of being relatively poor 50th percentile in my class makes it seem even sillier

Now, to look at moving to Austin:

Pros: Back in the computer field, where I want to be. Back in Austin, which is way better than Pittsburgh. Money in my pocket.

Cons: Company already does some outsourcing to India. Described by my friend there as not a great place to work, but they pay well. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Apparently the biggest problem with working there is my hiring manager. Also not necessarily the best situation to walk into. Could theoretically get laid off in 6 months, then I've given up law school for no job.

Interesting Editorial

From the heart of Texas, I bring you this editorial, from The Iconoclast newspaper, endorsing Kerry over Bush.

Personally, I don't particularly like either of them. If this is the best that the US can do, if these guys are the cream of the crop, we've got problems.

A sign from....jeebus?

What does it say about things in my life that in a week of looking for a tech job, I've had as many interviews as a year of looking for a legal job. Granted, the interview came (at least in part) because I have a friend that works at that company , but it still doesn't make me feel very good about my life in law school. That and the 3 weeks' worth of French homework I need to do.

I heart NY

I'm in NYC this week. This has consistently been my favorite place to teach, because I love being in the city. I love the throngs of people and that it's a place where you can walk to things, or use public transportation. It's the only place that I can think of where having a car is almost a disadvantage.

I'm all about food, as you can tell by looking at me, and there's nothing you can't find in the city. I generally just eat pizza while I'm here, because the pizza that I've been able to get elsewhere is generally chain pizza, and if it's not, it's not much like new york pizza. A pizza place on every corner makes it convenient to do, too, especially when you don't want to spend a lot of time tracking down some place that you've never gone to before.

For the last six months or so, I've actually had DC as my preference, even over NYC, just because of the Afghani restaurant across the street from the hotel. I was in DC two weeks ago, I went out to dinner with a friend to the Afghani place, only to find it empty. Bare walls empty. No booths or kitchen empty. Consequently, DC isn't my favorite place anymore. One of the things I'm going to try to do this week, probably Thursday (a friend is coming into town on wednesday), is find an Afghani restaurant, there are several listed in Zagats.

I stay at the Gershwin apartment building while I'm here, it's at 50th and 8th, right in the theater district. It's a nice place to stay, and they provide a cablemodem in the apartment for the internet addicts that the instructors are.

My company's center here is in the CBS building at 52nd and 6th, so I have about a 6 block walk every morning and every evening, other than the humidity of the city, I really enjoy the walk. Since I'm going up- and cross-town, there are a number of different ways I can walk the route, so there's always something new to see every time I come. I haven't been here in almost 2 years, and not too much has changed, or at least, not along the route that I walked this morning.

It's almost lunch, almost time to go to the Halal cart and get some chicken with rice, my staple lunch while I'm here. Convenient, dirt cheap, and something slightly different from what I can get anywhere else. I have to wait for the lab tech to finish setting up the class computers before I can verify that yes, indeed, they work, and go back to the apartment to do some work.

Yep, I'm all about the NY experience. Even if my experience is plain jane.

Potato Chip Cookies??

In packing my lunch today, I packed myself some Herr's potato chips, and while doing so, I noticed there was a recipe on the back. It was for Potato Chip Cookies. The recipe involves 3 cups of crushed potato chips and a bunch of butterscotch or chocolate chips. It's certainly not the oddest idea I've ever come across, but it's definitely up there.

I'm so intrigued I'm going to have to make some tonight.

Gotta post

I need to start posting again, just to get in the swing of things. Things have been so hectic since school started, but I'm gonna try to write something more significant ASAP.

The end is nigh

I have been completely awful about writing up what's gone on each day since I last posted. I'm so tired of being on this trip, and I'm just plain tired.

My mom has a snoring problem, which wouldn't bother me if I weren't sleeping in the same room with her. It's unbelievably loud, like my grandmother's, and it's just something I'm not prepared to deal with. I bought earplugs before I left Pittsburgh, and some nights they've helped, others not so much.

On top of this annoyance, I'm sleeping in the bed with Aaron, which is not the most comfortable thing either, since he flails about when he sleeps, which doesn't bother me unless he actually hits me, which has happened a bunch of times now.

I'm in Pocatello, Idaho right now, staying in yet another Best Western. We're in a B&B tonight in Boise, then a motel near the airport, and that's it for the trip. I get in at 345p on Wednesday, and it will be none too soon.

All of us are feeling it, I think. We're getting a little more annoyed with each other at stupid things than we were at the start of the trip. We all just want to go home, I think.

All in all, it's been a good trip, we haven't had too much bickering, and we did see the highlights of all of the places that we've been. This superficial treatment of the national parks is good and bad, because I know where I really want to revisit but I'm so tired of living in the car that I have little desire to get out of it (oxymoronic, I know, but spend a couple weeks in the car and I promise you'll have little desire to do anything but stay in one place for a while, even if it's still in or near the car).

If I could go back in time, would I change how things went? Yes, most definitely. Either not going at all, or making sure Sarah came with. I would also prefer a trip where the dogs went (though that would have been tough on this trip, because of the flying). I think having the dogs along would have been a blast at so many of the places that we've been (though particularly the beach).

I'm still gonna try to write up what happened on the rest of the days, I'll post that when I do, but I have a feeling that's not really gonna happen until I get on a plane on Wednesday, or I get home.

I'm up to date.

Here's the rest of the trip, thus far. I've also put up some pictures:
Aaron in the Cascades
Deer in the morning at the Fisherman Cabin
Tree in the Hall of Mosses in the Hoh Rain Forest
Aaron next to a redwood on the first day. That's him at the base of it.
Sunrise on the first day
Interesting tree, somewhere on the Olympic peninsula. "He went thataway!"
Trees at Paradise on Mt Rainier.
I haven't photoshopped any of these, they'd probably look a little better with more contrast (I talk about my camera problems below), but I don't have time or photoshop with me to make those changes.
Here's the rest of the log.
Tuesday August 3, 2004

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My sleep was a little more fitful than I would have liked, and on top of that, I had my sister telephone. At 6am. "Did I wake you up??" "Um yeah, it's 6am here, we're 3 hours behind, remember?" "Oh, right. I forgot." Then a little while later, Aaron, who shared the bed with me, managed to punch me in the face, apparently unintentionally (he said he was stretching, a likely story). I ended up waking up for good at about 7am, we got on the road by about 830am. My dad drove most of the day, which was fine with me, I was still a little tired, but more importantly, I wanted to look out the window as we drove up the coast. I'm fine with driving and looking around, the only problem is my mother's sound effects and comments about "watch[ing] where you're going!" as I drive along.

We didn't have to drive all that far today, only a couple hundred miles, but it was still a long day. We stopped a large number of places, probably 12-15. I'll have to check with my mother, I think she wrote them all down.

Our first stop was about 20 minutes from the (m|h)otel. There were lots of gulls and pelicans on the beaches here, and the rock formations in the ocean were very nice.

Later, we tried to see the sand dunes along the coast, where they're supposed to be hundreds of feet tall, but we apparently missed the right turnoff, so we ended up going to a different part of them, which weren't very extraordinary at all. Along this side trip, however, we did manage to see a couple of quail and take some pictures of them.

At one of the places (images 303-321), there was a wall that was built to keep people from falling off the cliff. In order to try to get a better angle for pictures, I got up onto the wall. Now, there was a ledge about 10 feet down, but apparently my mom didn't see it. She got so completely freaked out by my standing on the wall that she started crying and just saying, "Jeremy get down!" My dad's only comment was, "You act like you don't have a couple to spare." It was here that we saw a sea lion down in the ocean. There were also a ton of cormorants roosting on the rocks below.

We also stopped at a place where there were rocks containing little tidepools (images 322-350), containing sea anemones and starfish. We ended up spending a while there, since it was a small trek down the beach to the tidepools, and there was a bunch of stuff to check out there.

Our last stop of the day was at Agate Beach. Supposedly at one time, there were lots of agate rocks on the beach, but the beach looked pretty much picked clean when we were there. We did go down to the surf and Aaron found some sort of goo on the beach (it seemed organic, but we weren't sure what it was from). I also tried to get Aaron to pick up some dessicated dog crap partially buried in the sand, but he recognized what it was before he picked some up. (images 358-398)

When we checked into the BW, we asked if there were any palces to eat in the area. It was about 850p, not exactly dinner time, but hardly late. The womean behind the desk looked at us incredulously and said, "I don't think you're going to find much open this late..." Gotta love little towns.

We checked into our (m|h)otel, the Best Western Landmark Inn in Lincoln City, Oregon. Dinner at Burger King (ugh), pool and jacuzzi, then downloading pictures and typing up this stuff until 1230a. Time for bed.

Day:	2
Miles Driven:	200
Total Miles Driven:	800

Wednesday August 4th, 2004

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We went white-water rafting today. It was funny as hell seeing my mom wearing a wetsuit and 2 pairs of glasses, since she was wearing her regular glasses and a pair of sunglasses on top of that. She didn't want to lose her magnetic clip on sunglasses, so a pair on top of her glasses was the way she went.

We went down a tributary of the Columbia River, the White Salmon River. It was a very scenic river, very pretty. Of course, since we got soaked and everything, I didn't have my camera, so I couldn't take any pictures (though given my camera problems, it wouldn't help necessarily). Our guide's name was Terie, at the start of the trip, my dad felt it necessary to point out (quietly, only to me) that I have bigger boobs than she does. I guess I can write that here, she's unlikely to read this. :)

I sat up front, so did my dad, and we got soaked. In the boat, I mean. There was a part of the river that we had to get out and hike a bit, since the rapids were a little bit too difficult. At the end of that, there was a 15 foot cliff we could jump off, and to my surprise, all of us did it. I got to the cliff and reconsidered...it looked a shitload higher when you were actually considering jumping off the thing.

Day:	3
Miles Driven:	350
Total Miles Driven:	1450

Thursday, August 5th, 2004

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When we left this morning, we ended up stopping at a couple places in and around Yakima, to get cherries at the one place, to get bread and jam at another place. We got the latter items at a little grocery store called "Slim's". When we were about to leave Slim's, my dad and I both decided that it was a good idea to hit the restroom before we left, so we asked where it was, and we got pointed to the right aisle, and sure enough there was a sign that said, "Restroom/El bano." My dad motioned for me to use it first, so I went back there (through part of the stockroom), and I opened the door. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Someone had done something most awful to that bathroom. It was filled with diarrhea, so I just turned around and walked out. As I passed my dad, I said, "I'll pass." I walked to the front of the store and waited for him to come out, and to my surprise, he was out immediately. He too had passed. I told the woman at the front of the store, "Someone did something bad to that bathroom back there. I wanted to tell you so that you wouldn't think it was us." She had a horrified look on her face when I said that, but we left. As we were driving away, I thought I could hear a faint shriek coming from the back of that store...

Not much to write about today. We went to Mt Rainier and drove around it, then drove on to Aberdeen, where we are staying for the night. The hotel actually has internet access, which is good, though it's only a modem.

Mt Rainier was in the clouds, so we didn't get many pictures. We hiked up the mountain a bit when we got to Paradise (where the visitor center is located).

My dad hit another animal today, a bird, actually. It was sitting in the middle of the road, and it started to take off, but we definitely hit it. My dad said it was a "junco" and I think that's the correct spelling of it. Maybe if I'm feeling energetic I will put a link there to wikipedia. It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where George hits them ("We overlook the pooping everywhere, and they get out of our way when we're driving").

I'm getting frustrated over a lack of ability of my camera to take a decent photo. I certainly don't know everything about using an SLR, but I've never had a problem with a film camera in taking decent shots. All of my shots are getting overexposed, and it's really pissing me off. The real problem seems to be when the white predominates the picture, the camera's whitebalancing just doesn't seem to work quite right. I'm gonna try to use the internet access to figure out what the hell I can do to fix this problem.

Day:	4
Miles Driven:	300
Total Miles Driven:	1450
Animals run over:	3

Friday August 6th, 2004

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We left Aberdeen a little later than we wanted to, around 945am. We didn't want to leave too late because our trip today consisted of driving around pretty much the entire Olympic peninsula and back to the Southern end of Puget Sound, to Olympia.

On our way to Olympia, we saw a "scenic overlook" sign for Mount Walker that my mom suggested we take. We should have realized that this was a mistake when we turned onto a gravel road. Several miles later, up the side of the mountain we finally decided to turn around, but not until my dad had scared my mom half to death (and the rest of us too) by driving up this gravel road, along a cliff, at 25-30 MPH. It was definitely too fast to be driving up the road.

Also, a few hours before, when driving on the highway, though there were a few curves, my dad said, "Can you do me a favor and slow down a little bit?" though I was doing about 60 in a 60 MPH zone. Big mistake for him to say some shit like that to me this early in the trip. And you'd better believe I broke that out when he was tearing up the side of the mountain.

Day:	5
Miles Driven:	350
Total Miles Driven:	1800
Animals killed:	3

Saturday August 7th, 2004

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Oh my goodness, is this trip over yet? We didn't drive all that far today, but I'm beat. I'm ready to be home, I'm ready to not be living out of a car, I'm ready to be on solid ground for more than an hour at a time.

This morning started out in Olympia, we went to the capital building for a few minutes, and then drove up to Seattle. It took just over an hour to get to Seattle, where we were pretty much only going to the aquarium. We went through the aquarium, it was a nice aquarium, but it was pretty small.

I stopped at the help desk in the aquarium to see about a camera store, since I wanted to get an LCD cover for my camera, and I wanted to talk to someone about the overexposure/whitebalance problem that my camera seems to be having. We walked over to the camera store, the girl behind the counter talked to me for a little while, but the end result was that she said to contact Canon about service. She said that it sounds like something that's wrong with the camera, not with how I'm using it. Which is somewhat of a relief, but leaves me in a quandary about what to do about my camera situation. Buying a new one and returning it when I get home seems like a less than satisfying solution.

After going there, we went to meet one of my college roommates, Andrew, who lives in the Seattle area. Andrew's always been a little odd (not that I'm not), but I wanted to see him, it had been 4 years since we had seen each other (at another roommate's wedding). I had called him Friday night to see where he thought would be a good place to meet, he suggested a Vietnamese place. I was thinking when I agreed to that, that my parents and Aaron would be at the aquarium or something and wouldn't be around. My family isn't exactly the most diversified of families, so I wouldn't generally think to take them to a Vietnamese restaurant. As it turned out, though, they went with me. I was somewhat worried about it.

We arrived a little early and waited for Andrew, and during that time we ended up talking to the guy watching the parking lot, this little old Vietnamese guy. Apparently it was his job to make sure that people who parked in the parking lot actually went into the restaurant. He and my dad talked a bit, but we were all standing there under a tree, and during this conversation he (the Vietnamese guy) felt it necessary to point out that I'm "handsome." I finally get hit on by someone on this trip, and it turns out to be a little old Vietnamese guy. Just my luck. Andrew eventually showed up, we had a pretty good lunch, talked about what we're both up to a little bit, and both went our separate ways. We probably spent 45 minutes in total having lunch, and I think both of us said what we could say in that time, so it was a good thing we didn't setup more time than that to meet.

As it turned out, I needn't have worried about my family. They have all been raving about how good the food was at the Vietnamese place. We all got beef pho (Aaron got meatball instead of beef), and they all really liked it.

We drove out to bumblefuck today, to stay at "Ovenell's Heritage Inn" in Concrete, WA. It's pretty close to the Skagit River, but we didn't actually go down to the river while we were there. It's a nice little place, they have a bed and breakfast, and they have a set of cabins you can stay in. We stayed in one of the cabins. The cabin (which I forgot to take a picture of) was called the "Fisherman" cabin and was probably 200 square feet, had a bathroom door that didn't quite shut, and the water in the place tastes and smells like iron. So I ended up not showering while I was here, the water was just nasty. But other than that, it was a nice little place. I am sleeping on the futon here, Arn is on the floor, and my parents have the bed.

After we had checked into the place, and after we had dumped off most of our shit at the cabin, I decided that I'd like to go look at this trail that the innkeeper had told us about that was on the map of the Cascades. Big mistake. The road, once we found it (it wasn't well marked, a common theme on this trip), was a dirt road. Which would have been ok, if it hadn't been turned to mud by precipitation. So the first bit was mud, and I could definitely feel the car sliding about a bit on the mud. It shortly thereafter turned to gravel, but then again, it added switchbacks to the mix as well. The trip up the mountain ended up being about 9 miles of gravel and switchbacks, though thankfully it wasn't usually a cliff along the side of the car. We actually had gotten close to the top and had decided to turn around, as we didn't know how much further it would go. When we did that, there was a pile of snow where we were turning around, and we had gotten out of the car to take some pictures and look around. My dad started throwing snowballs at us, which we found amusing, and something to tell Aaron, since he had decided to stay at the cabin. A car was coming down the road, and we flagged it down and asked how much further it would be to get to the top, and he said, "you're there," as it was only about 250 feet to the little parking lot (though it wasn't clear that it was a parking lot until you got there, pretty much). We got out, took some pictures, and started down again. Not quite as harrowing as yesterday, when my dad was driving.

Day:	6
Miles Driven:	200
Total Miles Driven:	2000
Animals run over:	3

Sunday August 8th, 2004

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We got up early today. Really early. 6am early. Jesus are we dumb. None of us slept well in our little cabin, my parents because the mattress was apparently really bad, and me because I kept on getting woken up. My dad woke Aaron up to go outside and look at the stars at 1215am, my mom's snoring woke me up a few times, and then I woke up again when it became freezing in the cabin because we had the windows open. The benefit of getting up as early as we were was that we saw 5 deer outside. I even got a shot of the one taking a dump.

Then it was on to driving through the Cascades. This is really a part of the trip I could have done without. It was beautiful, yes, but it just wasn't as special after the stuff that we have already seen. We only stopped twice, both times for small trails. The one stop was an overlook, where I took a bunch of pictures, and that was cool. We were high enough up that my dad and I both were talking about vertigo, something that neither of us are particularly prone to. It was extremely high up. Aaron and I took to trying (and suceeding, of course) to freak my mom out by going close to the edge, or just climbing up rocks that they had there (at no point were we in danger of falling). She went nuts of course, so it was mission accomplished for us.

We drove on and eventually came to the Coulee dam, where we stopped at the visitor information center. It's beyond me why the dam even has a visitor information center, as they don't charge for any of it, and they don't even have any merchandise to sell, really. What they do have is a movie that you get to watch, which seems like propaganda for wanting to build the dam in the first place. It includes such musical interludes as "Roll On Columbia" and the propaganda songs written in the early 40s. I guessed that the movie was from the early 70s, though my parents thought it was older than that, even. In either event, it was a worthless movie to watch. It didn't help that we missed the first couple of minutes of the film, but I think that we got the overall feel of the experience. Apparently the Coulee Dam is the largest concrete structure in the world, which I found surprising, but that's what they said.

After Grand Coulee, we went through the last of the Cascades and broke into big sky country. We eventually hit the interstate and drove the rest of the way in to Spokane on that. Finding the hotel turned out to be no big deal, it was called "The Davenport."

The Davenport is a nice old hotel in Spokane, and my mom insisted that we tour the building and take some pictures. Aaron likewise insisted that we use the pool and hot tub, after having a night without such amenities.

Later, my mom had another "Ginny" moment when Aaron was taking the shower. Now, before I say what she did, I will say that there are a number of things my mom yelled at the rest of her kids for, and we resent almost all of them, just because they're so fucking stupid. This is one of them. She banged on the bathroom door and shouted at Aaron, telling him to get out of the shower. I yelled at her, saying it wasn't costing her anything (her usual script involved something about water costing money, and interesting thought from someone who's never paid an electricity bill or a water bill), and if there's someone who doesn't need discouragement from taking a shower, it's Aaron. Without going to school, that kid's just not learning to fit in with regular people. So then my mom insists that she wasn't yelling at him, that she was being reasonable, blah blah blah. Yeah fucking right. I asked Aaron later whether it felt like she was yelling at him, he said, "Yeah." And that's all that matters.

Day:	7
Miles Driven:	300
Total Miles Driven:	2300
Animals run over:	3

Monday August 9th, 2004

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I'm so far behind in my writing. I'm writing tonight, but I have a few days of writing to do. I'm gonna try to do at least a couple of days' worth of writing tonight.

We left Spokane this morning after hitting Perkins for breakfast and then Staples to return the cd burner. On our way out, we also went by the Manito Park in Spokane, they have a nice set of greenhouses and a Japanese gardens. I, um, had to use the restroom, and I went into the one near the Japanese gardens. This was an older bathroom, I hope, as there was no stall door on the toilet. There was a urinal next to the sink, and there was a divider there, but the toilet was standing free.

You can guess that I didn't use that one. Fortunately, there was a nice bathroom at the greenhouse area of the park, so I went and used that bathroom instead. I was still extremely surprised that there was a toilet without a stall door. Who is gonna use that to take a dump? Only the extremely desperate, I guess.

After we left Spokane, it was pretty much just a day of driving. I drove the whole way, in part so that I could be completely justified in playing my newly burned cds in the car, to make me feel better for having spent the time burning all of the cds. We drove through the panhandle of Idaho and into Montana, stopping for the night in Kalispell, MT, at the Grand Hotel. This place is a nice old hotel, though they do have modern internet access.

When we arrived at the hotel, we had the most bizarre experience. We gave the girl at the counter our last name, to check in, and another woman behind the counter said, "Oh, I think you're the ones with a bag in the back room." We were all thinking, "WTF is she talking about?" Then she said, "I guess you left a bag at the airport, maybe Boise?" and brings out my mom's missing piece of luggage. So we've driven 2600 miles over the last week, only to find my mom's luggage in the middle of Montana. Odd. Pretty cool, but odd. I guess United figured out where we were going to be by looking at the itinerary stuff that my mom had in her bag, and they forwarded it on to here.

As soon as the woman brought the bag out from the little room, my mom had a real "Ginny" moment, one that made me cover my eyes and pray that somehow I was switched at birth. There was a piece of paper that got put on the outside of the bag, taped to it, obviously by someone at the hotel (it had their letterhead on it). Apparently when they received the bag, they debated calling the only number they had for my mom, their home phone number, but had decided against it. They had written a note on the paper that said, in part, something to the effect of, "wanted to call, but it was to (sic) late in PA." Not bubbling over with thanks to the lady behind the counter (though I guess she didn't really make the bag appear in the middle of Montana anyway), my mom does take the time to say, "Oh look, she used the wrong 'too'." Right there in front of the lady. I don't know if it was that particular lady who wrote the note, but whether it was or not, it was definitely not the right thing for my mom to say. Once we were in the room, I was yelling at my mom about it a little bit, though she couldn't see where the problem might be. Apparently she said something to my dad about how I had pointed it out to Aaron yesterday on a postcard he had written to one of his friends or maybe our grandparents. But she couldn't see the difference. If she can't tell the difference, no amount of me talking is gonna show her the difference, so I didn't even bother to try to explain further.

We went out to dinner at a local place called "Moose's" which had peanut shells on the floor, cheap beer, and good pizza. I had 2 glasses of Okanokee, a regional beer (I guess). Even better, it was $1.40 a beer. I turned down the opportunity to have a beer called "Moose Drool," though I do plan on getting a couple of glasses with the Moose Drool logo on it tomorrow morning. While there, my family was really pissing me off; Aaron was being a brat, my dad was acting weird about dinner (he's not particularly fond of pizza, but they had other shit there, and he was doing his version of a pout, I think, something he does most often when he's hungry), and I don't think my mom was very happy about being in a place that said "saloon" on the outside. She was probably also unhappy about my drinking a beer (or 2), my dad drinking a beer, and there being smoke in the place (though it really wasn't that bad). The pizza was really good, and a good change of pace from what we've had already. Aaron was pouting during the whole dinner experience because we hadn't gone to Wendy's again, though we ate there last night.

After we got back to the hotel, my dad and I went out to check out the "Casino"s that are around town, we only went to the 2 closest, but they were both places where you can only play the electronic machines, so we didn't even bother.

I watched portions of "Top Gun" and "Austin Powers", and tried to figure out how to get my camera to work better for me. It's midnight again, I'm tired as hell, and I'm gonna go to bed. Without getting my writing done, of course.

Day:	8
Miles Driven:	300
Total Miles Driven:	2600
Animals run over:	3

The start of the trip

I'm not done with this yet, but I decided I wanted to post some of it anyway. I haven't put in the links to images yet, either, but at least you can know what I've been up to so far on the trip.

Sunday August 1, 2004

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My flight was at 530p from Pittsburgh to Chicago. I hadn't packed yet when I woke up at 9a, but I had pretty much packed by noon. I'm never one to pack early.

I wanted to make sure that I got to the airport by 3:30p, the last few times I've flown out of Pittsburgh (granted they were Monday mornings), I've had to wait in the security line for almost an hour each time, and I didn't want to rush it. There's been some road work going on out towards the airport, so I wasn't sure whether the bus would be delayed by those. So I wanted to make it on the 2:00p bus, just to make sure. My sister drove me to the CMU airport flyer bus stop, I was out at the airport by 2:35p. No detours.

I had to wait in line to get my ticket and my baggage taken care of, that took probably 20 minutes. Then security. Oh boy. 5 minutes. Good thing I planned ahead.

Once in Chicago, I looked on the monitor to see if my parents and brother had come in yet. They were taking a flight right around the same time as my Pittsburgh flight, but flying from Allentown. Their flight came in, they weren't surprised at all that I was waiting for them (though with all this time with them on the trip, I have to wonder why I even wanted to spend more airport time with them).

The flight to Boise was uneventful, though long. No movie. We landed in the Boise terminal, and here is where I hand out the props to the people who designed the Boise terminal bathrooms. Those are some great bathrooms. The dividers between the urinals were large. The floor to ceiling, two and a half feet deep variety. Then I washed my hand, and they had foamy soap. That's the best. I'm a man of simple pleasures, I guess, but foamy soap definitly wins points with me. On exiting the bathroom, they lost a few points, though, for the door. It was a swing-inward type. The cardinal mistake of bathroom design. Big loss of points for that. Also, paper towels instead of those awful not-gonna-get-your-hands-dry blowers. Good deal.

So my dad and brother (Aaron) go with me to get the baggage, my mom goes to get the car rental. They pick up their four bags, I pick up my two, we meet my mom over in the car rental line, and eventually we get our car, a Ford Freestar with 13852 miles on it. I'm sure this number will be much larger when we turn it in on the 17th or 18th. Much.

It's at this point in the retelling of this misadventure that I will note that my mother didn't make it out of the airport without talking about money. My dad told her to get the collision insurance offered by the rental car company, and she had to make a comment about paying for the airfare, and now paying for the car rental. And now the insurance on the car rental, too.

I've bought a Ford car new, my 1999 Mercury Cougar. I'm not anti-American cars, I'm not anti-Ford. Having said all that, this minivan is a piece of junk. It's way too small inside (my parents' '92 Caravan has more internal room), the brakes on it aren't very good. And then there's the beeping. The incessant, infernal beeping. Apparently Ford has decided its best policy for regaining market dominance is to piss off the people who already bought their cars. The car beeps when you don't have your seat belt on. Passenger and driver. I learned this while driving from the car rental lot to the terminal, a distance of about 800 feet. It beeps repeatedly for about 5 seconds. And then, two minutes later, if you haven't yet put your belt on, it beeps again for 5 seconds. And so on.

I appreciate the safety of utilizing the seat belts. I also recognize their inconvenience when watching birds or taking photos from the car, or driving 200 feet down a 15 MPH road. And during these otherwise peaceful times, I would like to avoid having to listen, repeatedly, to the car beeping at me. But in this Ford Freestar, I can't. I'm not in the car five minutes, and already it has pissed me off.

Monday August 2, 2004

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So we're off, making sure our belts are buckled (as I write this, two days into the trip, there isn't a person in the car who isn't pissed off about the beeping), looking for Walmart. We hate Walmart, but there's a certain necessity of having Walmart in the year 2004, and even moreso when it's midnight in Boise. With nothing else open at this time, our choices are somewhat limited. We shopped at Walmart for 45 minutes, buying the necessities of our trip (cooler, food, drinks, paper towels, etc). While we were in the checkout line (yes, there was a line at 1am), my mom said she wanted to go out to the car, and she got the key from me. She came back in after about 3 minutes, saying that she seemed to be missing a bag. Apparently my family's incompetence knows no bounds. Somehow my dad and brother hadn't paid enough attention to know how many bags or which bags to grab from the carousel. Short one bag, we tried in vain to go back to the airport to retrieve the missing. They had closed already. "Not even security has a key." said the person in the Northwest office (we flew United).

So my mother and I (we had left Aaron and my dad at Walmart to finish the checkout process) are at the Boise airport at 1am, missing a bag, and she starts crying. Way to start the trip.

<cue Batman "next scene music" here> Back at Walmart, we pick up my dad and Aaron, tell them what's up, tell my mom that she has to make a decision about what to do. We can stay in Boise until about 6am, until the United office opens, and get her bag; or we can start driving. Staying in Boise means skipping some of our trip. The late start means that we can't see the Redwood forest. The late start means that this has become just the 5-state tour, not the 6-state tour that we had planned. After eating some 130am Burger King, my mom decided (after some more crying) that there wasn't much in there that she couldn't live without, so we went on with our trip.

20 minutes later, we're off the interstate, and on US 20 West, to Bend, OR. 65 MPH, I'm cruising it at about the speed limit. This is not a well-lit road, this is a road where hitting a deer or elk seems not only possible, but probable. That collision insurance is seeming like a good deal.

My dad's back has been bothering him for a couple of months now, to the point that he wasn't sure that he would be able to go on this trip. Sitting in the seat trying to sleep isn't helping him, so my mom suggests that he get in the back and sleep on one of the bench seats.

The road we were traveling was one that winds through small towns, and when it does so, the speed lkimit drops precipitously. This happened about 30 minutes into the trip. 65 MPH right down to 35 MPH. I hate that, so I usually just kind of coast down to the speed limit, rather than applying the brakes to get down to the speed limit.

It bit me this time. I was doing about 50 MPH, in the 35 zone. As I'm pulling over to let my dad and mom switch seats, I see the flashing lights behind me. My dad's already out of the van, I don't remember exactly what was said, but the cop said that I was going an "extremely high rate of speed." Give me a break. It's one thing to tell me I'm speeding, but 50 isn't exactly an "extremely high rate of speed." Anyway, the cop felt it was sufficient to offer a verbal warning about it (without approaching the driver side window, even, since my dad was already outside the car), so I guess it doesn't really matter. That would have made the first day of the trip even better, a nice fat ticket.

So my parents switch seats. What this means of course is that she's going to be sitting in the fron with me. I figured she'd probably sleep, so I didn't think much of it initially. Instead, she ends up staying awake the whole time (around 4 hours), jibber-jabbering away. Talking about everything, but a lot of it starting with, "Well, I had it in that other bag, but.." Yay.

I can tell you, a day and a half later, that this bag and what was in it has been a topic of conversation more times than I care to think about.

I ended up driving most of the way to Bend, which is somewhere around 300 miles from Boise. Going through Eastern Oregon seems to be much like going through what I imagine Nevada or New Mexico to look like. A lot of scrub brush, not a whole lot else. There were a ton of jackrabbits, and we also saw a few (mule?) deer. The jackrabbits were pretty smart and stayed out of our way. Until 430am or so. A jackrabbit darted in front of the car, I was doing about 60 MPH, and while I'm not entirely certain, I'm pretty sure that jackrabbit is no more. (S)He hit the front of the car with an audible sound, there just wasn't enough clearance.

I switched driving duties with my dad at about 6am, and Aaron also got up and rode shotgun with him. I don't think my dad was driving even 10 minutes before he hit a rabbit, too. Luckily, this was to be the end of our Thumper-killing spree.

I tried to go to sleep, and all told, I probably got about an hour of sleep on this day. I was one tired hombre. We just stopped way too frequently for me to get any solid sleep. I wake up when the car stops, I can't help it. Our first stop occurred at 645am, when we stopped at a rest area about 20 miles outside of Bend, OR (on the Boise side), right around sunrise. (insert link here to images 103-109)

We drove through Bend, stopping for gas and the restroom (insert image 112). Not a bad restroom for a gas station, but it had the inward-swinging door. "I guess I won't be able to hold it until I get home," I quipped as I got out of the van.

We stopped a few more times before getting to Crater Lake (insert link here to images 113-119). I'm already starting to get the feeling that we're gonna be stopping a lot more places than we planned. Which is a good thing, but makes the days longer.

Crater Lake was phenomenal. The deepest lake in the country, it's about 1950 feet deep (Tahoe is 1600), and was formed by a volcano collapse. Since the large cone of the volcano collapsed, there have been a few smaller cones that have come up out of the bottom of the lake, the largest one even breaking the surface of the water that currently fills the lake (image 130). The lake's water is a deep blue, it's quite striking, especially with the surrounding scenery of rock and trees. I can only hope that the photos I took convey some of this. I took quite a few photos (the joy and burden of digital photography), we stopped several times (3 or 4) around the edge of the lake to take pictures and just to see what we could see. (images 120-183). At the one part, I thought the rock face was very striking (image 156).

After hitting the gift shop, we were on to the next part of our trip, California and the Redwood forest.

One note before I continue. While we were at the Crater Lake information center, complete with TVs and video of what happened to create Crater Lake, there was a woman sitting on the floor against the wall, directly across from where you walk into the center. She was breast-feeding her baby. In theory, I don't have a problem with women breast-feeing their babies in public. In practice, I don't really care, either, but I find it hard to be around when a woman is breast-feeding her child. I can't speak for other men, but for me, the problem lies in knowing that there is a bare breast pretty much right there to look at, but knowing that I shouldn't really be looking at it. I feel like the need to look at boobs is so ingrained that the baby getting to look at it, while I can't, well, that's just not fair. I guess what it comes down to for me is that I'm cool with women breast-feeding their babies in public, but if they're gonna do that, they have to be ok with me looking. Having said that, I tried my best not to look, but it was pretty much a losing battle. Rather than try to fight that battle (which generally involved me realizing that I was looking and trying to figure out how that kept happening), I ended up just walking outside to avoid the issue entirely.

Ok, back to the trip to the redwood forest. On the way through Southern Oregon, we happened upon the Rogue River Gorge. Most of the waterfalls along the way are supposed to dry up by this time of year, but obviously the Rogue River doesn't. I overexposed a bunch of pictures trying to get cool shots where the motion of the water, but that's basically because I don't really know what I'm doing with my camera. Typical. (Images 184-221.)

This part of our trip was basically a planning mistake. I had been talking with another instructor a few weeks ago while teaching, he said that if we were going to Crater Lake, we should hit the Redwood forest in northern California. I mentioned it to my mom, she left me a voicemail saying it was doable, I told Aaron to tell her to tell me how many hours of driving "doable" meant, he told her that I said to go ahead with the switching of reservations, and thus our trip to the Redwood forest was born. There are actually several Redwood forests in California, we couldn't make it to the ones with the big Sequoias, they were too far away from the rest of our trip. No driving through a tree for us. All we could swing, with the rest of our trip, was a trip down the Redwood Highway.

While driving down the Redwood Highway, I was really beginning to think that it had been a mistake to make this part of the trip. The views and scenery were very nice, but nothing like I was hoping for (images 222-228). And then we got to them. The real redwoods.

While it might have been a planning mistake that took us to the Redwood forest, actually going to the Redwood forest was anything other than a mistake. Words cannot convey just how awesome and heart-rending it is to go the Redwood forest. To put your hands on and look up at another living thing that has been around for probably thousands of years, standing 200 feet in the air and 10 feet in diameter gives you a sense of who you are and where you stand in the universe. Some measure of poignancy is added by the fallen redwoods that litter the forest. No matter how big, you can always fall.

After visiting the Redwood forest, I can honestly say that I have never experienced anything like it. I don't think I'm likely to. I've walked next to large land animals (elephants at the Pittsburgh Zoo), I've never felt anything special about trees before, but I definitely felt something in that forest. Astronauts have been said to touch the face of God by going into space, and that's the phrase that I think fits the Redwood forest best for me. There's something very sacred about it, to me, something that no religion can hold a candle to. I don't know how else to describe it. It's definitely worth the trip if you get a chance. (images 229-248)

20 minutes after leaving the Redwood forest, we were at our (m|h)otel, the Best Western Crescent City. After a short visit to the beach there (images 249-254), we had Subway, Aaron and I utilized the pool and hot tub, I downloaded the pictures off my camera, and we were all in bed by 9pm. The only eventful thing that happened in Crescent City was that Aaron got stung by a yellow jacket as we were getting out of the car to go to the beach.

Day:	1
Miles Driven:	600
Total Miles Driven:	600

The Odyssey begins

So I leave today for my vacation with my parents, really only the second vacation I've ever taken with my parents.

I fly to Boise today, my flight's at 530p, I haven't packed yet. I think subconsciously I'm hoping that if I don't pack I won't go, but I should probably take care of that sooner rather than later.

So the blog will be on hiatus for a while, I'm gonna try and update a couple times while on the trip, a couple of the rooms do have internet connections (not sure that I'm gonna spend $10 to get it though).

Your last call out for Chinese delivery

We got a flyer for a Chinese takeout place, "Hong Kong Taste," that's just too good not to pass along. I scanned the back of the flyer and put it up here so you can check it out....just don't order from them.

Asking the tough questions

I'm not afraid to do it. Let's challenge the normal thinking about tough subjects, subjects that we all care about, we all think about, that we all have opinions about. I'll get us started, you go next.

Are there dumber people in America than the people who show up for Wheel of Fortune? I don't believe so. Tonight, they guy who spun the wheel first, a writer, guessed "Y" as his first letter. Now, being a writer, I'd think he'd know which letters are a little more common than others and choose a little more wisely than "Y." On top of this awful guess, the first word in the puzzle was "_____'_". Do you really need to be told that "S" would be a pretty good guess for this puzzle? I guess he did.

While on the subject of Wheel, we should also talk about the whole "buying a vowel" thing. In case you don't know how it works, the contestants can spend $250 to "buy" a vowel. If the vowel is not a letter found in that puzzle, they lose their turn. Fair enough. Either way, they lose the $250. That's what rankles me about the whole thing. If there was no such vowel in the puzzle, there was nothing to buy. It seems a little unfair to charge them for the vowel that didn't exist. If I go to Amazon and try to buy something, but it's out of stock, I don't get charged for it. It seems patently unfair to me that they get charged for it. Then again, I suppose that it's not really their money that they're spending, it's the show's, so maybe they should be able to set their own rules.

Sundays in the hotel

Trying not to spend too much money over the weekend, I have thus far stayed in the hotel all day. I grabbed a couple of extra yogurts at the breakfast buffet to have for lunch, and I'm stocked on netflix DVDs to watch, so I've been doing that pretty much all day. Watching 5 or 6 hours of TV DVDs can be exhausting, let me tell you.

Earlier in the day, I had the "No Service" thing in the keyslot so that they wouldn't bother to clean my room. I haven't tracked stuff all over the carpet, and making the bed just seems silly, so I wasn't too worried about it. I got a fresh towel from one of the cleaning people this morning, that's all I really needed. But at some point, when I went outside my room, I must have forgotten to put the "No Service" sign back in.

The housekeeping people knocked earlier, I didn't answer, but when they knocked a second time, I did answer, because I had forgotten to get a bathmat earlier, so I wanted a bathmat. I let her in, and she started doing her thing, I tried to express to her that if she just did the bathroom that would be fine, but apparently I didn't do a very good job of expressing it, because she is currently vacuuming my room (She speaks Spanish, I don't).

To me, there's nothing more awkward than sitting here on my ass while she works around me. I know the company is paying for this service and all, but now I'm thinking that maybe I shouldn't have opened the door. Then again, I could be obsessing over this only because I've watched 6 straight episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm in some sort of Larry David-esque fit.

What's in a name?

I drove to DC tonight, along a familiar path, from my parents' house. South of Harrisburg, on US-15, there is a convenience store. Not just any store. This gas station/convenience mart has a name of "Rutter's."

I passed "Rutter's" fully 3 hours ago at this point, and I'm still thinking about it. I've been going past "Rutter's" for several years now, since it was on the way to my parents' from where we lived in NC, and I've always been mildly amused at the name of it.

"Rutters," I'd think, "I know what rutting is....maybe a rutter is someone who ruts." So here, finally, I have looked up "rutter" on dictionary.com and found that yes, a rutter is defined as (in one sense at least) "That which ruts."

This probably only amuses me, but I think the porn industry should start a campaign to be called the "Rutting Industry" and porn stars should be "Rutters." I imagine fun interview scenes of rutters trying to go straight:

Interviewer: So I see here Ms. Dildoupyourass that you were a rutter for three years. What exactly does that entail?

Interviewee: Rutting, mostly.

Hmm...I'm getting the feeling that this is a sign that I should go to bed, when I'm amused at such insipidness.

"It's pronounced 'nuke-yoo-lar'"

I drove to my parents' house this weekend. It would be a mistake to say that I drove "home", as not only is there no room for me anymore (or anything else), but I can't believe that these idiots (my parents) are related to me.

My little brother is 12, almost 13. He's going into the seventh grade. Except he's not, because he's never been to school. My mom has put him through what I'll kindly call "half-assed homeschooling" (it's probably more like "one-twentieth-assed homeschooling"). Her brand of homeschooling involves her giving my brother a worksheet and then retreating to her bedroom (a complete fucking mess...I'll take a picture tomorrow if I can). Whereupon he starts playing video games or just doing something, anything, other than the worksheet. He doesn't read books, he doesn't write more than a sentence at a time.

Because homeschooling is primarily a Christian nut activity, most of the books that she gets are for Christian nuts. The logic book that she purchased wanted little kids to brand statements such as "Jesus turned water into wine." as either "True Statement" or "False Statement." The math book concept of this amuses me of course, because I imagine problems such as "Q: Andy has 10 apples and Jesus takes 4 from him. How many apples does Andy have left? A: 10, because Jesus doesn't steal." The math books aren't that blatantly religious, but they still definitely reference religious bullshit.

The past few years, it gets to May and my parents say that he will be going to school next year. Then, by July, they've changed their tune and they think it's a good idea to wait another year. Then by the end of July it's not until high school that they're really going to have to send him to school, since my mom "can't teach him Algebra II."

They're at the latter point right now. A couple of months ago when I was here, he was going to school next year. Then apparently one of his friend's friends didn't like him, so he got scared about going to school next year, and convinced my parents (I'm sure it took him saying something only once) to let him stay home again. And why wouldn't he want to stay at home? There are no demands or expectations on him here. Those can only go up if he goes to school.

My biggest complaints though are the lack of schedule, lack of discipline, and a lack of a dedicated workspace (related to the discipline, I think). They constantly move around where his school materials are and where he is expected to work. To me it signals a lack of dedication to the homeschooling and yet another lack of discipline.

So I'm not in the door more than 10 minutes tonight when the argument starts about this whole clusterfuck. I tell my mom that she's not disciplined enough, he's not disciplined enough to carry this out. He's got no desire to learn, obviously she hasn't instilled that in him, maybe school can. She complains about my dad not helping, even though it's her party, she wants to do it. At that point, he did start bitching her out a bit about the fact that the homeschooling should be done by the time he gets home at 3pm. But for the most part, my parents are recreating the dynamic of my grandparents. What she says goes, he doesn't try to argue, even though he knows that she's full of shit.

I continued berating her, and I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but my mom set off the powderkeg. Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm horrible at trying to find a job. Horrible. I'm going to law school because, primarily, I'm awful at trying to find a job. It's really not laziness, it's more that I hate the whole rejection game. I never tried out for plays in high school/college because I don't like getting rejected on the basis of some superficial performance that they've staged for me. All of that contributes to my pisspoor performance during interviews (I can only think of one interview that I've had that I thought went really well....didn't get the job then, either).

So my mom says something about not being responsible and playing video games for two years. Seconds until ignition....3....2....1: We have mushroom cloud. While I lived in NC for two years and didn't have a regular job, I did teach classes intermittently. It was like being retired. I worked 11 weeks the one year, and 4 the year after. At $3k per, I made about twice what she did the first year, and probably a little less than she did the second year. What we made aside, I know where my money went. Rent, electricity, car payments, insurance payments, etc. My mom is someone who has never paid rent, electricity, car payments, insurance payments, etc. My dad has always paid for all that, and she lived at home with her parents during college. She pays for my brother's braces, and her credit cards. That's it. She wants to try to school me on responsibility? Fuck that, I blew up. Ballistic is a kind word for it. "You want to fucking take me on about that??"

I didn't get a real chance to get going about it (though I did say a few things) before my dad came in and calmed everyone down. He didn't do enough about the homeschooling issues, but he said more about it than I thought he would.

My brother was present for most of this, he was crying because he was so upset about me attacking my mother for this homeschooling shit. I'm not sure whether he thought I was attacking him or not (and I talked to him privately later and told him that I wasn't attacking him at all). I had to buy him off with a little Rita's.

After the Rita's trip, things settled down. My mother didn't really talk to me again tonight. We'll see how tomorrow progresses. At this point I'm glad I have the option of a hotel room in DC on Friday.

But at least it did give me something to write about.

Alright already

I've had several people tell me that I need to update my blog, so here it is. I'll try to do it again sometime in the near future, too.

The problem with posting right now is that I'm unemployed. I'm unemployed, school doesn't start again for another month and a half, and all of my friends are away for the summer.

So having none of that to write about, I decided I would try to come up with a list of questions that must be pressing in the minds of the home audience. These questions are not limited in scope to just myself; I think they're questions that any unemployed loafer could answer about himself.

Q: What time did you wake up today?	A: I woke up at about 9:30 this morning, when my landlady called. I'm not sure exactly what time it was, because I answered the phone on the fax machine, and the fax machine's clock is wrong.
Q: Are you going to shower today?	A: Probably. It's 8:35pm right now, and I haven't showered yet, but I tend to like to take showers before going to bed in the summer, I don't like feeling sticky while I sleep.
Q: Did you wear the same clothes as yesterday?	A: Sort of. The boxers and shorts are the same as yesterday, but I did put on a fresh shirt today. The socks I also wore yesterday, though just for 30 minutes while we took the dogs for a walk.
Q: Did you look for a job today?	A: Of course not. I'm working in DC in two weeks, so my availability is somewhat limited right now. Then I'm back for a week, and then gone to the northwest for two and a half weeks.
Q: What did you do today instead?	A: Well, I watched an episode of Cheers, two of Good Eats, maybe an Iron Chef (can't remember, maybe that was yesterday...hmm...."Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don't remember."...Maybe Meursault was just unemployed and had the days running together), PTI, and Jeopardy, and will probably watch an episode or two of Dead Zone or maybe watch the Deliverance DVD that Netflix sent me. I went to Walmart, Barnes & Noble, and Giant Eagle, and for a walk with the dogs. I also played a crapload of DoomII, going through levels 22 through 30.
Q: You really did nothing exciting today?	A: My landlady delivered a new refrigerator to us this afternoon, that was really the high point of my day, sad to say. We've had a real piece of junk all year, it doesn't freeze anything, it doesn't keep anything frozen, it doesn't keep anything cold (pork chops spoiled in 3 days). But now we've got a new one, so that has to be a step up. A new dishwasher is around the corner, too. Sunny days are here again, don't you think?

I'll be sure to try and keep you updated on these and other involvements in "The JDL Story" as the summer continues...

Manna from heaven

Well, after weeks of worry over how I'm going to pay my bills come August, the solution presented itself today in the form of a call from my employer, looking to see if I would be willing to pick up a class next week in LA. Trying to hold back my glee while I said, "Well, I guess I could make that work.." was truly a performance to see.

So I'm off to LA next week, back in an airplane, ick, but with money in my pocket, yay. After buying the new camera a few weeks ago, I followed up with the purchase of a new computer ($435 - $150 in rebates, who can resist that sort of temptation?). I've spent the intervening time trying not to think about how long it will take me to pay off these purchases while paying the minimum payments (approximately 3 lifetimes). Now maybe I can cut down on that amount of time, if only a little.

The trip in August my parents are paying for, more or less. Unbelievably, my mom bought my plane tickets (though it's only a matter of time before she starts bitching at me about paying her back for them, I'm sure. She's already made allusions by saying things like "I know you're good for it"), and they're picking up the car rental ($900 right there), and places to stay. My parents aren't cheaping out on the places to stay, either, at least not the whole trip. Sure, we're gonna stay at some cheap-o places, but we're also staying at some really nice B&Bs, too. And of course, for all of this, it's not my credit card # that's been put on the reservations (this paragraph is sure to nettle my sister, who's not going).

But with all of this in mind, having this little bit of extra money will allow me to be a little more generous and forthcoming with my credit card while we're on the trip. Food and gas aren't going to be cheap either, so I figure I'll chip in where I can ("We stopped for gas half an hour ago? That's it? Well, I'll top it off here anyway." <Magnanimous wave of the hand>).

Then again, maybe I'll just pocket my card. Or leave it at home. Maybe they owe me the trip. We only ever took one vacation when I was a kid. 5 days in Florida. I'm glad I went when I did, I barely enjoyed Disneyworld then, I certainly wouldn't now. But that was it. The pet store really anchored my family at home. And of course, braces for the other kids. I'm the only one who didn't get braces. And now that I'm a "professional" (No, not like Léon), I don't really have time to get braces. I guess once I can afford it I can always go the Invisiline route, but still, one vacation in lieu of braces, that seems like a fair trade to me.

But if I do break out the credit card, I can feel slightly better, knowing that I have a little bit of money in the bank to cover at least some of the purchases. Knowing that I taught another class that I'm not really qualified to teach. Knowing that it didn't matter. All that mattered is that I got the class, I taught the class, and the money kept me going. Like manna from heaven.

A facsimile of me

My fax machine no longer works, and I just don't know it. I send cover letter, resume, and writing sample using my fax machine and I never get a response.

I wonder if the firms even get blank pages printing out on their fax machine. Maybe 7 pages of nothing comes out on the other side. Maybe it's fitting that they're blank pages. Maybe their fax machines are smart enough not to waste the paper (since they probably put at least my phone number on the top of the page). Maybe there's no record of me at all printing out on the other side of the phone line.

This is somehow more comforting than knowing that they've gotten all that shit from me, they've looked at it, at least superficially, and thrown it in the trash.

The only problem is the fact that I did get that interview last month. The one where he didn't ask me any questions and was on the phone for 8 out of the 20 minutes I spent in his office. The one where I paid $6 for parking. The one that completely wasted my time and made me wish he hadn't even bothered scheduling me for an interview. That one confirmed it. I just get thrown in the trash.

On the bright side of things, I guess my fax works.

Job time

I've been half-heartedly looking for a job for the summer. Given that it's halfway through June and I don't have one, I have little hope of making any additional money this summer, which is bad news for me. Like, repo-my-shit bad news for me.

Actually, I have a couple jobs from friends that I can work on to probably make my bills for the summer, but it's still depressing. 4 years of college, 4 years experience, 1 year of law school, and no job for the summer. I even went so far as to go to Barnes and Noble yesterday to see if they were hiring. I didn't even have to resort to that in high school or college, and now I have to.

My desires are too varied. I like too many things. I could go to culinary art school and probably like that. I could just go study music and probably like that. The problem is that I never like just the one thing. I like everything. I've had that problem in my computer-related career. I'm not content with knowing what I do, I want to know everything else, too. So instead of getting really good at any one thing, I'm just ok at a bunch of things. Damn my interest in too many things.

Someone pinch me

So, after an excrutiating 10 days at my parents' house, I have arrived back in Pittsburgh, new car and new camera in tow.

The new car isn't really new, just new to me. 1994 Buick Skylark, white with a blue cloth top (though not a convertible). Maybe I'll get around to posting a pic at some point (using my new camera, of course), maybe I won't. It's got 113,000 miles on it, so it's been around the block a few times. Rides nice, gets great gas mileage (it went 260 miles on 7 gallons of gas = 37 MPG). And costs about $13 a month in insurance. Good deal.

The new camera is a Canon Digital Rebel, which cost way more money than I can really afford, but what the hell (spendthrift's favorite thought when spending money). I got it for the vacation I'm taking in August, I wanted to familiarize myself with the camera before actually going on the trip. More on the trip to follow.

In driving out here today, I not only got "driver tan", I got driver sunburn. My left arm is lobster red, my right arm, not at all. Not the most comfortable feeling. The car has air conditioning, but there's something wrong with it (so said the mechanic, I didn't even try it today....just had the windows rolled down, old-school style).

My vacation in August is with my parents and my 12 year old brother, Arn. We leave on August 1st. We're flying to Boise, and then we have approximately 3000 miles of driving we're doing until flying back on August 18th. Sound like a fun time to anyone? With the parents, in a car, for 2.5 weeks. When I first told them I'd go with them, I was kinda thinking it was a good idea; my parents aren't spring chickens, we only ever went on vacation once, mainly due to having the pet store. Other stores you can lock up and go away for a while, but pet stores require care that you don't kill everything while you're away. So we never went anywhere. Except Disneyworld once, for 5 days. So I was thinking that it would be good to go on vacation with my parents, see some of the country with them.

Then something happened. My mom bought the tickets and reality set in. Holy shit, I'm gonna spend 2.5 weeks with my parents. Somebody is gonna kill somebody else. Not sure if it's me killing someone or my dad killing someone, but shit is gonna hit the fan at some point during the trip.

We fly in and out of Boise, Idaho. Every time I say this to someone, they say, "Boise??" Yeah, Boise. The night we get in, we're planning on driving 10 hours to Crater Lake, Oregon. Then we'll take a couple days, up the coast, to Olympic Park, Washington. Seattle, the Cascades, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and then back to Boise. The 5-state tour.

At this point, I can't really back out, even if I could get my mom to not bitch at me for having bought my ticket. My mom's retina detached a while ago (last summer? summer before?), so she's no good for driving for that long. My dad would probably try to do all that driving without me, but that's because he's a dumbass. That's definitely a two-person (or more) amount of driving, so at this point, they need me to go in order for them to make their timetable for driving around to all of those places.

The original premise of the trip was to see my brother's commissioning into the Army. He's been doing ROTC the last couple of years of college, he was scheduled to get commissioned on August 7th in Seattle. Why it's in Seattle is anyone's guess, he went to school at Millersville, in PA. My mom bought the tickets 3 or 4 weeks ago, wanted to make sure she didn't pay too much for the airfare. Then, last week the Army changed the date of the commissioning to August 10th. A Tuesday. I can see having the commissioning on a Saturday, the original date. But a Tuesday? And of course, changing the date was really swell, I'm sure plenty of families will miss the commissioning.

Like us, actually. Because of the timetable of the trip and all of the stuff we're planning on visiting, we won't make it to the commissioning. My mom was going to see about switching all of the reservations around, but the reservations in Yellowstone are hard to switch, she couldn't do it for the dates that we'd need them, so the upshot is that we won't attend the commissioning. Fine by me, it certainly wasn't the reason that I was going, and from what he and my mom have said about it, we weren't even sure that we'd really get to see him before or after the commissioning. We're hoping to try to catch him while we're in Seattle though, on the original day of commissioning.

So August is pretty much the vacation, then school. I'll have about a week in between the two, maybe I'll clean up my already-messy office (?). And for now, I need to find a job. No classes to teach on my schedule, so I need some money from somewhere else, and right now I have no idea where that is going to come from. And I'd probably best not mention the fact that I can't work for 3 weeks in August when trying to get the job.

I'm gonna try to post more frequently, I've been really awful about it.

Working blues

I haven't been very good about updating the blog, I've just been so busy with finals, work, and now the writing competition. Here's a bit that I wrote last week:

I'm in LA this week for a class. 10 students, it's not too big a class, but they're making me work for it. I've never had a class that asked so many questions. It's a good thing, they're involved, they're learning, but it's also a bit worrisome. This is the class I'm least qualified to teach out of the classes I teach. I've done the least amount of real work with the material of the class.

Two days in, they've asked me more questions than a normal class for all 4 days. The good news is that they're not smart enough to ask me smart questions that would expose my lack of knowledge of the subject. The bad news is that they're also not smart enough to read documentation. Thus, the exercises, which are basically right out of the documentation and the class slides, end up being a lot harder than they should be.

Now that the class is over, I've also realized that while they weren't smart enough to ask smart questions, they asked so many questions that they were almost able to expose my lack of knowledge of the subject. But I made it through the class relatively unscathed, so I guess I can't complain about it at this point.

Switching gears....

I generally don't like anti-bacterial soap. It's a bad thing. The argument as to why it's a bad thing goes something like this: anti-bacterial products claim to kill 99.9% of germs. What about the other .1%? They reproduce and eventually, all we have left are vast amounts of the bacteria that's resistant to anti-bacterial products. And what do we do at that point?

That's the basic argument, I don't have research that says anything, but I've read articles and heard NPR segments about this.

Tonight, I want my anti-bacterial soap. See, S and I made a mistake 6 months ago.

When we moved in, we bought a new trash can, and in the interests of keeping it our trash can, I wrote our address on it in permanent marker. After a few months went by, we'd been using our trash can primarily for picking up after the dogs. The dog crap got deposited in grocery store plastic bags, and then placed in the trash can. At some point, the trash can lid was left off, or blew off, and it rained. So here we were with a trash can full of dog crap in bags that were floating or sunk in water. Shortly thereafter, the water froze. Now we had ice with dog crap in it. Our other trash can filled up, and brilliant guy that I am, I put some pizza boxes into the trash can with the dog crap & ice melange.

Fast forward 6 months. This trash can, for the past few weeks, maybe 2 months, has been unfrozen, and you really couldn't get close to it without noticing the smell. I equate the smell with snake crap, but for most of you, that won't be an illuminating analogy. It smelled pretty bad, let's just leave it at that. We've not been sure what to do with it. If we throw it in a dumpster, it's got our address written on it, they could come find us. We can't just dump it out, because the smell would be unbelievable. Certainly don't want to dump it out right out back, because it would just run into our yard. Definitely didn't want that.

Tonight, though, we had the good fortune of having a terrific thunderstorm. Thunder, pouring rain, all the good stuff. So at 1:15am, I decide I'm gonna take care of the trash can problem. So I go out back, while it's pouring, and go to lift the trash can over the fence (the gate's locked, it's a 3' high chain link fence). This usually isn't a problem, except that I haven't accounted for the water that half fills the trash can. So I get the brilliant idea to jump over the fence, and pull it towards me. While in the process of doing this, I realize that the lid has arched a little bit and is now open, and I'm pulling this container filled with shit water towards me, and it's tipped towards me. Bad news. I can picture it, me covered in this water that's been sitting there for months. I guess that's one way to ensure that I never let this happen again.

But I'm successful in getting the trash can over the fence. I roll it down the alley, making a ton of noise in the process, I'm sure, hoping that the noise is covered by the sound of the rain. I get to a storm drain and dump out the water, or at least, as much water as seems to want to come out. Here again, I miscalculated. I didn't take into account how much water would have soaked into the pizza boxes that were in there. So it still weighs quite a bit. I'm gonna have to dump this shit-water-logged stuff into a trash bag.

So I come back into the house to enlist my sister's help in this process. It's at this point that I realize my hands smell. A lot. I don't worry about it too much, thinking that it will be fine after washing my hands. So we go out back and take some trash from the house with us when we go (tomorrow is garbage day, part of the prompting of this whole experience). My sister brings some bleach with us to dump into the trash can after we're done to start correcting the smell problem in that trash can.

It's still pouring, we have a double-bagged trash bag to dump this stuff into, and after a bit of concerted effort, we manage to get everything out of the trash can. Except now we have some on the asphalt in the alley. Soggy, shitty smelling bits and pieces of cardboard. Ugh. So, as I laugh, I tell her, "Hey, pick that up and put it in there." No takers on that one, as you can imagine. Maybe I shouldn't have had her smell my hand before we went outside.

So I use the garbage bag (the outer one) to scoop it up, tie up the trash bag, dump some bleach in the trash can, and head inside to shower and wash my hands. A shower later, several hand washings later, and the smell is still on my hands. I thought that I would put the problem to rest by putting some cocoa butter lotion onto my hands, making my hands smell nice. That is just not to be however, because after the initial period of nice smelling hands, after it soaks in, my hands just smell like cocoa butter snake shit.

Ok, enough typing, time to go wash my hands again.

Friends ending was so sad.

I can't say that I've liked Friends for quite a while. I haven't watched it for many years, though I've watched it this season since it was the last season. The last episode was better than several other last episodes from the last few years. Friends ended, as was inevitable, with Ross and Rachel getting back together. It's a simple principle: you give the viewers what they want for having watched for so long. You don't cheat the viewers. Yet, there are shows that fuck this up.

The worst perpetrator of this that I've seen....well, I'm a little embarrassed to say what I think it was. Ok, ok, it was Dawson's Creek. The entire series was about Dawson and Joey almost getting together, then in the last episode, she ends up with Pacey. Pacey!?!?! Are you fucking kidding me? The last two seasons of that show were almost unbearable to watch, the only thing that kept me going was waiting for Dawson and Joey to get back together. I had to watch her have a thing with her doofy professor (who was the "I wanna dip my balls in it!" guy from The State), have a fling with the guy with all his hair combed forward (Charlie), and then the other fling with Eddie (played by Oliver Hudson, Kate Hudson's brother). Those shows were ohmyfuckinggod awful, and I watched every single one of them, just to get to the finale. And then the producers served up that turd of a finale. Unbelievable.

The Seinfeld finale was a letdown, but at least it was true to the characters of the show. I'm not sure that there was a good way for that show to end, but at leaset they kept it consistent, and the audience didn't have any expectations for the wrapup of the series.

But for Friends, the sadness isn't about the show being over. And maybe that's true for a lot of shows. What's sad about the shows is that when I turn on the TV on Thursday nights, I'll have the reminder that I'm not in high school anymore. I can't believe 10 years have gone by since the show started. That was back when ER was still good. I imagine that the next two high-school era shows that will end will be NYPD Blue and ER, though I haven't watched ER since George Clooney left.

Now, I say all of this about how I can't pretend I'm in high school anymore, but I went and got a haircut yesterday. When I sat down in the chair, the first thing that the hair stylist asked me was, "You getting your hair cut for the prom?" I guess maybe I can still pretend if I want to.

This time, gmail for sure.

I'll start off talking about gmail so that I don't forget.

I got a GMail account last week. Google is giving them out to people who post regularly on blogger, and I guess I've been posting regularly enough to get the invite. I feel so special. If you don't know about this, gmail is gonna be google's answer to Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. The difference being google's willingness to give you a gigabyte of space. But they don't guarantee that they'll really delete your mail (they call it "archiving" instead), and they scan your mail to be able to provide you with advertisements. So I started up an account there, the interface is extremely slick, and the site is also currently unbelievably fast, since there are virtually (no pun intended) no users.

Property exam was today. 3 hours of my life that I'll never get back, 3 hours during which I probably proved that I had at best a "B" knowledge of the subject. Though last semester taught me that law school grades don't measure anything about knowledge of the subject. Unfortunately, that's the only thing last semester taught me, so I didn't really know how to do things better this semester. But at least it's over. It's the least bullshit-able of the classes that we have this semester.

The end of this semester heralds the end of my time in B section, class of 2006. Next year, my section is scattered to the winds to the classes of their choosing. We haven't really had to make new friends all year, because we've gone from class to class together. Next year we have to meet some of the rest of our class.

Provided I can afford to return next year. :)

Gmail and more.

Last night, S and I went to the Rasputina concert together. Murder by Death opened for them, and they also have a cellist, though they're a little harder than Rasputina. They were ok, they showed some promise. But there's nothing that makes me want an album less than someone saying "This next song is about zombies." I thought the music was pretty good, but the vocals weren't mixed very well. That's the life of an opening band, though, I guess.

Rasputina came out and played for about an hour and a half. It's always surprising to go to a concert where the vocalist can sound as good as or better than on the studio album. But Melora sounded that way.

The audience was quite amusing. Take all of the people from high school who were uncomfortable at social events add all of the people who might have been labeled as "trenchcoat mafia," age some of them 5-15 years, and that's what the audience was. It's also not really a band you can dance to, in any way, though that's not to say some people didn't try. Well, one person, anyway. You know the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine dances? That's what this lady looked like dancing sometimes. She got really into the one song, and pretty soon legs and thumbs were flying everywhere. S laughed for a long time when I pointed out the similarity.

At one point in the show, Melora said, "We like it here, so depressing and forgotten." That pretty much sums up that part of Pittsburgh, and probably a lot of Pittsburgh, for that matter. The show was at Mr Smalls, in Millvale, this rinky-dink area of Pittsburgh North of the North side that really is depressing and forgotten.

Finals are upon me again, but that hasn't stopped me from going to a Pirates game two nights ago, and then the Rasputina concert last night. I've got jobs to apply for, mountains of Property to study, and I can't concentrate on doing those things. Other things, I've been pretty good about. School/Law related things, not so good.

Which probably means I'll be posting a lot here this weekend. :)

Disturbing trends

Last semester, there were a few people that I hung out with extensively. At my house, out for bar review, wherever. This semester, they've been gone pretty much every weekend, so there's been no hanging out. None. Which means that my "going out" time has dropped to virtually nothing as well.

So the first trend is: friends I had, I've been losing. Or it feels that way since we're not doing as much anymore.

Then there's also my friend acquisition trend. The only friends I've made this semester have been people that I talk to online (who are from school), but that I don't really do anything with in real life.

I'm not sure which trend is more disturbing, but they're both unsettling. In spite of all efforts to be pretty good about acquiring friends, I've become worse at doing that. And even if I do acquire a real life friend, I can't seem to keep them.

A great day for the Constitution

I've written before about my Constitutional Law class. Worst class ever. Worst professor ever.

Today we were talking about obscenity and pornography. Gave me a chance to inject some fun into the class. The first case that we were talking about was the case where a guy went into a courthouse (circa 1970) wearing a jacket that said "Fuck the draft" on it. In the opinion, the Supreme Court wrote that "one man's vulgarity is another man's lyric," and said that it was ok that he wore the jacket.

Not so for pornography. The Court said that it had no social value, yadda yadda yadda.

Prof: "So how do we reconcile these two cases."

Me: (raising my hand and getting called on....mine was the only hand up) "Well, I'm not sure that you can. It seems like the Court is making a content-based judgment on the material. 'One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric'....while I might not like bukkake videos, there's obviously a market for them, and others should be able to watch them."

Stifled laughs all around. Including mine. I like to laugh, I've been laughing about this whole scene ever since this afternoon. Mostly because I don't think the prof (a strong women's rights advocate) knew what bukkake is.

While talking about the "fuck the draft" case, she had been very careful to not say "fuck the draft," so when she called on me again for my participation in the discussion, I said that maybe a distinction between the two was that "fuck the draft" is political speech, whereas porn isn't. That was kind of amusing too, just because she's so politically correct.

I really wanted to say "fisting or bukkake" in class, but I didn't have the balls. I felt that would be too over the top, too blatant that I was trying to be shocking.

The good news is that we didn't finish the pornography discussion. Tuesday I can try to work in "fisting" and "coprophilia."

Scary porn

I can't say that I watch porn. Well, ok, but not a lot. I have one porn DVD to my name and one VHS tape that has 20 minutes of porn on it from years ago, something I taped when I was in junior high school. I got the DVD at a computer show...buy 3 for $20, so my friend and I split it. I took 2 DVDs, he took the other, 6 months later we switched. It's not good porn, obviously, but it's ok cheap porn. Just hacked together sex scenes from other porn movies that may or may not have incorporated more of a plot.

Even without watching much porn (or maybe because I don't), there are things that scare me about it.

For example, on one of the DVDs that we bought, there are two girls who are both on the VHS tape that I have from long ago, doing the um, same sorts of things. How scary is it to recognize people from porn? Along those same lines, at least two of the DVDs have different scenes with the same actors. How scary is it to recognize a porn actor, before seeing his face, by seeing his cock? Or even recognizing his method of jerking off onto the chick's boobs at the end of the scene.

I also hate it when they do just completely out of context things in these movies. Some chick shows up in a skirt, not wearing panties, but wearing rollerblades, and you want to take her rollerblades off and start licking and sucking on her feet? Ugh. Dude, you're nasty, she's nasty, just fuck her already. I'm not here to watch you put up some pretense of having something more than dirty sex with this chick. 5 minutes from now, you're going to be fucking her ass, I think we can skip the foot licking.

Then, the other day, while watching the DVD, I realized that the sheets on the bed in the movie are extremely similar to sheets that I own. Not entirely identical, or at least, if they are, the sheets in the video had faded quite a bit. You know you've gotten bad sheets if you see them in a porno film. Ugly paisley, that's what they are. Guidelines for life: don't buy carpet that you'd see in a hotel, don't buy a comforter you'd see in a hotel, don't buy sheets you'd see in a porno.

The great irony of the sheets, though: my mom bought them.

LSAT fun.

I was talking with someone about my LSAT essay, he suggested typing it up and posting it here, so I am.

LSAT WRITING SAMPLE TOPIC

Susan, an archaeologist, has the opportunity to participate in one of two archaeological digs and must choose between the two. Write an argument for the archaeologist's choosing one option over the other, keeping in mind the following goals:

• The archaeologist wants to achieve prominence in her field.
• The archaeologist wants to have autonomy in her work.

[Insert two descriptions of the two different digs here. ]

My answer:

If Susan must choose to participate in one archaeological dig and she only has two options from which to choose, clearly she must choose one option over the other.

Suppose Susan were to choose both. This cannot happen, however, because she can only choose one.

Likewise, she cannot choose not to go to a dig, as she must go to only one dig.

Therefore, since Susan must choose one of the options and not the other, she will be choosing one option over the other, as there is no other possibility.

Deja vu all over again.

I got an email last night from Reunion.com. For god knows what reason, I punched in my information on classmates.com years ago, and now they send me the monthly update on how many people from Emmaus High School have signed up in the last month. They've been sending it to me for years, I don't really care, it just goes to my Yahoo! Bulk Mail (Spam) folder, and I delete it from there. No big deal.

The mail that they send out is obviously generated by a script. I can already picture the SQL query that it uses to pull the information from their database. Having said that, it should be pretty easy to customize the script a little bit. You'll see what I mean in a minute.

The subject line (the only thing I've seen of the email other than who it's from) is: "2 New Students, 0 People Looking for jdl"

Now, I didn't need to be told that no one from high school is looking for me. I knew that already. When I was in high school, no one was looking for me. 10 years later, they sure as hell aren't looking for me.

But did I need reunion.com to tell me that? Did they really have to go out of their way to tell me that I'm a pathetic loser with no remaining friends from high school? I didn't need them to point that out for me, and I can't say that it has made me any more inclined to use the services on the site.

So what I want to know is why the dipshit programmer didn't think about this when coding the script. Obviously that dipshit programmer should have realized that he also probably falls into that category, the one who gets "0 people looking for you!" emails.

Then again, that dipshit programmer might live in India. Taking a job that might have kept me out of lawschool. Oh nevermind, that makes me feel better.

Calling all Rasputina fans...

Rasputina is playing here in Pittsburgh on 4/22. It just struck me that I have no idea whether that is part of exams period or not. Either way, it doesn't matter, I'm going to the show.

Anyone out there a closet Rasputina fan and want to go with me? "There's safety in numbers...my dear." (bonus points for someone who can get this quote, and miranda, you don't count, I just told you where it's from recently)

Bathroom humor

Why is it that guys find a need to spit into the urinal as they're stepping up to them? My female readership obviously wouldn't know about this habit, but it's fairly common to see guys walk up to the urinal, and as they're unzipping or stepping up, they spit into it. Sometimes they spit into it while they're pissing. Either way, what's the purpose? Every time I hear this done, I can't help but think about animals in the while that want to lick up the piss of the other competitors in the area. I guess I'm just not competitive enough to feel the need to spit into the urinal.

In the basement men's room at school, they've removed one of the urinals. It's just wall now. Maintenance actually put one of those "Wet Floor" things in front of it to ensure that no one overlooks the fact that there is no urinal and instead pisses all over the wall. This is in the law school, presumably we're smart enough to figure out that we shouldn't piss where there is no urinal. But I guess not.

The urinal that is missing is the one in the middle. There are three urinals, without dividers in between them. It's nice that the urinal is gone now, because some guys don't realize that you're never actually supposed to use the middle one anyway. Who wants to ensure that they stand next to another guy while they're both taking a leak? Apparently some guys do, but not me.

And why are guys expected to go to the bathroom immediately next to another guy? No one would ever think to make a women's room that just had toilets standing free without stalls. Women get some privacy every time they go to the bathroom, but guys don't even get a shred of it with the urinals without dividers. I'm not saying that the urinals need to have stalls around them, but the dividers make a big difference in the level of privacy that you have in the bathroom. With the dividers, I'd even say that it's ok to use the middle urinal (though some would disagree with that assessment).

It's even worse when you go to a stadium. There, you might just have a trough. A fucking trough. Now you can get splashed by someone else's piss, or have another guy elbow in next to you. Again, another indignity that women would never be expected to have to deal with.

So for any architects out there: Put in dividers!

CMU has a bathroom in the basement of Doherty Hall, one of the academic buildings, that has a men's room. On the door, after "MEN", someone scrawled a "U" in after it, so it's known as the "MENU" bathroom. The reason this bathroom has notoriety (and it's been years since I've been in there, so it might have been corrected) is that the stalls have glory holes in them and the bathroom is thus known as a place to have anonymous gay sex.

But I didn't know that my freshman year at CMU. And I'm not even sure that I knew what a glory hole was. And I happened across the "MENU" bathroom. I happened to use the bathroom without incident, but in looking back, by not fixing the bathroom, it seems like CMU opens themselves up to liability if an incident were to occur there. And of course, after I found out about the bathroom, I don't think I ever used it again.

This is probably far more than you ever wanted to read about men's rooms.