Corcotopia

So the last month has been interesting, to say the least. Not a lot has happened in terms of fancy stuff.

Good times have been had. This month I have drank legally, come within 1% of finishing Washington’s highways, blown it with yet another girl, and strongly considered my future and my purpose at the University of Puget Sound.

I’ll start off with the lighter stuff before moving on to the big announcement. Scroll to the bottom if you like spoilers.

A couple weeks ago Zakk, Thor, and I went to Canada and got wasted. That was fantastic and good times were had. I’ll tell the story as best I can.

I’m a highly shaky guy by nature. Everyone knows this. A couple of you have witnessed me attempting to put change in a tollbooth bucket. Many of you have seen me accept change from cashiers only to drop all the change.

I become additionally shaky when I’m dehydrated, namely when I’d been drinking the night before. I’m also highly intimidated by authority.

When you combine all this into one and then have me cross the U.S.-Canadian border strange things happen.

Normally going into Canada my experience has been something like

Customs Guy: “ID?”

Me: “Here”

Customs Guy: “Why you coming to Canada?”

Me: “[why I’m going to canada]

Customs Guy: Fair enough, anything to declare?

Me: No

Customs Guy: Welcome to Canada, eh?

Well this time we went through all that but were then asked to pull our car off to the side for additional screening. I was in shock that my car was being searched GOING INTO Canada, but that’s that.

I gave our ID’s to the guy at the booth and he said “Hold your hand out again”

and I did, and he said “Why are you so shaky?”

My friend replied that I’m just a shaky guy.

So they searched my car while I proverbially shat my pants in nervousness as there has been weed smoked in my car and you never know where there might be some residue or something.

The car was clear, but we all had to step into a separate room and empty our pockets and lift our pants, and then they waved us on

But I was scared shitless.

Anyway, we went to the first bar we found, we all had a beer, and proceeded the 45 minutes or so to our hotel in downtown Vancoover.

From there we had lots of beers and chicken wings at lots of bars, and it was all delicious.

One notable moment was when we went into a strip club. After some gorgeous babe got done dancing, some stripper told me to come with her so I could get a lap dance. I said “Okey doke” and followed her. When told the fee for a lap dance was C$50, I said “OK, I’m going to run to the ATM.” I was already wasted and didn’t really want to do it, so I asked my friends and then sat down at the table we were at and finished my drink

A few minutes later a bouncer comes up to me and tells me he’s going to kick my ass if I don’t give her money for a lap dance, so I find the stripper and apologize profusely, and she says “So are you going to tip me for wasting my time?” and I said “I don’t really have any money” and she said “I’m going to let the bouncers know then, because that’s not cool”

So I gave her the US$20 in my wallet, and essentially paid $20 NOT to get a lap dance or my ass kicked.

We also attempted to find weed, which is hilariously easy in Vancouver. It turns out you just go to the art museum gallery steps and ask the stoners on the stairs that are there 24 hours a day (we hit them up twice at different times of day) and they give you weed at a decent price. This would not happen in America.

Let’s see, I overtipped a waitress because she looked tired. I did not get laid. Ummm…watching the Canucks game in a Canadian bar was fun.

Oh yes, we were in a bar full of Red Sox fans at the end of the ALCS and the bartender gave us all a shot of Jamison when Tampa won for free, that was pretty sick.

Going back into the US was uneventful, probably because we had a 21 year old in the car and so it was legal to carry back alcohol.

Two days later I would almost finish Washington’s highways. Tomorrow on my way to Spokane/CDA I will finish the rest of the pavement and then I just have two ferry routes to finish and I will be completely done. That’s awesome.

Also, Hotwire really is great. I stayed at a really nice hotel I would usually expect to pay around $80 or $90 for for $35.

As far as the girl goes, there was a girl seemed somewhat interested in me who I thought was really a quality person. Last night as I stumbled back into my room wasted I sent her a wasted facebook message confessing my feelings for the first time. Beyond myself saying “Goddamnit Dave why do you almost always do that?” I got a response not 24 hours later saying that she is “kind of in a relationship with someone back home” which is highly unlikely but whatever.

Now for the big thing. In the last few months, my parents, administrators, advisors, basically everyone is expecting me to make some decisions on my future. I’m not ready.

My life thus far has been lived the way my parents want me to live it. They always say they want me to do whatever it is that makes me happy, but that’s come with a huge huge asterick. They want me to do whatever makes me happy as long as it falls within their very narrow idea of what they are comfortable with. I need to break out of it. I’m on track to graduate from school, maybe get a master’s degree, and then jump out into the workforce, work a meaningless career, and live my life far below what I’m capable of.

At this point in my life, I’m a junior over halfway done with college, I’ve never had a real relationship, I’m not really building a particularly impressive resume for life beyond college, my grades are decent but far below what I know I’m capable of (I’m not going to sell myself short. I’m a smart guy. I should be getting straight A’s, not a 3.1 student or whatever.), I do the bare minimum necessary to accomplish anything, I’m not very confident and have some type of social anxiety as a result,and I haven’t really done anything. I’ve driven a bunch of highways. And that’s great- I’m proud of the highways. There’s room for that in a successful life.

At this point I have no idea what I want to do. I don’t want to decide. I’ve made decisions on my future only because I’ve had to. I’m not a Communication major because I have any particular desire to be in that field but because it seemed like a good way to get through school. I’m ready to do more than that, but I don’t have the motivation.

So I’m strongly considering taking a year off. It’s really easy at UPS, you just fill out a form, my scholarship will carry over, and everything will work out.

If I take a year off, I don’t want to accept a dime from my parents. I need a kick in the rear. I need to live in the real world, I want to struggle, I want to see what it is I’m fighting for, because at this point I don’t see any point in being in school. My whole life everything has been handed to me and while I thank my parents for their love and support, I need to have to fight and struggle for something to appreciate what it is I have.

Beyond that I need to become more confident in myself. I need to prove to myself that I am capable of success, or at least have the opportunity to put myself in the driver’s seat in my life, something I feel like I’ve never been in. I’ve always just sort of followed what sounds good or what other people want. So I’m going to take a year off I think and will refuse any support from my parents.

The next thought is…where will I go, what will I do?

I’m going to go to Springfield Missouri. I’ve based this on the following criteria:

•  If I’m going to take a year off I want to go somewhere interesting. Southern Missouri/Northern Arkansas is one of few parts of the country I have never seen, and it’s supposed to be beautiful.
• I know nobody who lives anywhere remotely close to Springfield Missouri. If I chose Boise, which I’m sure my parents will lobby for, I’m just a 2 hour drive away from security and shelter. If I chose Tacoma I wouldn’t really be changing my life.
• Springfield Missouri has a low cost of living and a surprisingly large amount of jobs available in the $10-17 an hour range, which is what I’d be shooting for
•  I don’t really (at this point) see any reason I’ll ever need to go back when my life there is done, which makes it more special
• Springfield is a college town. This means lots of easy to get and inexpensive housing
• I’ll probably have to take the Colt because I expect my parents will exercise their right to revoke the Liberty, and I don’t know that the Colt can make it much further than Missouri
• And yeah, I’ll be working on driving every mile of state highway in Missouri, because I love doing that and why not?

I need to get control of my life. I think that abandoning my current life for something completely different, doing my best to succeed in a vacuum, and then coming back is going to be the best way for me to do this. At the rate I’m going I’m going to die doing nothing but what other people want. I need a change. Transferring schools isn’t going to get me more motivated, it’s just going to change my scenery. Springfield Missouri is a change that has the potential to reap great rewards.

When I return I will hopefully have more confidence in my abilities, more control over my own life having finally done something my parents won’t necessarily approve of (but will hopefully still be willing to help me with college afterwards, but that’s a non-factor in this decision), and just be able to live for myself for a while instead of constantly trying to please other people.

We’ll see, but my objective is to be in Southern Missouri in 6 months.

So the highlight of these last few days is successfully taking the Dodge Colt on a 700 mile drive.

It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to take the Colt on a 700 mile drive- it was that I was left with little other option and so I had to press it into service. Not only did it perform, it performed well. It still ran like a top when it got back.

When I go for drives of over 100 miles my ears and nose are subconsciously listening for any new noises or weird smells coming from any car. I’ve had brief scares in the Liberty when I’ve heard a funny new rattling sound and after sort of freaking out realizing it was just a CD case banging against a door panel or something. I smelled nothing odd or heard no weird noises over the entire drive.

This car is a beast. Any doubts I’ve had that I got anything other then a good deal on this car are completely smushed.

To top it off I averaged just over 43 MPG, burning a paltry 15.2 gallons of fuel over 655 miles. The Jeep would have averaged 21 or so over that same trek. So my $90 trip turned into a $45 trip. That’s a victory.

It’s very unlikely I’ll ever take it on a drive of that magnitude again- I’d still prefer the trusty reliability of the Jeep. It’s good to know, though, that when pressed into service like it was that it is capable of success. This wasn’t an easy drive for a car. I went up and down two mountain passes and then climbed and descended another one. The remainder of the drive was spent on freeways. I admittedly babied it a little bit- I tried not to go much over 65 MPH and I don’t think I ever went any period of time at more then 70 MPH (which certainly helps the fuel economy..the Liberty would have been at more like 75/80 in all fairness), especially due to its lack of a 5th overdrive gear.

I should explain the circumstances that led to its use. My parents are coming next weekend and I’ve already put a ton of miles on the Liberty  (groan) and didn’t want to blow it up to an unreasonable level by putting another 700 on it. I didn’t want to rent a van to skip class. I couldn’t really wait another two weeks because the days are getting too short (they’re barely long enough now…I started photographing barely when light was good enough and stopped just as it was getting too dark) and it would have been completely impossible to do it, lest I wait till spring. That wasn’t an option as I want to have this done before Christmas (and I will, I’m 2 drives away from completion of the whole highway system). I had no option really but to use it.

I might use it again on some of the early Oregon stuff, namely the “knock out Portland Metro” drive I take next spring, but that’s about it.

Honestly I’m considering selling the car. I got a really good deal on it. If I can sell it for more then it’s worth…say…$1700 (keep in mind I’ve invested $300, it wasn’t quite roadworthy when I bought it, and now it has new tabs (which move from owner to owner in Washington) and a killer stereo- the only mechanical modifications that needed to be made were a new mirror and a new headlight) , if I can turn around and find a similarly good deal on a $1500-$1700 car I’ll have an even nicer automobile.

I’ll think about it more when the title arrives- it’s a little sketchy trying to sell a car with a month old title- I look like a curbstoner if I’m doing that so we’ll see. But if I list it for $1800, sell as low as $1600 but not sell for a dime less than that (because I don’t particularly need or have any desire to sell it except to flip it around for another car) then it’s certainly worthwhile. So I may dangle it out as bait and if someone bites that’s great but if not that’s fine too.

Anyway other than the car this weekend wasn’t too exciting. I had a ton of work to do so I won’t have to do much work when my parents are here.

Now I’m Here

I’ll take weekends off and summarize them on Mondays since Monday is usually pretty boring

Interesting day today.

I determined today that I was going to get the Dodge Colt up to full snuff so that it could go to eastern Washington and back on Sunday. This meant I had to do three things

1. Check the fluid levels and make sure oil is good
2. Fix the windshield wipers
3. Get a radio

Number one was easy, unless I missed some fluids in which case I’ll find out when the thing breaks down. Everything looked good.

Number two was easier then I thought it was going to be. I went down to Autozone and showed them the little plastic piece I broke and they pulled out a chest full of random plastic pieces and I found two that were sufficiently similar and they gave them to me for free.

Number three…well that’s where the title of the post comes in. I went down to Circuit City because they had a good radio I liked on sale online so I went down there to buy it. It comes with free installation and everything. I figured if I’m actually going to buy a new stereo which I had been trying to avoid doing  I may as well let them install it because breaking a $5 cassette player from the junkyard is one thing but a brand new Pioneer CD player is completely something else. So I went down there before class, set it up to come down after class.

So I went down there- they said it would take an hour and a half. No big deal I thought…it’s only an hour and a half and the mall is right across the street- I’ll just do what the cool kids do and hang out at the mall.

That was longer then waiting an hour and a half at the airport. I’ve come to the conclusion that malls are just airports with more stores, no airplanes, and most importantly fewer semi-comfy chairs to sit down in.

I got some pizza at Villa Pizza to kill time, but that’s just spending money which I wasn’t really thrilled to do given that I had just dropped down $100.

Then I wandered around- looked at some compact discs and stuff and realized that electronic media is still ridiculously expensive and yes I would like to buy season 4 of House but no I would not like to spend $42 on it.

Spencer’s which is generally the only amusing store in the mall was overrun by Halloween costumes so I didn’t spend much time in there.

Looked at the new Saturn Astra parked inside- that’s a fine vehicle. I’m glad to see the General bringing some of his European Opels stateside.

I asked a good friend of mine why girls like malls. Her response was “Because girls like shoes, clothes, and boys and the mall is sort of an infestation [sic] of all those things.”

I understand the shoes and clothes thing but I didn’t see many straight 20-something guys there that weren’t visibly being drug along by their girlfriends.

After a while I got so ridiculously bored I decided to just circumnavigate the exterior of the mall. That took 22 minutes.

I should disclaim that I go to malls roughly twice a year. I come from a family of mall-haters. My mother intentionally avoids malls with a passion- as a young kid I never spent more than 20 minutes in a mall with my mother- and that was for our twice-yearly run to Sears to get whatever clothes we needed.

But yeah, I didn’t enjoy it.

Fortunately I walked back to Circuit City, the car was done, and I got to blast killer music out of the Colt on the way home- which was really quite lovely.

Let’s see…as far as the rest of the day I totally dominated a Stats quiz without a calculator which caused anger to the professor because everyone else was using a calculator and I still finished first by a large margin and got all questions correct. I’m beginning to wonder if I should have majored in math- my brain works a lot better for that.

I spent a lot of time in Customer Service situations today where I needed direct assistance from a store employee. First of all, I dislike being in those situations- my general preference is to grab what I need and buy it and walk out of the store. This is impossible with car stereos and windshield wiper arm thingees stored in a drawer. At Circuit City while I was waiting to buy the stereo all of the Associates were assisting other customers so I figured “Hey, that’s chill” and I waited and waited and they all seemed to take forever with the people they were helping. The manager of the store comes out and asks me if I’d been helped and I told him “No, but I’m looking to buy one of these stereos” and he acted all mad at his employees but I said in their defense that they are all busy I’ll just grab the next one that opens up. He said OK and walked off.

My question is: A) I’m sure one of them saw me they were all just busy with other customers so that’s fine and B) If you want me to buy something and I’m standing in front of a rack where the absolute cheapest thing is $79.99 and the most expensive is several hundred dollars I’m out to buy a fairly large ticket item so I should be a priority. So why does the manager walk out to see if I’ve been helped and then not offer me the assistance that his busy sales associates were unable to? He had time to walk all the way out of his office but not enough time to help his subordinates try to sell me a large ticket item. I thought that was sort of odd. I feel like if I were a store manager and I were out on the floor and I saw somebody trying to buy something expensive and all of my employees were busy I’d still try to help sell to this guy.

But that’s why I don’t work in retail.

Now I’m Here

By gosh…it’s been almost a year. But sitting down and randomly typing into the computer…well it felt natural and I realized how much I missed it. So I’m going to start posting again everyday.

I’m not going to talk about how I woke up and took a shower. That doesn’t really matter. I’ll write about high points in the day now, random thoughts that went through my mind, interesting dillemmas I encounter.

This time ten months ago I stopped blogging. I didn’t admit it then but I was frankly pretty depressed- I was pretty much between a rock and two hard places and didn’t have much desire to write anything at all- I couldn’t bring myself to do hardly anything, let alone write about my days. But I’ve conquered those demons (and have no desire to dwell on those dark three or four months) and now feel pumped up and ready to go. I’ve sent the email out to all the random people who read this thing and I’m ready to get back into the swing of it. So here goes.

So today in statistics the professor said that if somebody  memorized all 800 standard normal probabilities for various z-scores she would give that person an A and not make them come to class because they clearly had no lives. I told her I was going to take her up on that because I’m confident enough in my memory and recall abilities that I can do that. I told her I’d have it done by Monday because I’d love to have an A and not come to class. She immediately retracted her offer of course, but after thinking about how awesome it would be to have all those numbers stored in my head (and you only need to memorize 400 of them since have of them are just 1-the four hundred above 50%) and I’m still going to try to do it by Monday. I so far have 64 of them memorized. I enjoy it.

Will this improve my chances with the cute girl who sits next to me in that class? Ehhhh, maybe…probably not though.

Let’s see…I also bought new wiper blades for the Liberty and the Colt today. The Liberty is a piece of cake to change the blades on- it’s like every other car with the neat hook. The Colt uses this weird master-slave pin that pokes into a hole and I’ve never seen anything like it. I kind of broke the wiper assembly on both wipers in different ways trying to figure it out so I have two windshield wipers sititng on my desk. I’ll fix it tomorrow. That was sort of annoying. I may have to run down to the junkyard and yank the wipers off the old Colt parked down there. Ick.

Had to watch Mister Johnson for my Imperialism and Culture (Humanities 310) class I have to take for graduation. That was actually really good. The ending just leaves you sort of in shock and everyone just kind of silently walked out of the classroom. If you can find a copy I recommend it if you’re bored.

How about those Mariners, eh?

Let’s see…I guess keeping your cell phone in your pocket causes your sperm quality to decrease. I guess my kids will be retarded (insert shot at my arguable retardation here). That’s chill I guess. More likely this has as much validity to it as claims that the state of California causes cancer. Although in reality I’m sure cell phones can’t be good for your health. In fact- I’m reasonably confident that all the weird waves running around in the air that weren’t present 100 or even 50 years ago are eventually going to lead to our extinction. The fact that you can’t go anywhere without being exposed to some kind of non-audible sound wave or other wave just can’t be healthy. And yeah, if it means my sperm are retarded that wouldn’t really surprise me. I’m just not exactly sure what to do about it. Maybe I’ll start carrying my phone around in my socks- I don’t really care if my feet become retarded- that’s what golf carts are for.

On the Election 2008 front- I really, really wanted to vote for John McCain. I consider myself to be more of a Republican. I think he is a strong candidate. The idea of Sarah Palin being one heartbeat way from the presidency scares the crap out of me. That chick is batshit insane. And I like Obama- he seems like a good guy and I like a lot of what he proposes. I don’t believe in global warming- I never will. I also don’t think shooting wolves out of airplanes and building giant oil pipelines from Alaska is a very prudent decision. I like offshore drilling as a temporary solution. I don’t like Republican tax policy and I’m not a big fan of staying in Iraq. While my strong preference is to vote Republican I just don’t think it’s going to be able to happen this time. I’m behind Obama. More on that as stuff happens but that’s my (very) general sort of thought right now.

Let’s see…I bought the Highwayman Road Goes on Forever album yesterday- it’s different. It’s a big departure from what Cash/Nelson/Jennings/Kristofferson normally sing but after listening to it a couple times it’s growing on me. At first I was just confused and put off but it’s not too bad. Not as good as their first or second album but still a good listen.

Now I’m Here

 So…it’s been what? 10 months? I’ll summarize my last ten months as quickly as possible

• Final semester = worse grades but not too bad, just enough bad to make me say “Hey maybe I should study harder next time” but not bad enough that things like scholarships came in jeopardy- otherwise good times had
• Summer gets a D+ in terms of quality- it pretty much sucked except work which was completely awesome. Outside of work though….yeaghhh. It seemed like nothing went the way I anticipated it going/wanted it to go; my summer was spent in utter confusion- but that’s in the past. On the bright side I was a very effective worker because I spent many nights dreaming about the supply of pool towels so no complaints there.
• All else is good

So all that said…no I’m not going to post a blog every day. Every week? Yes. In 20 years I don’t think I will particularly care about what I had for dinner tonight but I do like knowing I might be able to look back on here and know what I was up to.

I’ll start with this school year. Moved in to my new digs- it’s pretty nice. Actually I live in a glorified broom closet with a very nice view. I’ve got something like sixty square feet to play with but every single one of those square feet is mine and only mine- so that’s pretty cool. Honestly I don’t spend a lot of time in this room but it’s nice to have my own space to study in and store random junk in.

Speaking of random junk, I finally acheived my lifelong dream of buying a second car. I picked up a 1990 Dodge Colt for $700. It’s surprisingly nice. After I replaced the headlight and going to the junkyard and getting a new passenger side mirror it’s been very good to me. It’s got a brand new clutch and that’s evident. It shifts silky smooth and yesterday I took it clear up to Seattle without incident. It’s a very basic automobile but it gets the job done and at the 37 MPG I’ve been averaging with it it is certainly paying for itself (in comparison to the Liberty).  I’m pretty sure I underpaid significantly for it and if for some reason I were to turn around and sell it today I’d probably ask $1100 or $1200 for it.

It’s a perfect little errand runner though and is doing a lot to keep miles off the Liberty which is almost exclusively being used for long highway drives.

On the highway front I should be done with the state of Washington by Christmas. I have one more drive in Western Washington and then I have three ferry routes I have to ride on off of Seattle and then I’ll be done with everything west of the Cascades and south of Interstate 90 (which pretty much bisects the state horizontally) in the whole state. I’ve basically got the northeast corner left- I just have to take a weekend to go up there and then I’ll be completely done with that.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I finish that. I keep saying “Oregon” but I’m wondering if I’m going to have the time or desire to tackle a full state again.

As far as having time- classes are really challenging this year. I’m having to spend upwards of 7 hours a day studying. I’m going to be tired by the end of the year undoubtedly. In the meantime I’m attempting to go for long runs 3 days a week in the interest of being in some semblance of “shape” while also looking for some sort of internship in either the journalism or civic administration fields to keep me occupied during the summer so I don’t have to pass another three months in McCall.

And then there’s the standard drinking. My beer pong game has almost improved- the other day I shot four in a row. I almost fell over as did everyone else in the garage. I’m still significantly below average though. Let’s see… I got in trouble with the RAs again the day before classes started. I was really drunk and came back from Zakk’s house and held up a handle of Captain Morgan and yelled “Who wants a free shot of rum?” in the hallway. I then lied to her about being 21 so I wouldn’t be written up. When she went to check I ran the rum across the street. When she came back, angry I lied about my age, I told her the rum was in my car across the street and therefore off campus. She got mad and I got written up.

I met with the guy in charge and I now get to take an Alcohol Education class because apparently I’m an alcoholic because I was drunk before 7:30 PM on the Saturday before classes started. Whatever.

No police scares yet thankfully. I have gotten way too high a couple times in the last few weeks- actually I’ve smoked more weed the last few weeks then I have in a long time. I don’t do it on school nights though- I’m a complete idiot for the next 24 hours after I smoke and can’t think at all.

Went to Coeur d’Alene last Saturday night at Weston’s urging- that was pretty fun- got really drunk and unfortunately had to watch The Ohio State University get shellacked.

But yeah, so far it has been a fun three weeks.

Now I’m Here?

Well, it’s been two weeks since I just up and out stopped posting.

I’m not sure what I’m  going to do.  I just don’t feel like it anymore. I’ve gone two weeks without posting and not once have I said “Man, I want to post a blog today.”

I guess I’ve just up and stopped.

I feel like it’s somewhat important to keep some kind of chronicle of my life, but I really don’t care to write anymore about how I woke up, took a shower, ate a bagel, and went to class.

I feel like my time could be spent doing something more interesting.

The daily post is over. This is for sure. I may go to a weekly/biweekly format and then fill in the spaces with occasional posts where I just rant for a 1000 words.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but the era of daily post is done. I have simply lost the desire. Check back occasionally, there probably will still be a new post or two before I get into some kind of new groove.

Then I wandered aimlessly for a while before going to sleep.  I sat down in the computer lab just whole-heartedly studying United States Route 1, but got bored about 2 counties into Maine (started at the Maine/New Brunswick border). Chilled out for a bit, it was nice and relaxing.

Then I went to sleep.

This morning I woke up, took a shower, and felt incredibly inspired to write a Biology paper. It wasn’t just any old Biology paper, it’s the big one due tomorrow.

So this was good and quite surprising. As a general rule of thumb if I drink -> I’m useless the next day. But maybe it was because I kept it reasonable- just 5 icehouses. Anyway, I was rearing and ready to go.

For about 15 minutes, of course, then I slowed down considerably because no matter how you put it I’m still me. But those were an incredible 15 minutes.

Anyway, I essentially sat around on the computer all day. Ate some lunch and got me some food and that was delicious. I had a club sandwich. Nothing better than a good club sandwich

In my later years of life I have found I am beginning to love turkey. I used to despise turkey, and up until recently I only enjoyed it at Thanksgiving because Thanksgiving turkey is really just the bee’s knees.

Now I love me a good turkey sandwich. Life is crazy sometimes.

Anyway, after consuming that turkey sandwich I sat around for a bit. Ate some tacos, enjoyed the day.

Just kidding of course, didn’t really eat tacos.

I essentially spent all day writing the paper in the 5 minute writing, 15 minutes staring at the computer screen/looking at pictures of highways.

When I discovered Oregon DOT has a video log just like WSDOT’s SRWEB, well, that just did it for me.  And then of course…who else might have one? Pennsylvania and Florida have them for sure. Who else? It’s a mystery. Florida’s really got the best one, it can play forward automatically so you can sit down and watch. It’s like watching a movie.

Anyyway, ate some chicken strips for dinner

Finished the paper around 8:30 which is probably the earliest I’ve ever finished an assignment this year. So that was sick.

Watched the new Family Guy which was the highest quality episode I’ve seen of it in a while, sat around for a bit, and Now I’m Here.

Anyway, then I went to sleep.

This morning I woke up and watched the Ohio State-Illinois game. This was a decent football game, but it was clear where teh Buckeyes heads were. It was time to think ahead to Michigan. I agree with that, I mean, fuck, it’s fucking Illinois. So what if they had a decent season? It’s still Illinois! We haven’t lost the Illibuck game since 2000! Nothing to worry about, right?

WRONG. Ohio State done got their rear ends handed to them. So did Michigan against Wisconsin. It’s a simple case where both teams were too concerned about next week. Unfortunate for both teams. It probably cost Michigan a trip to the Rose Bowl and it cost the Buckeyes a trip to the National Championship.

Still, I’m looking at this optimistically. Michigan lost, which makes the week a lot better. As long as we beat Michigan, we still had a hell of a season. Few people pre-season would have picked us to ride #1 for 6 weeks.

So I’m putting the car flag on my car and showing incredible Buckeye Pride for the next 7 days. I’m proud of the Buckeyes. They had a great season so far. All they have to do is beat Michigan and they will be redeemed.

They can do it. They will do it.

I’m not going to pretend that this was an ideal situation, it wasn’t. I was heartbroken. But if this makes them realize more than ever that they need to whoop Michigan’s ass in the Big House, then maybe it was a good thing. Because that’s really the key. Beat Michigan. You know? We don’t give a Damn for the Whole State of Michigan the Whole State of Michigan the Whole State of Michigan. We don’t give a Damn for the Whole State of Michigan cuz We’re from Oh-hi-ohhh! O-H! We’re from Oh-hi-ohhhhh! I-O!  and so on and so forth (which, by the way, I know the band sings that at pep rallies pre-Michigan game, but I dare the MARCHING BAND to run out on the field at halftime (they’ll be there) and perform that in the Big House. That would be awesome. Nah, not really, the bands have always had respect for each other.)

If they beat Michigan and play whoever (Arizona State maybe? That’s likely and would be fun.) in the Rose Bowl, this will have been a great season in my eyes.

And the Bearcats knocked UConn down, so that’s good. UConn had no business being in the Top 15.

Anyway, I was shocked and disappointed, but what can you do. They just better not fuck up next week.

So then I sat around for a bit. I ate some lunch, a nice big sandwich. I then took a shower.

Then I studied highways for a long time. I examined a lot of stuff, thinking about how to improve my own washingtonhighways.org. I implemented a few new features, most of which you don’t care about (and if you do, it’s at washingtonhighways.org).

I also spent a good amount of time working on my cartography skills and so I present the first original map created by David J Corcoran:

Honestly, I think it’s pretty good except the cartoonish look that makes up downtown Walla Walla. Vector graphics are fun and with practice I can make that even better. This is less useless for things like this where google maps can do just as good a job,  but for historical alignments and stuff it serves a much greater purpose.

This took me about an hour to construct but future iterations may only take like 20 minutes. Also, the dot for Waitsburg is about 2 mm too far right.

Anyway, then I went and got beer, 2 18’s of Icehouse to cover myself until Thanksgiving and Now I’m Here.

Anyway, then I went to sleep.

This morning I woke up, took a shower, and decided I didn’t have time to eat breakfast because by this time there was like 10 minutes to class.

When I went into the facilities, however, somebody had decided to excrete their inner vomit all over the door and walls of one of the stalls.

This normally is not notable news except this weekend is PARENT’S weekend and the cleaning staff didn’t come by till like 2:00 PM this afternoon, so every father who needed to use the restroom got to walk in and see 3 stalls. One with puke all over it and a red sign that said “WTF?!” pointing to it, a cleanish stall, and one with a clogged toilet.

Two stalls down on a school night is kind of a rare deal too.

Anyway…yeah I’m excited to get out of the dorms next year.

Then I went to Biology. A bunch of parents in there screwing up the seating.  I recall my parents, when they came last year, said that even if they would have been there in time they would not have gone to any classes because a bunch of parents just makes class a “circus” or something to that effect.

I agree with this. It’s distracting.

Anyway, we sat around talking about formatting for the paper due Monday and then talked about genetics some. He says that people who did poorly on everything else usually dominate genetics and I think he might be on to something.

Anyway, then Econ. I was really trying to rush over there because all the seats are full in that classroom so if even a single parent showed up we’d be short on desks.

Fortunately no parents made their presence, not surprising given that it consists mostly of upperclassmen and things of that nature.

My parents aren’t coming this year. They decided to come at the end of September instead because it’s really silly for the parents weekend to be this weekend because Thanksgiving is in two weeks and everyone is going home anyway.

I can’t wait to get home for a few days, to be honest. Not many of my friends are coming back it sounds like, but this is fine because it will be good to spend some time with the family and the dogs and the cat and eat good food and relax/unwind/catch up on sleep for a few days.  It should be more relaxed than last Thanksgiving where everyone came home for the first time and it was just constantly juggling spending time with family/attempting to get drunk every night. (which, by the way, it will be interesting to see, after a few month layoff, if my parents trust me again to go out at night without me having to be all crazy and make things up/modify/whatever it was I had to do towards the tail end of last summer (I don’t have a blog to reference, but I know a large extent of it was “nothing” as the constant rush of big parties happened to drop off exactly the same time my parents found the blog)

I’m excited to drive the Wrangler again too. My clutch leg is itching, and it’s frankly a lot more fun to drive then the Liberty (I’m assuming I’ll be driving the Wrangler and not the Green Liberty, but with my sister now licensed who knows what will happen, right now the Wrangler is the car my Dad drives most and my sister drives the Green Liberty because she’s lame and my parents are, for whatever reason, not teaching her how to drive a stick  “until she gets a better feel for driving” (which, in retrospect I feel like being thrown into the fire with the Wrangler was for the best. Driving a stick held off my development of a lead foot, for one)).

Anyway, then lunch. I had me some food and it was interesting. It was kind of a weird dish, a heated couple of slices of white bread with roast beef and garden vegetable spread between it. The vegetable spread does not complement the roast beef that well, I thought. It makes it taste processed (or maybe it was processed) without really adding the garden vegetabley taste we all know and love.

A nyway, then Comm. It was OK, we listened to him rant about Documentaries for 50 minutes which was just fine.

Then Spanish. I dislike Spanish still. It’s sooooooo boring. The most boring Spanish class ever. There’s nothing fun about it.  I can’t wait till next semester when I can get a different prof (and a different mix of people…the people in the class don’t jive that well or something, but it just doesn’t foster a very vocal environment. I have hardly spoken any espanol all year).

Let’s see, then I went to Safeway to get father a birthday card and also picked up some bananas.

Then I bought a stamp, mailed the card, and ate the bananas. What I just learned about myself is that if I buy large quantities of fruit and store it in my room I am fairly likely to eat it. I was sitting in my room thinking “I’m hungry” “Should I walk all the way down to the SUB for a bag of chips or just eat this banana?” and so I ate the banana.

It’s way easier than walking all the way down to the SUB for a banana. I would just never do that.

Anyway, then I sat around working on uploading photos for the washingtonhighways, chilled out, watched some House and some South Park.

Now I’m Here.