All Hallow's Eve

Well, Alton's first Halloween was fairly boring. We didn't even leave the house, Grandma and Grandpa came over and we made some Emu tacos.

Yeah, Emu. I think the list of animals I've eaten in my life goes like this (in approximate order of frequency):
Chicken, cow, turkey, pork, bison, deer, tilapia, catfish, bass, walleye, crappie, sunfish (various spp.), crayfish, rabbit, pheasant, quail, dove, shrimp, elk, ostrich, oxen, _emu_, alligator, and I can't think of anything else right now, but I might have had a fried grasshopper once.

We were walking through the farmer's market and I saw the emu stand and couldn't resist. Very red meat. Wife and I couldn't tell any difference between it and bison (maybe a little less fat), but my parents didn't like it as much as beef (I, of course, haven't eaten beef in years, so no basis for comparison). My parents could have been reacting to my 'taco' recipe, which included red bell peppers and potatoes, as opposed to just meat and onions.

ANYWAY, here's what I've done this week:

- Visited Manhattan, home of _the_ Kansas State University. Met up with a friend of mine there and got some good advice on various aspects of a talk I'm giving. Good encouragement as well. This was an official work trip, because I needed to dig out papers on heavy metal pollution, but I brought along the whole family. I think the family had a good time (wife says yes!).

- In my mind, college campuses should have crazy people. When you go to college, you should end up experiencing diverse viewpoints and ideas. KU is like this, KSU...not so much. Notre Dame wasn't really like that as much as KU, but there was at least some oddity. Manhattan's sea of people who all looked like the preppy bastards I knew from high school made me think up a few possible slogans for the school:

"Kansas State University: Why would you want to learn anything anyway?"
"Kansas State University: Conformity is happiness....right?"
"Kansas State University: Comfortable with ignorance."

- In all seriousness, K-State has a nice library and some really good profs, so I shouldn't make fun of them.

- Manhattan drove home a reality I've always realized but never thought about: Driving in college towns sucks. After thinking about this, I can actually modify it a little: driving in state college towns sucks. The reason, I assume, is the fact that college admissions have sky-rocketed over the past 40 odd years, resulting in a great demand to expand buildings, but also a sky-rocketing price for nearby real-estate. So roads become expensive to build, and colleges are somewhat committed to the "walking campus" mentality anyway, and so road organization doesn't keep pace with the traffic load. This isn't really a problem if you're living on campus, and it isn't too much of a problem if you work there (usually with easily accessible designated parking), but for visitors it is a pain in the ass.
By comparison, Notre Dame, which has maintained a fairly even class size for decades while systematically eliminating ALL road traffic on-campus, has funneled traffic to large roads that can handle the load, and built parking lots in easily accessible locations near the edges of campus (eliminating the need for drivers to get on-campus at all). But of course Notre Dame is under no obligation to allow more students, as state schools often are.
I would love to hear of an example of a state-college town that doesn't suck to drive in (at least around the college). Here are the ones I have seen this effect in up-close:
Lawrence, Manhattan, Norman, Athens, even Golden, CO (even though School of Mines isn't a huge population). Ann Arbor's probably the best driving experience, and I was almost in a huge accident the last time I was there!

- NBA!!!!! Watched the first two nights of NBA action and here's my thoughts:
The Mavs are going to be better than last year.
The Spurs are going to lose this year.
The Celtics aren't going to be that good.
The Bulls will, ONCE AGAIN, start the season horribly.
The Suns and Bulls will face off in the Finals.
Mostly though, I'm just happy we're back in the NBA universe.

Ah, Hello there.

I haven't written in forever because A) I'm playing around with a new
blog related to work and science (analyze-everything.blogspot.com) and
B) I moved and didn't have internet for awhile. So here are my recent
thoughts:

- Jane Goodall is a monotone speaker, even if what she has to say is
interesting. That's my assertion, anyway, because I fell asleep for
part of the speech she gave in Wichita 3 weeks ago. I love living in
a major metro area again.

- We moved into a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment with a gate that
closes at 6 pm. While the gate is a first for us, we also had a
2bdrm2bt in the last apartment. What really makes this apartment seem
new and different is that we've been living in my parent's basement
for the last three months. I'm grateful, and I'm not saying it was
hell, but having your own space, especially with a kid, is great.

- Speaking of the kid, aside from getting daytime and nighttime
confused over the past few days, this kid is fantastic. He lays on my
chest and cooes at mom for 20-30 minutes at a time on a regular basis.
He's a cutie!
Let me put it this way. I might be the most cynical person I've
ever met (yeah, it goes way beyond what I share verbally). but seeing
my son smile at me just makes me happy.

- Fort Scott Kansas is surprisingly nice, possibly accentuated by the
beautiful fall evening I find myself enjoying. The town is old, and
so the downtown (set on top of a hill) is full of ancient buildings
that have new signs. I ate at a mexican restaurant that served a
great margarita, and I walked around for about an hour in a happy,
semi-drunken daze.

- Weather in Kansas is so much better than it was in Indiana. I
spoke with my cousin (who's still in Indiana) about that today. NW
Indiana is somewhat beautiful in the fall, and the summers aren't
blisteringly hot, but for the most part, I hated the weather. By
comparison, this has been an amazingly hot and long Kansas summer, yet
a hot summer just means the evenings and nights are beautiful. For
reasons that are probably obvious, it feels awesome to go walking
around at 85 degrees at night when it was 105 that day. I,
personally, am just about incapable of getting enough sun in my life,
and so Kansas kicks ass.

- The University of Kansas's football team is 7-0. The University of
Notre Dame is 1- (a lot). "And the world turned upside down..." And
yes, I'm fully aware that KU's football team could be a house of
cards, but hey, this is still pretty cool.

- The NBA season is coming. Redemption for the Mavs? The Celtics
return to prominence? Will my (increasingly stupid looking)
prediction that Kevin Durant won't be a great pro come true? The
NBA!!!

- Finally, have I mentioned Kongregate? If you play stupid online
flash games, this is the greatest site on the internet. They have
badges...they have awards...they have levels. The entire site is like
a meta game. So awesome.

Wow....I'm amazed....

...I know some of you think Matchbox 20 sucks, but you're wrong. I just didn't realize how wrong. See, I was under the assumption that Matchbox 20's cool songs were entirely contained within their first album "Yourself or someone like you". That album contained some solid songs (3 A.M., Push, Shame, Hang), but most importantly contained one of the most amazing songs of 1996: Long day. Basically, I liked that song so much that you could never convince me that it wasn't one of the 10 best songs of that year, even though "Recovering the Satellites" came out at the same time and just about drove me insane.

At any rate, I don't listen to either of those albums anymore, which might be why I completely forgot Matchbox 20 didn't suck, since "Mad Season" was awful, and Rob Thomas is annoying.

Apparently Matchbox 20 had one more good song in them. Has anyone heard Let's See How Far We've Come? I've heard some amazing music this year: Bright Eyes, Jack Johnson, Okkerville River, the Decembrists, Gym Class Heroes, Jonathan Coulton, etc. Yet I don't know if I've heard a better song this year. The song is lyrically perfect, sums up precisely my personal angst about the collapse of the biosphere and political world that I thought existed. Musically, it is simple and elegant, with just some guitars and drums. And finally it's short, we don't have to dwell on this forever.

This song has inspired me to pull out the guitar. I'm going to re-learn this thing if it drives me and everyone around me insane.

And now the baby's crying.