On another fun note, my sister was fired from her job today for challenging her manager's manipulative and unforgiving treatment of the staff. Her various superiors apparently decided to continue living up to their reputation as ungrateful elitist snobs with startling perfection.
Aside from my foul paycheck and my sister's letting-go, I got a call from a police officer in a town up north (around 300 miles north, to be exact) who apparently found my old bike. For those of you that don't know, I spent 6 months of savings on a brand new mountain bike last February (my old bike was literally falling apart), and unfortunately this bike was subsequently stolen while I was attending a summer class at the local Jr. College in July. Unfortunately, the officer up north wasn't in his office when I called back and I therefore couldn't determine whether the whole bike is intact, nor could I determine what condition the bike (or pieces of the bike) are in. I must admit, I never thought I'd see as much as a bolt from that bike ever again. The timing couldn't have been worse because just two weeks ago I was finally able to buy a new replacement bike, and it's the same exact make and model as the old one.
I went over to Spring Lake again today to introduce my bike to the north ridge trail above Howarth Park, but instead I discovered the "Eagle Scout" trail right along the edge of the reservoir. There were several stops to climb over large sharp boilders and some stairs, otherwise it was pretty nice. All the bumping around made my new lock holder fall loose again, so I took the whole damn thing off and re-installed it the correct way, like the guy should've done when I bought it. I did some more new trail exploration on the top of the south ridge, and ended up getting a flat in the process, so I went down to the Bike Peddler and got a guy to finally show me how to fix a flat on my own. Tomorrow I think I'll do some more off-roading, despite half the trails being cut around and through beds of jagged rocks. I go slowly around those, I'm an old man.
I turned off the fan this evening.
The painters came today to clean the siding and do a little prep work with caulk. The sound of the pressure washer going back and forth on the siding was oddly similar to hearing a squadron of B-17 bombers flying over, and just as loud. The workers left a bunch of their crap all over the place around the side, so I'm guessing they'll be coming back either this weekend or Monday. If not, their heads will be on stakes by Monday evening.
This afternoon I went over to Spring Lake to ride the big loop on my bike, but first I enlisted the able-beaked ducks and geese of Howarth Park to help me get rid of a bunch of stale bread. The geese were particularly violent in their efforts to snatch bread from the smaller ducks, so I was a socialist about it and tried to toss out pieces of the bread evenly to everybody. At one point they all hopped out of the water and began circling me, but I busted out my unresistable powers of persuasion to ward them off.
Urge to kill.. falling.. falling..
For some reason all this recent political fun finally inspired to write up a list of things I'd plan on or consider doing if I was, say, the overwhelmingly suppored president the US. Take a gander...
As I was picking slowly away at my waffle this morning, I was thinking about the old Liquid Television cartoon where the two guys in a space ship were looking for Frank's place. I was specifically thinking of the sketch where they arrive at a cave entrance with a gigantic "if" sign and proclaimed the famous line, "That's a pretty big if." I did search after search on Yahoo and Google, but unfortunately I was not able to produce the slightest bit of information about that cartoon, let alone that particular sketch. I even resorted to making ridiculously particular searches like "liquid television frank's place pretty big if." This, of course, smacked heavily of the infamous blog search that lead some poor sap to the blog of the now absent Hostile Redhead, "bitchy police officer spanking ass." Even though this particular subject has brought numerous "what in the hell"s to my lips many times before, I still couldn't help but chuckle. I've stopped now.
Nerdygirl apparently doesn't want to trade links with me, so I want everyone reading this to send her an e-mail calling her "Becca" until she does. Am I evil? Yes I am...
C'mon Nerdygirl, you know you want to swap links... why, just think of the 3 users you'll get every year that will come from my site to yours! Sounds pretty sweet eh?
Me: So will I have enough time to get lunch at the break?
Her: Well you're not going now, you're going at the break right?
Me: Uh.. yeah.. so how long will the break be?
Her: Well I need to use the restroom.
Me: Alright, we can just get everybody out and lock up the room until we both get back then.. no problem. (this is what we usually do)
Her: Well we can't do that, we need to stay to help people finishing the lesson during the break.
Me: Uh.. ok.
...10 minutes goes by...
Her: What are you still doing here? The break started 5 minutes ago, I thought you were going to get some lunch?
Me: Well.. uh, someone has to stay in the lab when students are here... didn't you say you needed a bathroom break?
Her: Oh.. no, go ahead.. take your time, I really won't need to go until later.
Me:Ok... I'll be back in a bit then.. probably about 15 minutes. That way you'll have enough time for a stop at the bathroom.
Her: No, go ahead.. go for 25 minutes, I'm just doing lecture when everyone comes back.
She apparently didn't get a full night's sleep, and unfortunately, neither did I. In related news, I've been staying up way too late again... although tonight I did a little bit of work on my epic. I'll upload the maps tomorrow.
I got a ton of errands done today... I even managed to fit in a short bike ride as well. I was listening to NPR while driving around and heard a bit about German Chancellor Schršder's justice minister Herta DŠubler-Gmelin's alleged comparison of Bush's political tactics to those of Hitler... I couldn't stop nodding and laughing at the horrible truth. Consequently, when I read this article about the whole matter, I did the same thing. Who would've thought...
...this is Rome, and we are the Romans.
Speaking of a totally unrelated subject, I've been eating way too much sugary food lately... in particular, too much candy, sodas, and cake. My teeth and kidneys will soon revolt... I've been hearing them screaming.
I found myself working again with Mr. F this evening. Even though no one reads this blog, I'll still spare his full name the indignity of being cited here. Anyway, he's a so-so instructor, and usually comes off pretty cold when people face him with questions or problems. That aside, he's actually an interesting guy when you get to know him. My point to all this is that he has an odd habit of beginning each one of his short speeches by staring directly at me for about 6 seconds before looking away. This, of course, goes far beyond the average time it takes for people to look away or be stared down in a conversation (about 2 seconds.)
So the question to ponder is: why does he do this? Possible hypotheses include a subconscious urge to be the dominant staff member (my job is generally subordinate), a subconscious need for staff approval of whatever he's talking about, or he might just have a complete lack of the average person's built-in sense of basic cultural responses toward social norms. These hypotheses are also complicated by Mr. F's extensive history in the military, as well as his social persona of being an upper-class yuppie. It's fun staring him down though... I think I might actually be creeping him out.
It was a little overcast today, maybe there really is a god out there listening to me... fascinating.
My first guitar got a nice refurbishing this evening. After taking it to Burning Man this year, it got so saturated with playa dust that I had to take all the hardware off and give everything a good scrubbing. I polished the scuffed spots on the body, oiled the fretboard twice, fixed up the bridge with a new support block I made, and threw on a new set of strings. Aside from the chips and gouges around the fake body binding, the guitar looks almost as good as new... which is surprising considering it's around 35 years old.
My sister and I went to the Coldplay show the other night in Berkeley. It was an excellent show, mainly because the band seemed almost unprepared for the size of the crowd, which was apparently the largest show they had played in the states thus far. As a result, the show felt very personal, and at times, almost comical. I wish I would've brought earplugs though, as we sat next to the PA. In the end, the excellent show slightly softened the pummeling effect of the atrocious $10 parking fee. Your parking sucks, UC Berkeley.
Otherwise, today was a day to test patience. The 1-hour photo developers at Albertsons misprinted or left out the majority of photos from the 4 rolls I took at Burning Man not once, but twice. I'm going to have to look for another place to get pictures developed... again...
I had an odd bit of a vision today while I was driving around doing masses of errands. I imagined a morning along the edges of some mountains, a small valley and a small town. There, a cafe, and a woman who I'll meet. Striking eyes and dark hair, piercing the mind...
The drive home was a slight ordeal... for the first 10 miles out of Black Rock City we averaged 4 mph. The Burning Man "Exodus" as it is called was made into more of a biblical epic when the the heat made the thermometer in my truck top out at 122 degrees F, staying there for 2 hours. Cherz split at Reno for the night and after stopping once to sleep for a half hour at a hotel parking lot in Auburn (and later injecting myself with some Mountain Dew) I finally made it home around 2 am. Today, I spent most of the morning pulling the dusty mess that was once my camping gear out of the back of my truck, and then dedicated myself to about 5 hours of washing and detailing my 4-wheeled friend, with surprisingly excellent results. In another miracle, I even managed to chisel out the 8 years of pennies I've accumulated in my cupholders... most of which any health-conscious being wouldn't want to touch with their bare hands.
I'd like to end this with a short bit of a salute to the Blue Boat crew. Thanks guys, the Blue Boat truly has the funk.