Dear Asshat,

Dear Mr. Asshole Who Sent Me and the Legislators a Nasty ,

I read with interest your comments in response to my email of February 28th, 2008. I would like to point out that at the end of my email was my phone number, and that in the future you can feel free to pick up the phone and call me at any time to let me know if we have failed to account for a previous site visit when commenting on one of your proposed dam sites. In this case, this may have saved you and your Watershed Joint District (WJD) some embarrassment (and a lot of time), since the site you refer to as having been previously evaluated for the presence of Broadhead Skink habitat (site xxx) is not, in fact, the site referred to by my comments or the public notice (PN). The PN referred to site yyy. From a phone conversation with Mr. Jerky Engineer Who Actually Wrote the Letter You Signed, and numerous helpful reminders from other assholes, I’m now aware that you do not receive a copy of these PNs because you're too lazy to download them off the web, and I will endeavor to include the location of the site I am evaluating more prominently in the future.  Because apparently putting it in the subject line and the first sentence of my email isn't enough.

As to your other comments, I’d like to take this opportunity to respond to some of your assertions and clarify our position:

- “[Your agency's] inference that this project will degrade a uniquely valuable aquatic habitat is absurd unless aquatic habitat that are very limited in extent and connectivity, and substantially devoid of water in excess of 90% of the time are inordinately valuable!” [emphasis by author]

   This is, in fact, exactly what we are suggesting. Ephemeral and intermittent streams are heavily used by many species of native fish, amphibians, reptiles, and invertebrates. These habitats are often temporally important refuges and spawning grounds, and they are rapidly disappearing from this state's landscape. The mere fact that they are dry or greatly restricted for much of the year is, actually, one of important characteristics that make them so valuable for these species. Permanent pools, and perennial streams, often include predatory fauna (e.g., fish, waterfowl, etc.) that would extirpate many native species.
  We do recognize that the term “valuable” has a variety of connotations. We are tasked with acting as an advocate for wildlife and wildlife habitats. As a result I use the word value in relationship to wildlife, not in terms of monetary gain. From the perspective of a publicly funded entity like a WJD, value might mean something different. For example, placing dams on streams with virtually no water or connectivity to the rest of the watershed my have little value for a WJD.

- “[Your agency's] assertion that the number of dams in [this state] is proof that appropriately sited, designed, and managed dams can’t relieve flood damages is just as ridiculous as the widely presumptive representation on their part that landowner investments in wildlife populations and habitat pale in comparison to theirs.”

   For the most part, we are confused by this statement. Nowhere in our initial response did we refer to landowners, to our own investments in wildlife, or to the relative merits of landowner vs. state-sponsored wildlife initiatives. Nor did we assert that the number of dams in this state was proof that dams were incapable of flood control. I have attached the original email to this, so that you may re-read it to confirm these details yourself. Proof is a nonsensical term in science. In science, the weight of evidence is used to determine whether a theory is strongly supported or should be discarded. For instance, a vast amount of scientific evidence exists suggesting that dams and reservoirs alter the species diversity, flow regime, nutrient processing, and thermal regime of downstream reaches. Pointing out that this state's amazingly ambitious history of dam-building over the past 100 years has not prevented flooding is not proof of anything, merely a fact.
    Personally, I am unaware of any agency policy whereby we diminish the importance of landowners or “conscript and internalize all of the credit…for the widespread support for wildlife populations”.

- “…[your agency's] assertion that this proposed structure may negatively impact the Broadhead Skink or it’s critical habitat is almost as ludicrous as the fact that [your agency] listed this invasive species in the first place and has enthusiastically used it to take thousands of acres of property and associated financial resources from both public and private projects over the past two decades in the name of species protection and mitigation.” [emphasis by author]

   After reviewing our permits from the past twenty years, I can find no evidence “thousands of acres” of Broadhead Skink habitat have been appropriated by our agency at any time or in any fashion.   In fact, our agency is unwilling to acquire any land for the purposes of Threatened and Endangered species mitigation. We also hold no conservation easements for the purposed of Threatened and Endangered (T&E) species mitigation. This is a public agency acting on behalf of the citizens of the state, whose elected officials felt that the conservation of T&E species was important enough to pass the Nongame and Endangered Species Conservation Act. Subsequent polls have generally shown that act to be well supported by public opinion, and a recent review of the act by the legislature resulted in no significant changes.
    
    Accusing this agency of acting against the interest of the public is particularly ironic for a WJD whose very existence would not be possible without state laws forcing all residents of a watershed to pay for structures that benefit few (by your own admission this dam site has very limited connectivity to the rest of the watershed). This is particularly egregious when these watershed structures are primarily for the purpose of “recreation enhancement and protection” on private land with no public access. The use of public funds for private “recreation enhancement” can hardly be construed as anything less than a violation of the public trust.
   
    If you and your fellow members of the WJD are so inclined, you are welcome to file a petition to change the status of the Broadhead Skink (I’ve include the form as an attachment here). There is broad support for such a change within the agency, but unfortunately the agency does not unilaterally determine whether species are added, removed, or changed on the state list.
    
    I would also be interested in reading any scientific study or analysis that describes the Broadhead Skink or its critical habitat as invasive species. Such studies would also be useful to include in any petition to de-list the species (although I am not involved in that process).

- “…their demand in the subject e-mail for “holding all other permits in abeyance”…is symptomatic of their limitless and unjustified lust to conscript any and all natural resources to their control.”

  Comical rhetoric aside, we have no authority to demand other agencies issue or not issue permits (feel free to re-read the email in question). Certainly, we hope that other agencies do not issue permits to project sponsors who are unwilling to comply with state statutes, and we have reciprocated that policy for other state agencies. I fail to see how requesting project sponsors abide by state laws constitutes “unjustified lust” for control.


  Finally, I think of myself as an enlightened and polite person.  I'm not the kind of person who would point out what an asshole you are, or the fact that you're too much of a fucking coward to return my phone calls.  I'm not going to point out to all the world that you're just using an antiquated piece of legislation to line your own pockets with public money.   And I'm certainly
above pointing out that the people you hired to work for you were all fired from previous jobs for laundrying money, stealing, and disregarding state and federal laws.  I'm not above pointing out that I will be watching your WJD very, very, closely in the future.

Sincerely,

Wow...

I just got a letter from a project sponsor in response to a letter
that I sent out a few weeks ago. I had basically just posted the
generic stuff I always post: We're opposed to dams because we're
concerned with the continued loss of unique aquatic resources, blah
blah blah. Based on aerial photographs of the site, I also said an
on-site evaluation would need to be done to determine if Broadhead
skink habitat exists on-site.

Holy cow...the response I got was priceless. I could literally not
put a price on it. Wow. Oh, and the bastards sent me all this info
'proving' the skink wasn't on that site....except of course it is the
wrong damn site (actually, the wrong "dam" site too).

So I called them up and pointed this out.

"Oh...it is?"

Also priceless.

For some reason...

...I continue to look up my email address when someone asks me on the
phone. As if I don't have it memorized. As if I haven't been working
this job for 7 months. As if I'm an idiot. I've gotten to the point
where I can do it so fast that I don't even interrupt the flow of
conversation.

And let's talk about conversation a little bit. I call people on the
phone a lot, a hell of a lot. And usually I'm telling them bad news.
So my phone manner is changing. I've gotten to the point where I'm
just reciting previously stated lines, I'm not even sure that really
counts as communicating. Does it? All I know is I've begun to notice
I'm doing it.

But I'm not doing it as bad as all the other agencies! Yesterday, I
called a guy from the Army Corps. I'd say it was like speaking to a
machine. I'd say something, and before I could finish, he'd start in
on one of his obviously rote response....that took probably 2 minutes
to finish!

Me: "I was wondering if this sandstone quarry -- " ("project that I'm
reviewing is in jurisdictional waters of the U.S" I didn't get to
finish)

Corps Guy: "Well, if you're talking about a quarry you'll want to
talk to the KDHE Surface Mining section. There's a guy there named
XXXX. Have you met XXXX?"

Me: -- (0.25 second pause)

CG: "Yeah, he's the one who does quarries on the state level, we
primarily get involved only if there are jurisdictional waters of the
U.S. being effected. What county did you say this was in?"

Me: "Uh...Wilson."

CG: "Well the only DWR notice I've gotten recently from Wilson county
is a stream crossing near Fredonia. Is this a stream crossing?"

Me: -- (no pause)

CG: "But we don't get every DWR notice, you might have been confused
about that. You know the DWR covers some stuff we don't cover? For
instance they've..."

Ok, I'm going to end this here, but just imagine that conversation
going on for twenty minutes before I managed to convey the concept
that no, this is a sandstone quarry and NO this wasn't a DWR notice,
and yes XXXX and I go way back...at least a month.

Then I called the State Conservation office and, you're not going to
believe this, but I spent a half hour on the phone before the person I
was talking to realized I wasn't trying to build a sandstone quarry
myself.

One time I called an engineer with my own agency, and guess what, I
spent 30 minutes on the phone being told over and over again "what do
you want from me?" with different inflections until I finally started
laughing into the phone and told him I'd get back to him. Seriously,
what part of "A map showing the footprint of the project" is hard to
understand!??!

But no, I never scream or yell or get upset at these people, even when
I really, really should, because I'm a representative of the great
state of Kansas, and to be honest, it feels like getting stabbed in
the back when the state represents me by voting to build a new coal
plant and forgetting the environment part of the "Energy and
Environment" committee.

Sooo....That went to kind of a weird place. I'm going to be honest,
writing this was kind of a roller coaster in itself.

Cell phones

I don't know if anyone has noticed this, but I don't talk on the phone
that much anymore.

The reason is simple...I'm annoyed by my cell phone. I'm a little
annoyed by cell phones in general. I just don't like talking on them.
I know my wife thinks I'm always yelling into them, but that's
because I can't ever hear anything...and that's not very good logic.
The phone is annoyingly small, and annoyingly light, and so it feels
like its not really there at all.

Anyway, I'm just annoyed by my cell phone. So if I called and talked
for like 2 minutes, that's why.

Go check it out

To those of you who read Omnivore's Dilemma, the same author wrote a
book called "In defense of food" and Paul wrote up a book review about
it on Analyze Everything. Go check it out
(http://analyze-everything.blogspot.com/).

Other news: I don't think any post I've ever made has spurred the
controversy of the rotisserie chicken issue.

Allow me to concede defeat, calm the outcry, and diminish the whole thing:

Grocery store rotisserie chicken sucks! I don't understand, and never
will, how someone can walk into a grocery store, see the unbelievable
bounty of different foods present, and decide to eat the piece of meat
that's been rotating in some display oven all day, was probably chosen
because it was on the verge of going bad, and has been doused in some
generic spice rub that's really just 80% salt. As an added bonus,
sometimes its sitting next to the checkout in a plastic container.
How long has it been there? You _do know_ that the grocery store
sells other food, right?

And everyone can stop telling me: It's quick and easy. Quick and easy
isn't a good thing when it comes to food. McDonald's is quick and
easy, is that where you want to associate yourself?

Oh wait. That didn't really sound like a concession at all, did it?

Doesn't random count for anything anymore

I bet you're wondering what I've been doing today. I'm going to tell
you. I've been thinking about a 2.75 mile long log jam in the Neosho
River. You can see the damned thing on aerial photographs:


View Larger Map

Hmm...I hope that embedding worked right. (Update: Should be working now)

There's a town nearby (Jacob's Creek), and a boat ramp, and the boat
ramp is apparently jammed in with logs, so that nobody in town can get
on the river. Apparently the log jam started decades ago, and they've
tried dynamite, fired, and a lot of hope to get rid of it...without
any luck. Now they're talking about dragging the logs out by truck.
Right now this area of the river etc. are kinda cut off, so I'm sure
the wildlife is loving it. I've personally never heard of something
like this, which is why I'm heading out there at the end of the week.
I want photos!

Other news:

- 300th post!

- NBA: The Suns screwed up. The Mavs are much better than anyone realizes. The Lakers are border-line awesome.

That little yellow light

Lately, whenever I log on to gmail, a little yellow dot next to a particular name is always illuminated. Always. I get on at 6 in the morning, the light is glowing, I get on at 12 30 at night, the light is glowing. At work, after lunch, at 8 in the evening: Glowing light.

I'll be honest, I don't know what the color is...is it green? The color I'm referring to is the one that means: This person is online and active.

And the light isn't 'clocked out', meaning the person hasn't done anything for awhile, and therefore might be away from the keyboard. Nope the light is always bright and active.

So far, I haven't sent you any messages DC, but you can bet that when I do, it will be at like 2 in the morning and go something like:

Holy cow dude! Are you ever off the computer???

In other news: Have you guys checked out Bash.org. I love reading through random idiots talking to each other.

No Title

Well, I guess I'm finally at a point in my life where I can honestly assess the world.

And the world has two kinds of people in it.

People who think the rotisserie chicken sold at the supermarket sounds like a good idea, and those who don't.

My wife is the former, and I'm the latter.

I don't think we ever discussed this before getting married.

Mind dump

Response to comments:

-  So apparently "Konrad" took issue with my statement: "And not one of the Republican candidates have the moral integrity or intelligence of a garden slug."  Specifically, he seemed to think that I should have more precisely defined what a garden slug is.  "Konrad" then went into a long and detailed explanati--- I'm going to spare you the details and just defend myself by saying A) a garden slug is a slug in a garden...duh, and B) Konrad, you're an idiot (If that's even your real name).  But thank you for commenting!

-  For those of you who wondered and commented (that Konrad character again), my friend is apparently going to get out of the hospital soon.  

Music coolness:

 I get bored an unproductive in hotel rooms, so here's the music I've been cramming down my ears, you might not have heard of all of it:

 -  Rilo Kiley  Silver Lining and Portions for Foxes.  I really dig Jenny Lewis, she did some solo stuff that was awesome too.  Both of these songs have good sounds, but I don't necessarily understand all the lyrics to Portions for Foxes.  Are foxes a metaphor for composters/decay?  I don't know.
  
 - White Stripes  Icky Thump and You Don't Know what love is.  Is there any real doubt that the White Stripes are the greatest mainstream musical act currently in existence?  I guess it depends on whether or not Modest Mouse qualifies as 'mainstream'.  I think not, since most of their really good stuff is pre-Float On.

-  Paramore Misery Business (and acoustic!).  Probably my biggest guilty pleasure is pop-punk bands.  I really liked Blink 182 and Less than Jake and now Paramore and essentially the entire
lineup from "Fueled By Ramen" is filling that gap.  Paramore essentially sings the same songs as Britney Spears (in terms of topics), but apparently guitar and attitude count for a lot in my book.

-  Dashboard Confessional  Vindicated.  I forgot about this song, even though I really like it, then I stumbled upon it last week.  I hoped this would lead down an interesting avenue of new music, but it turns out Dashboard Confessional are border-line incoherent and sort of a bunch of losers.  So that sucked.

-  Sparklehorse Sick of Goodbyes.  Actually, I could have picked a bunch of songs from Sparklehorse.  They're part of the Cracker-Camper Van family, and they are weird and beautiful.

-  Cute is What we Aim For Curse of Curves.  That's just a stupid name, but the song isn't bad.

Other stuff:

 -  Apparently there is no pretense internally that the Guantanamo Bay detainees are real people.  There are a lot of people who like to divide the world into *good* people and *evil* people.  If you're one of those people, then you can't possibly refer to the Bush presidency as anything but evil.  He has overseen the widespread kidnapping, imprisonment, and torture of people from all over the world.  That's either evil or you don't believe evil exists.  That's all the options there are.

-  Apparently the movie Jumper sucks.  So much so that someone had a 'Dead Poets Society' moment.  I'll be honest, that's kinda what the first three years of graduate school did to me.  

-  So I've been trying out Opera on my work laptop for the past couple of months.  I've got to say, it kinda sucks.  Everything that's in Firefox is here too, but everything seems to run slower, and right now, as I type this, the browser seems to have real problems dealing with the Blogger "edit post" window.  Things keep re-arranging, and shifting and damnit if I am not getting real close to ditching it altogether.  Other stuff is just more annoying to use, like the password wand or the history.  

-  NBA:  This is supposedly the greatest season in NBA history.  So why am I losing interest faster than at any time in the last 5 years?  Because the model franchise for great basketball (the Suns) threw it all away.  Look, Shaq is everything that is wrong with basketball recently:  He whines when he doesn't get enough shots, he can't dribble or shoot, he has no team loyalty, he takes credit for the success of everyone he plays with, he slows down the game, he has always benefitted from ridiculous officiating, and he takes off half the season.  Why would the Suns want to get that?  The Spurs lead this wave of up-and-coming basketball teams that focused on skilled basketball, great on-court chemistry, and planning for the long-haul, but it certainly seemed like the Suns were on their way towards succeeding the Spurs as the best team in the league.  How bad could the off-court chemistry with Shawn Marion have been?  The two teams most poised to rip the West out of the hands of the Spurs were the Mavs and Suns, but now, purely by default and raw talent, the Lakers are clearly the best team out there.  And I hate the Lakers.  No wonder the NBA is losing me.

Work is getting weird

So for the first time in years I am now a non-exempt employee. What
does that mean? If I work over 40 hours a week, I get paid overtime,
or comp time.

That seems fine, but I _do_ work over 40 hours a week, and I don't
want to bankrupt the section I where I work.

I'm not sure how this is going to work out. I guess I'm going to have
to take vacations.

Other stuff:

- NBA: Despite any reports you might have heard to the contrary, the
Cavs just got a lot better. And the Suns? The Suns should have kept
Marion. I may have to quit watching the NBA. The Lakers are good,
like, scary good. I'm really doubtful anyone is ready to deal with
them in a 7-game series. Right now, the next best team in the West
might be Utah, and Utah might be able to handle the Lakers, but the
Spurs are just plain outmatched. They desperately need Tony Parker
back and 100%. The Mavs are a complete enigma. On the one hand, they
only have 1 legit offense weapon. On the other hand, Dirk is capable
of carrying a team to the Finals.

- Juno didn't win best picture at the oscars. Frankly, the Oscars suck.

- A friend of mine has been in the hospital since Wednesday of last
week with an aneurysm. That's pretty scary, since there's really
nothing you can do about it beforehand. You just suddenly get a
horrible headache and pass out. If you're lucky (and he is) you don't
die. He ended up having brain surgery to stop the bleeding, and stop
a bunch of other 'potential' aneurysms.

Movies...again

After 7 (or so) long months, the wife and I went to a movie. We intended to go see No Country for Old Men (cuz it looks intense), but we missed the start, and we saw Juno.

And it was awesome! This is the first movie we've seen in a theater in forever, and it was a great one to mark the return of theaters.

You need to run to the theater to see this movie. Run.

Other news:

Nobody listens to me when I tell you to stop eating beef. Everybody's like "You're just a nutjob." Here's another 130 million pounds of explanation for why you shouldn't eat beef. In fact, you need to start buying your food from a grass farmer, and you need to read Omnivore's Dilemma.

Ok, I gotta go watch the rest of the NBA All-Star Game

Presidential Idiocy

I've been stressing out a lot lately about the presidential debates.
Apparently having a kid has thrown my concern for the future into
overdrive. And this is swinging down to the presidential debates,
because we, as a country, have royally fucked-up everything over the
past 8 years.

Seriously, if you don't understand this, then you need to think about
it more. Not one area of our country is in better shape than it was 8
years ago. Not one. That's astounding.

I'm not convinced a president really has any strict control over any
of this, but between a president, his appointees, and the legacy of
authority he/she leaves behind, our country clearly views presidential
terms as mini-epochs. I've only been alive and aware at all for 3
epochs:

Bush Sr. - A guy who embraced the belief of compromise, downplayed his
affection for corporate interests, and generally didn't do anything
else memorable.

Clinton - A guy who mostly did whatever the people wanted, began the
process of bringing the government into an era of openness, and began
the process of co-opting industry to make environmental change.

Bush Jr. - A guy who has managed to create enemies of practically
every other nation in the world and all but about 20-25 percent of his
most loyal followers in this country. Bush was actually pushing for a
bill that would make it illegal to _think_ a certain way.

The country will hopefully resume what I once assumed was the
inevitable march of progress from animal group to tyrannical state to
something else (human?). Or will it? Apparently people are actually
casting votes for guys like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Really?
Someone out there wants to elect another idiotic religious ideologue
who won't work with anyone who doesn't strictly agree with his limited
view of the world? Mitt Romney referred to Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama as terrorists a few weeks ago!

Romney and Hucakbee are running on pure hate, nothing more. The
hatred of things like Islam and women's rights and abortion and
equality for homosexuals and taxes and health care. I used to think
that voting for Ron Paul was like voting for a system reset. If you
honestly thought that Paul was the best candidate, that meant you
thought the last 120 years (or so) of the United States was a failure,
and you wanted to reset the whole thing back to the constitution and
Bill of Rights. After awhile I realize that Romney and Huckabee are
even more a system reset. They are saying: Vote for us and we'll
reset things back to a theocracy.

Meanwhile on the Democratic side we have Obama and Clinton. In what
has to be the most ridiculous political irony of the past 30 years,
Clinton is the conservative, old-school candidate here. If it were
still 1994, you'd appreciate just how weird that is. But its because
Clinton has compromised on so much stuff. Obama, on the other hand,
hasn't been a politician long enough to have to compromise.

I forgot where I was going with this. All I know is that there's only
one candidate that doesn't suck this year: Barack Obama. And not one
of the Republican candidates have the moral integrity or intelligence
of a garden slug.

The happiest baby in the world?

Now bear with me for a minute here:

My son is big. He's tall, he's heavy...he's breaking moma's wrists
(seriously). In fact he's off the chart in terms of size.

So in all the world, there might not be all that many babies who are
bigger than my son at his age.

Therefore, there probably aren't that many babies who have a bigger
smile than my son at his age. Right? Bigger all over means bigger
smile too right?

So when my baby is _exploding_ with happiness and smiling from ear to
ear and so filled with joy that it is almost impossible to contain it
within his body...

well, his body is bigger than most babies, so most babies _couldn't_
contain it...right?

Oh who cares, I just wanted to point out that my son is a ridiculously
happy baby. If I haven't sent you his photoalbum from Feb. yet remind
me to. There are a couple of pictures where he's obviously about to
explode from happiness. Its really hard to stay depressed while
looking at them.

(where have I been? Sick...lord...sick. Curse you constantly
evolving diseases.)

You're kidding right?

Oh, looky what's in my email today:

"The Ecological Society of America is pleased to announce the establishment
of an official Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?
gid=9475287002&ref=mf. We hope that this group will serve as a fun,
informal venue for ecologists to network, share ecology-related media and
links, and further spread discussion of ecology across the Web.
Registration is required, but free and open to the public, so "invite"
your friends and colleagues!"

Seriously? I've been openly pining for a Web 2.0 application for
ecology that's the equivalent of Reddit, and this is what I've got? A
Facebook group? Who do I have to mortally wound to get some
satisfaction around here?

Sports Thoughts:

- So, Shaq to the Suns. For Shawn Marion. Am I honestly supposed to
believe that Shawn "Awesome" Marion was the problem for the Suns? It
sounds like the Suns had to get rid of either Shawn Marion or Amare
Stoudamire. The problem the team has had in the playoffs is with Dirk
Nowitzki and Tim Duncan (nobody else has beat this team in the
playoffs in years). Amare sucks on defense, shoots terrible shots,
and won't box out. Shawn Marion grabs a ridiculous # of rebounds,
plays amazing defense on bigger defenders, and scores without even
having the offense run through him.

Why would you trade Shawn? Amare is what he is, he's not getting
any better. And if you'd traded Amare, you could have gotten back a
guy (or guys) who really fits your team (like, say, David Lee and
Jared Jeffries, or Josh Smith and Al Horford, or Channing Frye and
Joel Pryzbilla, or Tyson Chandler and Julian Wright).

The Matrix WAS Phoenix for the past 8 seasons (or however many it
was). If it were me, I wouldn't have traded him for anyone who wasn't
a first team All-NBA guy.

- So K-State finally beat KU in a home game. Of course, to do so
they needed the Urinator, the whiniest coach and players I've seen
outside the ACC, and then afterwards an assistant coach got a DUI.
Winning is hard, winning with class...apparently a little harder. On
a less bitter note: Beasley is the best player in college basketball.
Nobody else is even close.

- That was a great Super Bowl. And my son started rolling over
finally. I was a lot more excited about the rolling over.

- I don't actually think Shaq will suck with the Suns, at least not
once they get in the playoffs. I'm not even convinced they can't
still run. I just think that they should have kept the core together
for one more year. I mean, really, who in the West is going to beat
them? The Spurs don't look good, for whatever reason, against anyone
but the Suns. The Lakers, Hornets, Warriors, and Blazers are not
battle-tested enough to beat the Suns in a 7-game series. The Mavs
are great, but they appear to be playing head-games with themselves.
I think a rematch with the Warriors this seasons would kill them. The
Nuggets are never going to win as currently constructed. The Jazz are
good, maybe even really good, but I can't honestly imagine them
beating the Nash-Marion-Amare trio. The West has never been more
wide-open, and the Suns have never been this healthy. If they hadn't
gotten stupid suspensions last season they might have won it all then.

Kind of a lot of tears today...

So this wasn't really my son's best day ever. For the past two mornings (the weekend) the boy has been pretty much an unholy terror unless dad is taking care of him. Yesterday morning I was gone for maybe half an hour before I got a call from mom that was borderline frantic. I came home, and the boy immediately turned on the charm...big-time. Big smiles. High-pitched squeals. The works.

But only for dad. And it isn't even like I was doing anything. I just sat there and stared at him. Maybe I sang "Amazing Grace" (one of the two songs I can remember at any given time).

Today, same story. In the morning the boy was borderline hostile to mom, but totally smiles and giggles to dad. This is a bad trend, since dad isn't around in the mornings most days.

Part of the problem might be that mom is the one wielding the snot-sucker. What? You don't know what a snot-sucker is? Here's one, apparently the correct term is aspirator. All I know is that my son views it as a highly developed torture device. I don't know if I've ever heard him scream the way he did this morning. And that brought on the tears. This was actually a lot worse than the shots he got at the doctor's office.

(yes, you have to use an aspirator on a baby. They don't blow their noses! And it seems like all babies have a ton of mucous build-up overnight. The boy is so bad in the morning that he can barely breath through his nose at all. You try nursing a boob without the ability to breath through your nose...ok...you probably won't want to actually try that. That's gross.)

Baby tears are tough on mom and dad, especially because you know the kid is fine. There's nothing painful about the damned snot-sucker. There's nothing painful about waking up. There's nothing painful about being alone for ten minutes. But that doesn't mean the baby doesn't feel like crying whenever those things happen.

Is this becoming a blog about my kid? Are the only interesting things that happen to me lately kid-related? What has happened to me? Here's the other stuff that happened this week:

- My good friend J and I rented an XBOX 360 and Halo 3 on Saturday. You know, to see whether those video games the kids are always talking about were worth anything. Well, the game is good, and the system seems good, but $400 good? Has inflation really gone up that much? The most I ever spent on a video game system was on my DreamCast, and that was because it came with 2 games, 2 controllers, and it was the Sega Sports all-black edition. My XBOX cost less than $200. And I'm going to have to pay $350 just for a system with 1 controller for the 360? No. No.

- I went to a hibachi bar for the first time in my life on Friday. I was pleasantly surprised. The only really memorable things about the food were the sauces (an intense ginger/soy thing and a mild mustard sauce that was referred to as 'spicy') and a ginger-rice vinegar dressing on the salad. But the overall atmosphere was fun, and I like seeing my food cooked. As far as I could tell it was all pretty simple.

- Nothing makes sense in the NBA. The Boston Celtics played amazing on Sunday against the Magic, but lost because Hedo Turkoglu hit an amazing shot over near-perfect defense by Paul Pierce. And am I the only one who thinks Pierce looks thirty pounds heavier than he did three years ago. Is that muscle? Last year Ray Allen scored 30 ppg for the month of January and averaged 26 ppg, 4 apg, and 4.5 rpg. What happened to that guy? Meanwhile the GS Warriors (whom I loathe) aren't as awful as they ought to be, and the New Orleans Hornets are, without a doubt, the best team in the West. Nobody else is even really close. They demolished the Spurs on Saturday.

Maybe I just have less to say these days...

Well, I have been quietly waging my own personal war against social networking sites that look like bullshit pyramid schemes for the better part of the last ten years. What actions have I taken in the pursuit of this war? Ok, basically I just wished anyone who used Facebook, Myspace, and god forbid, YTMND, would become a miserable idiot.

In retrospect, this was a bad strategy. For one thing, these sites now boast something like a hundred trillion users all over the freaking world. Assuming my wish were granted, we'd have a world where total idiots get elected on a regular basis. And since we're winding down our second Bush administration, I guess I'm a freaking wish-maker.

The other reason this was a bad strategy is that it turns out I actually know a lot of people who are on Facebook and/or Myspace (I pretend I don't know the people on YTMND). At first I just made vomiting noises every time someone mentioned they had a Myspace or Facebook account, but eventually I realized that was just making me look like an idiot.

Even after realizing everyone I know is involved in this stuff in some way, I've generally snickered to myself every time I hear anything about these sites. After all, everything I've ever heard is bad. I mean, every damned MySpace page I've ever seen is a poorly designed wasteland that starts playing some stupid song without any prompting. And Facebook? Facebook stole their code from another company (and don't get me started on Secret Crush)!

So it was with a certain amount of glee that I read an article posted to reddit with the title: "Why I Will Not Be Using Facebook - Fierce yet detailed attack on the social networking site." However, upon reading the article, I realized a few things:

1. The author is an idiot.
2. I have no basis for my own dislike of this idea.
3. reddit titles kinda suck.

But basically, I realized I was falling into the same stupid trap that everyone falls into with music. You learn about something in a particular way, and you tend to start dismissing the new stuff without really thinking honestly about it. My internet life began before the web, when basically the interactions were through message forums and bulletin boards. Web-versions of those kind of interactions (i.e., IM, blogs, link aggregators, etc.) make sense and seem cool, while stuff like Facebook and MySpace just seem like more annoying versions of Geocities (and for those of you who don't remember Geocities, well, let's just say this is probably the coolest website for NBA 2k1 ever created!).

So anyway, if you're on facebook or myspace or orkut and I made little cough*idioti*cough sounds when you mentioned that: I'm sorry.

And no, this doesn't mean I'm going to create a facebook account.

Other stuff:

- I stayed at a hotel the other night that had a free-alcohol "happy hour". A FREE ALCOHOL HAPPY HOUR. And I worked through half of it!

- Speaking of that trip: You know what's worse than spending two and a half hours walking around in semi-freezing rain? Trying to explain to two skeptical consultants the difference between abundant and common in terms of leaf litter at the same time. I drove for an hour with the heater on full blast before I got warm. Why the hell didn't I try to get a job in Mexico?

- the NBA: Just off the top of my head everything we thought we knew about the western conference should be tossed out the window. Just forget it all. The three best teams right now are the Hornets, Blazers and Lakers (well, before Bynum got hurt). The Mavs and the Suns are apparently trying to pull a "spurs" by sucking early and getting great late. You know what they're missing? Tim Duncan. As for the East: Nobody in Miami should feel bad...they won a frickin' championship! You think I wouldn't trade a year or 3 of Dallas being miserable for a Dallas championship. And hell, Miami'll probably end up drafting Beasley, turning them right back into title contenders.

- If you like Carcassonne, you can play it online here (called Toulouse). And yes, we've probably played 60 games in the past three days.

Taking baby to get his shots

So sickness was an issue over New Years. And by that I mean: We
ended up in the ER twice in two days.

Yay.

Anyway, as a result, I got to take my son to his 4-month doctors
appointment. That is one of the ones that involves shots.

Here's how that visit went.

Son and dad are sitting in the patients room, waiting for the nurses
to come in and give son a reason to cry. As we're waiting, a girl
down the hall, probably 3 or 4, is getting her shots. She is unhappy.
She is screaming. She is screaming: "No no, don't hurt me! Don't
hurt me, no!" and then she got really really hysterical: "NO NO DON'T
HURT ME! NO!" This girl had a little sibling (less than a year old,
probably 4-6 months or so) who then started bawling.

Son looks at dad (whose starting to feel a little nervous about this
whole thing) and smiles :). Son doesn't know why we're in this funny
room, but hey, if dad's here, everything is ok. Right?

Well, about that time the door opens and a nurse enters. I'm starting
to worry that in about a minute my son is going to hate me.

So I propose a plan to the nurse:

"I'm going to leave the room while you do the shots, then, when you're
done, I'm going to _fight my way back in_ and 'rescue' my son...you
know, so that he thinks I would never let anything bad happen to him."

The nurse looked at me like I was the dumbest person on earth. Ok,
well, I guess that's not really funny, but still, you don't have to
act like such a prude.

Anyway, the other nurse comes in, and I end up having to hold Alton's
arms while they jab his legs. And Alton's just laying there looking
at me like "Hey, dad's holding my hands. Good times!"

And then the tears came. Good times...and by that I mean, dang...that sucked.

Alton was tough though. He shrugged off the shots pretty fast and was
fine for the whole drive home. That might have been helped by the
fact that dad couldn't find the damned car in the parking garage and
we walked around in the freezing cold for 15 minutes. I'm pretty sure
the cold numbed the pain from the shots.

Other things we learned from the doctor visit:

Alton is off the charts in terms of weight. Literally, I saw the
chart, which has a whited-out area designating the range of weights
for children at different ages. Alton is waay above the top of that
range. That's the same as he was last time, but on the plus side,
this time he was almost at the top of the chart for height as well
(>95 percentile). So he isn't just heavy, he's tall too. And he
doesn't appear to be as far off the chart as he used to be....although
maybe that's just me.

KU won a BCS game!!!!

I know there are unexpected stories a lot in college sports, so-called
Cindarella's, but KU winning 12 games and a BCS bowl game is the most
unexpected thing to happen in football since Boise State went
undefeated and didn't win it all. What? That happened last year? Oh
yeah.

Still, even if this is the peak for KU football for the next 40 years,
it was a good peak. What an amazing season!!

Exhaustion and getting back to work

Well, Christmas is over and back to work I go. Saving the world is a
job that allows no passive relaxation, but only brief pauses before
returning to the fight. And yes, I am going to work the "saving the
world" paradigm until it is completely dead.

Much like I feel, the first day back in the office.

I actually "went to work" yesterday, but that consisted of driving six
hours for an hour-long site assessment (yes, good habitat). In short,
I didn't have to get up early.

Today I did, and _man_ am I dragging.

On an unrelated note, I think Tegan and Sarah rock:

Christmas 2007

Well, we traveled west for Christmas this year, to the very edge of existence. A place where the internet is either absent entirely or runs slowly, a place where the coyotes outnumber the people. A place where darkness is really, truly dark. That's right, we went back to the scene of the crime (anyone else remember being trapped for 5 nights in a blizzard last year?).

This year there was no blizzard, which almost qualifies as evidence for a divine ruler. Fortunately, there was also a tiny revelation in the form of the Nintendo DS. Pretty damned awesome, and, for the record, I despise hand-held games. Still I did my part to try to save a certain princess from the forces of evil, even if said princess appeared to be dumber than a box of rocks (sure Zelda, just jump into the evil Ghost Ship...really). The fact that I failed had more to do with the fact that other people wanted to play the DS (those selfish jerks!) than any lack of skill on my part. Oh, and thanks to DC for bringing the games!

The baby got spoiled. And I mean it in a bad way. Today my son spent the entire day throwing a fit if he wasn't being held. I'm not sure the baby's butt hit the floor (bed, etc..) for more than half an hour when he was awake for the entire 5 days we were out there. Anytime he got mad, someone swept in and picked him up.

My philosophy: You gotta let the kid whine a little to even see if he's serious. Half the time he's just making noise to hear himself.

Anyway, we got blessedly few presents, and one of the ones we did get was an electric vibrating chair cover. Which pretty much means I'm going to have to hurt my back so that I can justify using the thing nightly for the next, oh, six months or so.

I also got Tequila...awesome.

And K, I see you got a Wii. I'm going to use that as justification for us getting one: "But dear wife, we can't fall behind K-man on the technology curve!"

What? I have a blog

Yeah, so I've been busy, and nobody reads my blog anyway, so I haven't
been updating like I should. Here's what's been happening:

1. Ice Storm 2007: I got a day off work last Tuesday, and took some
other hours off, because I couldn't get to work. Fortunately, a lot
of other people couldn't get to work either, so we got an 'inclement
weather' day. Yay! I stayed home and watched movies.

2. My wife's First Day back to work: Well, the office needed some
help getting some stuff done, so my wife is now working 1-2 days a
week putting stuff in envelopes and other random office stuff.
Yesterday was her first day, and my son's first day at Grandma
Day-Care. Apparently both he and my grandma survived and had fun, and
my wife enjoyed getting out of the house for awhile. Of course, we
had to get up before 6 o'clock, and didn't get back to the apartment
until around 8, but hey, it was still worth it. Of course, it was
nice for me because I didn't have to drive to work and back alone.

3. Where is the time going? Ok, haven't talked about the NBA that
much this year because I haven't cared that much. I'd like to say
that's because I'm still scarred from the 2006 Finals or because I'm
sick of having officials and the league office determine the champs,
but really, I just don't have the time. This is weird, because I
actually work a lot less now than I ever have before. So where is my
time going? Travel. I drive about 20 hours a week doesn't help. I'm
in the car all-the-time. Plus, the list of things I'd like to spend
more time on goes like this: Trying to get back to working out
regularly, Alton, cooking, Alton, hanging out with friends, Alton,
writing, Alton, reading and Alton. And plus I have all these
addictions (videogames, NBA, reddit, webcomics).
So I'm sure interesting stuff is happening in the NBA, but I've
only been able to watch about 10 games so far this season, and I've
totally lost track of my fantasy teams.

How I spent my weekend....

Aside from cooking a 4 (5?) course Breakfast for Dinner meal with my amazing friends on Saturday night, I pretty much spent my weekend doing awesome stuff (the food and company were awesome too, I just can't make biscuits and gravy!). Then I found this video, which is practically a documentary of my life:

Mondays have been sucking

The reality is that I have to deal with a lot of big egos in my job
(uh...other than mine). These are people who believe that whatever
they think, is the way it is. For some reason, I keep getting these
people contacting me on Mondays. This is the third Monday in a row
where I've had to deal with some jerk who doesn't know jack about
anything trying to tell me what I can or can't do. Today it wasn't so
bad, but I'm also tired and feeling uncreative.

Lack of creativity is usually not an issue in this job, because I keep
a stack of no-thinking, crap work around for when I'm not feeling up
to doing anything interesting (or when I run out of interesting
stuff).

Today I burned through my whole stack of stupid work. Now I'm faced
with a significant headache (caffiene related I assume), a complete
lack of desire to do any science, and not a lot else to do.

And I had to deal with ego maniacs.

Other stuff:
- We had a somewhat sick baby this weekend. He seemed to have a
cough, but some time in the steam-room helped. Unfortunately, now we
have a sick mom, and that totally sucks.

- I haven't watched a full NBA game in like two weeks. And apparently
the world still exists.

- Nothing else. I'm going to putting some pics up later tonight on
the work blog. Feel free to check it out.

This is just another reason why K-State sucks

Funny, I've never seen a KU basketball player piss himself on a basketball court. According the the interwebs, Bill Walker is from Ohio. I can't help but wonder if he's really from Boston.

For some reason, I'm using the word "Awesome" a lot lately

I sorta feel like I'm 15 again. I wish I could stop.

Anyway, I read the latest issue of JNABS and loved the Kominoski article. But I'm not going to repeat my thoughts on that, check them out here.

I spent another day doing nothing but driving and talking in a short meeting. I'm thinking that by the time I get home from work tomorrow, I'll have driven 19 hours this week. I'm fairly sure that's a light week for driving.

I drive some.

I made stir-fry tonight in a cast iron skillet. Holy moly, I forgot how much smoke a really good stir-fry produces. We had to open windows and turn on fans, and it still smells a little smokey in here, but damn that was some good stir-fry. I love, love, the way the oil moves on that cast iron skillet when it is smokin' hot. I use high-powered oil (safflower, smoke point over 400 degrees), but it smokes almost immediately, you've really got to get your meat in there fast. The chicken had such a perfect sear after 30 seconds in there.

Ok, I'm getting carried away, but it was delicious.

My wife made a mini-cherry cobbler (portion control, thank goodness). We ate like kings.

Awesome.

In other news:

- There is no other news!

Saving the world

Everybody chooses to view themselves through a particular lens. In
_every_ case, this is delusional: You don't know yourself.

Over the past year I've viewed myself through a variety of
perspectives. Being a parent has changed those perspectives some, but
not as much as I'd imagined.

In terms of work, I've begun to increasingly view my career as an
attempt to save the world, with all the environmentalist emphasis I
inherently contain. I've always felt that was a part of who I am, but
all my other ambitions were blasted out of me by long months working
in hell and the slow-dawning realization that my son is going to have
to live through some awful environmental disasters.

Some days though, some days I just don't want to save the world. Some
days I don't care if it all falls apart. This is somewhat
nihilistic....I'm not sure existence, ultimately, matters. This is
also somewhat pragmatic....I probably can't save the world, and I
could be making way more money if I didn't keep trying.

Mostly though, I sometimes don't want to save the world because the
world seems to be so consistently filled with the worst kind of
people. I'm not sure why, but apparently most people I've known in my
life (and virtually all of those in positions of authority) are
absolute jerks who value secrecy and power more than anything.

I guess this is just one of those days.

In Milwaukee, at SETAC

Someone has tickets to the Milwaukee Bucks game!

K always drives. He also parallel parks...really close to the curb.

The main ceremony was supposed to take place at 6 30....Central Time.
Oops.

Here I am, in Milwaukee. Looking up, at a mirror.
This was even a little weird in real life.

I'm in Milwaukee. Attending SETAC.

The Colts are on....

I drank a beer and three glasses of wine.

I ate some food.

I registered and got a neat bag of stuff.

I don't believe in organizations and their ability to cause change....but hey, this is kinda fun.

K and D are here. I'm way more drunk than them.

Boston Sucks.

Forever Young (I can't think of a good title)

Well, the weekend came and went, and here's what I learned:

- It is important to find that one word that makes your child happy.
For my son, the word is "Moo". He also likes Kangaroo and Orangutan.
And yes, I tried thousands of words to find those.

- The Next Iron Chef: I was rooting hard-core for Chris, but as soon
as he went for the melon thing, I knew he'd lose. The judges did not
really just based on the criteria the chefs were trying to achieve:
Ultimate American Food. Chris's dessert did that, but the judges
talked about it not being "Iron Chef worthy". Next week's battle
royale should be great! I'm rooting for Simon, but I suspect Besh
ends up winning.

Now, some background info on the Iron Chef competition that you may
not have known:

Casey's frog legs from episode 3? When the judge was like: "Why
didn't you salt your food?" Turns out that the food is stored on ice
and then re-heated between the finish of the cooking and the actual
judging. Well, when Casey got his food back from the photographers,
he found the frog legs were completely submersed in water! So all the
salt got washed off. Yet Casey didn't say anything....poor guy.

The kitchen during the first two episodes, when everyone was
sweating like crazy, was 132 degrees! The camera crews had turned off
the fans so that the noise didn't interfere with the cameras. As a
result one of the participants ended up going to the hospital to be
treated for dehydration (I can't figure out who).

I got most of this info from Michael Ruhlman's blog. (I think I
spelled that right). He's the writer-judge.

- Kansas beat Nebraska 76-39. And they should have tried to score
100, Nebraska totally deserved it.

-- Pumpkin and Avocado. The perfect combination? We'll see.

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.

How are you feeling?

I have a hard time describing my wife metaphorically these days. She
grabs sleep when she can, will go with any stopgap measure to slow
down Alton's crying, is up to her arms in dirty diapers, and takes
fifteen minutes to get ready before we go anywhere.

At the same time, she's singlehandedly making sure our health
insurance, car insurance, car payments, bills, housing, cooking, and
cleaning is all happening. Without her, we'd have been bankrupt
months ago, and I wouldn't be able to find clothes to wear every
morning.

Honestly I have no idea what other job requires this kind of
dedication and all-encompassing commitment. I mean, I am having a
really hard time getting my sleep schedule regular enough that I can
function like a human, but I'm hardly doing anything. My wife is even
managing _my_ sleep by taking the baby out of the room when he starts
to fuss so that I don't get woken up that often. I try to help out
at night, but I kinda hit a wall Sunday night and since then I've just
wanted to sleep for the last three days. I don't mean, "I wanted to
sleep for three days straight", I mean "Every single minute I've been
awake for the last three days, I wished I was asleep." But at least I
CAN get some real sleep.

I have no idea how my wife does it.

Right now, even after a really good night's sleep last night, I feel
exhausted. I also feel like work is getting a little overwhelming,
but that might just be because I'm getting flak from engineers who are
upset with "delays."

At any rate, I spent Tuesday getting yelled at by 4th and 5th graders
who really wanted to see the crayfish again. I swear kids, they are
everywhere, find your own when you go home!

I fought authority and authority got bent...

I always realize new things about myself. As I was driving home today, I thought about my frustration with so much of the world, and realized that a lot of it probably boils down to one thing: I really, really, hate being told what to do. I can't think of a single authority figure in my life (advisers, bosses, parents, teachers, etc.) who could tell me what to do without me getting irritated.

For instance, once I was sitting in a lab meeting and my adviser said that from now on, he wanted us to send him a short little summary of what we talked about in our one-on-one meetings. This makes a lot of sense, but it pissed me off for two reasons. One was a sort-of pride issue: why should I record our meetings when it was always the adviser who couldn't remember what we'd talked about last time (Answer: Because advisers always feel as if your time is less valuable than theirs.). But that's just pride talking, the real reason it irritated me was because, damnit don't tell me what to f***ing do! (I didn't say this made a lot of sense)

This has been a ubiquitous feature of my life. I simply can't work at many jobs, because I simply can't handle being told what to do all the time. In high school I didn't turn in my homework. Sure, I was lazy, but I was also annoyed that someone thought I needed to do homework. If I needed to do homework, I'd do it, thank you very much. Otherwise bugger off.

As I continued to think about this I realized something else: I implicitly value the opinion of my peers. I'm willing to call up and ask a friend for advice about any subject, and I really really value that advice.

My last job (Oklahoma) started off great because nobody was telling me what to do. I just did the research I wanted, and didn't pay any attention to anyone else. But then I started getting told what to do...all the time. And then I started realizing the guy telling me what to do was a crazy jerk.

My job now is pretty fantastic because nobody is really telling me what to do specifically. Certainly there's a lot of oversight in theory, but in practice I'm just doing whatever I want. I feel as if I am extremely productive this way as well. I think I'm doing a great job. Even when the boss needs to tell me what to do, he goes about it by saying something like "I think we ought to have a meeting with everyone in the group so that we're all on the same page." And then the meeting is more like a discussion.

Other thoughts:

- Alton is so cute.

- Basic Instructions for life. Hilarious.

- I'm listening to the Manchurian Candidate on my drive to work. Boring. But still better than radio.

My Thursday-Friday

What have I been up to?

- On Friday I took a drive down to a site where they supposedly piled several tons of rock along 500 feet of the Kansas River.  I say 'supposedly' because I couldn't find the site.  Or at least, I couldn't find 500 feet of rock.  I drove to this site by taking a street called Lakeview (there was no lake) and then turned onto the 'Scenic River Drive' (the river was visible once, through some trees).  We had a cold snap hit the night before, so it was about 65 degrees, and this turned out to be some of the most beautiful farmland I have ever seen.  I ended up taking a ton of pictures.  

-  Ever since I spent two years driving around obscure forest service roads in Wisconsin and the UP of Michigan, I've had an intrinsic faith in Gazetteers.  I mean, some of those roads were more like horse-trails!  Well, that faith is pretty much gone after three straight weeks of getting lost and/or confused in Kansas.  I don't know if this is happening because I'm going to places that are just being built (and so the maps aren't new enough) or if I just got lucky up in the UP.  Who knows.  All I know is that I've started using Google Maps, the Gazetteer, AND ArcGIS in combination.  Usually I get where I want to go.

-  I don't know if everyone is aware of it or not, but the music being played on the radio sucks.  Really awful.  I'm not sure what can be done about it, but this is the strongest argument ever made for XM radio.

-  Finally:  Elton John versus Billy Joel.  I know the sexy, conventional, obvious choice is Elton John, but aside from Tiny Dancer, Elton John sucks.  My mom and dad and mother-in-law actually suggested that Elton John was a more talented piano player.  Hello!  Billy Joel is the Piano Man!  I consulted with my musically brilliant uncle, and he totally agrees with me:  Billy Joel is better than Elton John.  That's just a fact.  That's science.  From now on these are the kind of conversations I'm going to have on this issue:

Someone:  Elton John is so awesome!
Me:  (The sound of someone laughing while drinking milk...or, if appropriate, making a snickering sound.  I may even 'snort)
Someone (in disbelief):  You don't like Elton John?
Me:  Elton John is a less enduring, less reserved, less talented, and infinitely more annoying version of Billy Joel. 
Someone:  But Elton John is so talented.
Me:  Did you not read my blog-post on this subject?  I think my logic was pretty flawless.
Someone:  But Elton John...
Me:  I can't talk to you about this if you're just going to ignore logic.

Potential

Back in April, when the idea of having a child was still relatively
new and terrifying, I spoke with a member of the Oklahoma Wildlife
Commission. I was speaking with him about Golden Algae, but we talked
about having a kid. I can't remember this guy's name, and I can
barely remember most of what we talked about, but I can definitely
remember him saying:

"You have to live for your kid. You really do, or else you're not a
good parent."

This made me realize something about myself and about potential.
Throughout my life I have always been referring to as having "great
potential." I always assumed this was a backhanded compliment, since
the previous statement inevitably was followed by a "but..." "But he
doesn't do his homework." "But he doesn't listen to authority
figures." "But he's got awful handwriting."

My 'potential' was always something intangible that could be realized
in the future. I assume most of these people were referring to my
future ability to be successful at something. I've always wondered if
I have 'realized' my potential. I've always sort of assumed that I've
failed...miserably.

But the statement the Oklahoman made about living for your kid made me
realize that my parents really DID live for me. I can't ever remember
a time from the time I was aware until the time that I turned 21 when
my parents weren't intensely interested in being involved in whatever
aspect of my life I allowed them to be involved in (too tired to not
end with a preposition!). My parents listened to me cry about the
injustice of a non-fisherman owning the besting fishing shore on the
lake, read me books aloud so that I could act them out, and hate
everything about high school. My parents never once acted as if my
life (or my sister's life) was inconveniencing their life. They lived
for me.

Why? Well, because more than any other activity, raising children is
considered a noble, worthwhile endeavor. The State of Kansas has
special language in the policy manual to address the special emphasis
parents must place on raising their children, and the flexibility that
must exist to accommodate those parents. Other organizations are the
same way. You may, personally, be a total failure at everything else
you do in life, but if you are a good parent, then all is redeemed.

And this comes back around to potential. If you are raising a child,
and if you are living for your child, the spectre of unrealized
potential has been washed away from you. You are no longer
underachieving. You are exonerated from the pressure to reach your
potential that you might previously have had. If your career goes on
a 20 year hiatus while you become a stay-at-home mom/dad, then nobody
is going to think "You are an abject failure." Or at least, the
people who will think that are assholes, and who cares what they
think. At this point, in my life, if I fail to realize the rest of my
potential, it will not be because I failed, it will be because I quit
living for me, and started living for my son.

I spend a lot of time thinking about this idea. The idea that I no
longer toil under the burden of unrealized 'potential', but have
instead passed that burden of expectation to my son. Even if Alton
gets screwed up, so long as I live for him, I've done all I can.
Oddly enough, I feel this is something of an unfair burden to place on
my child, or any child, but I can't seem to figure out any way around
it. I'm going to do everything I can to help him become whatever he
wants to become, and until he can shuffle the burden off to his own
child, he's always going to live with the knowledge that I've done
everything I can.

Life is funny.

The Arrival

My son was born on September 3rd, 2007 at 6 26 pm. He is named Alton.

My wife started having serious contractions at 1 15 am on the 3rd. At least, that's when she told me. I was in the middle of a round of furious on-line gaming at the Kongregate website. By the time we had convinced ourselves that, yes, these were real contractions, it was 2 30-ish. We got into a room at the hospital at 3 00 am.

As it turns out, having a baby on a minor holiday is probably a good thing. The delivery ward we were in was usually packed, because there are numerous planned inductions scheduled. But on Labor Day nobody wants to schedule an induction. We had an induction scheduled for the 7th ourselves. If we had come in the previous Monday, we would have had to go through a good chunk of the early part of the labor (the contractions) in a 'non-delivery' room (although, because of crowding, they often do deliveries in those rooms anyway).

Instead, there were just 6-8 deliveries occurring during the time we were there. I think this means we ended up with a little more time from nurses.

The process itself was traumatizing, exhausting, vaguely humiliating, astoundingly painful, and heart-wrenching. And that's just my part. When Alton finally arrived I very nearly just fell on the floor and started crying.

My wife, and any other woman who has gone through that, well...my god. I had an idea, but watching it on TV or reading about it or whatever is nothing compared to what it actually is.

Last year I started getting really sick due to an early-onset ulcer. That can be pretty painful stuff. One night I felt like I had drunk a bottle of phosphoric acid, then I started throwing up, and I just felt burning all up and down my esophagus, down into my intestine, and especially in my stomach. I was in agony, and it continued for 6-7 hours before I gave in and went to the ER to try and get something to alleviate the pain. It took a couple of days for me to recover, and a couple of more days before I would eat anything.

I'm pretty sure that's comparable to what my wife went through during the first 6 or so hours. That was the easiest part of the entire delivery process. At the end my wife was screaming, and everyone in the room (which by this point was about 12 people) were telling her to keep pushing and that she was doing a wonderful job. I think she ignored all of them, but I kept repeating everything they said, and, in her words "You had to be my brain."

Alton turned out to be 7 lbs and 14 oz, and 19.5 inches tall (long). This is the same length as my wife and I were at birth, but he's actually a lot lighter than both of us. Which meant that my wife's mom could say he was "really little." That's crazy. That's crazy. There's no way I believe that the human race will continue to propagate.

I know I won't continue to propagate.

Anyway, Alton arrived a brilliant shade of purple, but it turns out that isn't too uncommon, and so after a few good screams (he's got good lungs) he was pink...and loud.
---
Ok, I had to go hold him for the last 2 hours, which turned out to be really easy, because he just slept. Now that I'm back I've completely lost my train of thought, so I'll continue this later..

Its happening right NOW!

Live blogging Alton's birth!

Oh thank goodness

Apparently our fears about the spread of non-indigenous species have
finally been resolved:

--
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is implementing the Captive
Wildlife Safety Act (CWSA) in a new subpart K of part 14, Importation,
Exportation, and Transportation of Wildlife, in Title 50 of the Code
of Federal Regulations. The CWSA amends the Lacey Act by making it
illegal to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or
purchase, in interstate or foreign commerce, live lions, tigers,
leopards, snow leopards, clouded leopards, cheetahs, jaguars, or
cougars, or any hybrid combination of any of these species, unless
certain exceptions are met. 72 FR 45938 (August 16, 2007).
--

That's right...no more interstate trade in snow leopards. Finally our
long national nightmare is over.

Bugs Bugs EVERYWHERE!!!

So I left a bragging, boastful, annoying voice message from my friend
K today. Basically, I can sum it up like this:

"Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I get to go look for snakes
today. I hope you enjoy hanging out in the office!"
*click*

I'll be completely honest here though: My day was kinda brutal. It
was 103 degrees out, I was down in an old streambed most of the way
(read: no wind), and I've found 8 ticks on myself since I crawled out
of that streambed. I also came a lot closer than I'd like to getting
heat-exhausted, and I think I STOPPED sweating. I could barely stand
up long enough to order food and get it in the KFC I stopped by
afterwards, and I felt so much better afterwards that I could barely
believe it.

So going out and looking for snakes (and snake habitat) is fun, but it
is also kinda brutal.

Other stuff:

- We broke the lease on the flea house. And now I have to stop
talking about it or I'll get extremely angry. Seriously.

- I watched a show on Food Network last night where they rated the
best restaurants/food in the country (some magazine sponsored, but
hosted by AB). They had a category for ribs.
The winner was a restaurant in Illinois.
And the credibility of the magazine goes out the window.

- We're going to look for houses again this week. For the record, I
hate the world. On the other hand, we're going to buy a house, it is
going to be great, and we're going to convert the entire yard to
natives. I'm done playing around.

- Did I mention we bought a car?

Inside Jokes

Life is all about collecting "inside jokes" that you can refer to with specific friends.

For example, a fairly obvious one is the predilection a certain friend of mine has for ketamine.

Also, a few people might catch this reference: The oceans are salty (HI-larious).

Anyway, I just wanted to mention that we bought a car. Honda Civic LX. I'm having a hard time realizing it is STILL in the garage and it isn't just a rental.

Meeting

A room full of white guys and 3 women are making decisions about how
our wetlands and streams will be preserved.

Button up shirts, slacks, collars, close-cut hair, trimmed beards.

"We should just pass a wetlands law."

There's a lot of people just trying to figure out who is in charge of what.

"Let's organize a meeting to figure out what a wetland is."

I am through the looking glass.

Oh...really...

Here's a new experience some of you might not have had yet.

Naming a beneficiary for your life insurance policy.

I imagine anyone with kids has done this. I imagine most people
without kids haven't.

I haven't. Or rather, I hadn't until now.

I don't actually have a child yet, of course, but I will within weeks,
and if I am smote down while fighting the real-world equivalent of
Lord Voldemort, I'd hope that my lightning-scarred child wouldn't need
to beg hand-me-downs from the equivalent of the Weasleys (bless their
souls).

Eventually this lead to wife and I talking about the terrible
possibility that we could BOTH be struck down whilst defying
Voldemort's real-world equivalent. Who would we want to raise our
child?

Certainly not my estranged sister who openly loathes me. Which is
good, because I don't have an estranged sister who openly loathes me.

I do think that, generally speaking, family is better than not-family
(mostly because holidays would be a mess!). And so we talked about
our siblings. We talked about our friends.

This was definitely the weirdest conversation I'd ever had.

I hope the real-world equivalent of Lord Voldemort remains, as he has
been to this point, to terrified of me to reveal himself.

Stupid rental

List of problems with the house

1. Back door will not close/lock.
2. Electrical outlets in kitchen are not safe.
3. Toilet sinking into floor of bathroom.
4. Abundant mold in bathroom.
5. Fleas abundant in all rooms of house.
6. Door to hell in 2nd bedroom.

Itchy...but painful looking

My leg looks bad. Real bad. Really really bad.

Ok, not quite that bad actually, but every time I show my leg to people they gasp.

I've got a case of poison ivy.

I'm shocked. I thought I was immune. I've had poison ivy once before in my life, and it was bad, but I thought it was because I'd been exposed to poison sumac (which is rarer, but apparently worse). I've gotten poison ivy on myself so often since then, without any ill effects, that I just assumed I was not really at risk.

So this comes as a surprise.

Last night, in my sister's living room while watching Harry Potter 3 on DVD, I gave in. I started scratching...like crazy. It felt good. Really good. But by the time I had gotten control of myself again I was bleeding all over the place. I haven't scratched today, but I can feel it building up.

Other news:

- I know I'm a weirdo, but I love the heat. This 105 degree heat wave that has been baking Kansas has been great. I do find it a little awkward, because I sweat like nobody's business, but I love being out in the heat. I love feeling that righteous exhaustion at the end of the day that comes from having tramped through 30 thousand feet of stream, underbrush, rocks and prairie in a hundred degrees of heat. The fact that I get to see snakes, turtles, fish, 80 foot tall trees, and limestone caves is great, but it is best on a miserably hot summer day. I look forward to enjoying it in the fall, though, and in the early spring, but damn. I love the heat of the summer.

- Actually, I was going to write more, but I gotta go put on some anti-itch medicine.

Wow.

Let's see, I can't stop reading Harry Potter, I have the entire collection of Alton Brown DVDs, I'll probably own a Honda Civic in a week, and yet...

and yet I find myself totally in awe of Amy Winehouse.

Seriously. This girl is old-school. I think Kieth Richard's is looking at that and thinking: She needs to get some help.

The girl was mixing heroin and HORSE TRANQUILIZERS. I weigh twice what she does and I get a little woozy after 2 beers.

From the Western Plains

The list of ways in which my new job is an improvement over my old job
is substantial:

1. Don't have to work with a jackass (at least, none have revealed
themselves yet).
2. Get to go out in the field and look for snakes, fish, learn to
identify trees, etc.
3. My workplace doesn't smell like noxious chemicals (in Texoma the
air quality within the research building was awful).
4. I'm getting to learn about Gray Bats. Really? Gray bats?
5. Although my office doesn't have a window, it does have a really
comfortable chair, two huge computer monitors, my own phone-line, and
all the storage space I could possibly use.
6. Free hats! Free waders! Free wading shoes! Free cell phone!
Free books! I got a "Mussels of Kansas" book the other day!
7. I'm getting to learn something totally new.
8. I get to make decisions about how people can build things, what
they need to do to prevent environmental damage, and how to best
protect the environment.
9. The Army COE, the EPA, the FWS...all these guys are listening to
me when they make decisions about how to regulate streams and
wetlands. Not just me, but definitely me.
10. Did I mention I get paid better, with better benefits, and they
will pay for me to go to meetings, and they have a per-diem?

So yeah, this new job is working out ok.

Can I publish via email?

Well? Can I?

Birthday

(SPECIAL REPORT: We interrupt this mediocre blog post to bring you
this update. I have lost my phone. And by lost, I mean I
accidentally washed it. With my pants. On 'heavy duty' setting.
Yes.
SO, if you are one of those people who I've called on a cell phone,
and I'm unlikely to remember your number because I met you in graduate
school or you moved sometime in the last 3 years or you birthday was
after 1975...SEND ME YOUR NUMBER. I totally forgot it.)

Well, I'm officially 29 years old now. I'd be a lot more terrified of
that if I was still 25, if that makes any sense, but as it is, I'm
just exhausted about the world.

The job is going well, but the 3 hour a day drive is really killing my
non-work productivity. Well, that, and the fact that I had to read
the entire Harry Potter series. Thank god that's over, or else I
might have destroyed all the personal relationships in my life.

Apparently...wait...

As I was writing this (in the middle of the day cuz I'm done with
almost all my work), I was handed a copy of Unionid Mussels of Kansas.
This is the coolest thing anyone has given me in at least 4 hours.
The last two days HAVE been kind of a "Getting cool stuff" festival,
however. Yesterday my loving wife purchased me the entire 27 disc
collection of available Alton Brown episodes, then my parents got me a
new knife set (drool) and Alton Brown's award-winning book "I'm just
here for the food." Then when I got to work this morning I got a
state-issued credit-card to buy gas.

I think the mussel guide (did I mention it is illustrated?) falls
above the credit card but below the cooking stuff.

We also moved into the house we're renting on Saturday. I'd be lying
if I said I was anything but dismayed by the place. It just makes me
mad, mostly at myself, but a little bit mad at the cruel fate that has
forced us into this situation. Screw you Fate!

The kitchen is pitifully small, with an ancient electric stove. The
fridge is small, there's no dishwasher. The bathroom is A) moldy and
B) unbelievably ugly. I shouldn't think about it. After we got all
our stuff in there it looked a lot nicer. The sheer fact that I do
not want to move again could mean that we stay there for awhile, but
this is definitely the ugliest, worst place we've ever lived.

Once we're in Pratt, or at least once I quit having to drive 3 hours a
day, I'll be more communicative.

Good morning Saturday

What I did this week:

1. Drove to Topeka and sat in on a committee that is deciding what to do about reservoirs and sediment and available water in KS for the next 50-70 years. And by "sat in" I mean "participated". I ended up meeting a ton of interesting people, but it was a long meeting.

2. Staying in Lawrence and got to see my...uh...niece. Wow, I just realized my sister's baby is my niece. That's weird, but I guess not really. Anyway, she's 3 weeks old but still very tiny.

3. Went to Kansas City and looked at Redbelly Snake habitat. Which consists of oak-hickory forest with steep gradients. In 105 degree heat. That was a hot, sweaty, exhausting experience, but a lot of fun.

4. Went to see a play starring a college friend.

5. Read Harry Potter 4.

6. That's probably enough.

I'm thinking it would be really cool to record notes and a review of each of the restaurants I visit while on this job (only visiting local stuff) and call it "Threatened and Endangered Food."
I think that'd be fun.

Today it is back to the birthing class. Yay. After last week I've been telling people that if I saw that video in November...well...I wouldn't be pregnant.

Post from Mid-week

I've been too busy to really update, however, I did write this entry earlier this week:

I sit in front of a double-screen computer imagining the
possibilities. The possibilities are actually pretty limited, when
push comes to shove:

1. Review a proposed project.
2. Review a proposed project.
3. Review a proposed project.
4. Review a proposed project.

So under that classification system this job is going to be pretty
boring. Let's try another:

Detention dams, road-crossings, beaches, housing developments,
effluent releases, or wastewater treatment plants.

There's some diversity there. I could also divide these up by biology:

Broadhead skink, pallid sturgeon, redbelly snake, sicklefin chub,
Arkansas darter, or, say, wetlands.

So I think this job will work out, but I'm a little worried I'll get bored.

What's been happening?

I almost forgot my password to this blog. Dang it has been awhile. Let's get right to it:

- First of all, my good friend K revealed himself to be 'openly hostile' by sending me a link to the game tower defense. I'm going to warn you that clicking on that link is like clicking on crack cocaine. I'm serious. I didn't look up from my computer screen for three days, and that was only because a catastrophic flood inundated the biological station, forcing the loss of internet, phones and septic systems (ew!).

- About that flooding: Lake Texoma, she is over her banks! I may not be teaching a class on Invasive species this summer after all, since the profs are supposed to arrive in 17 days and right now the road to the station is flooded over in 4 places, the phone and internet is out, the septic systems are backed up, and there's a pretty good chance one of the dorms is going to be flooded out momentarily. I'm conflicted about this. Overall it is a bad thing. The station needs the money from such a class, I need the money (and experience), and I've spent a ton of time and effort getting everything ready.
On the other hand, I am extremely busy and I would love to not leave my very pregnant wife for two weeks. I'm also not sure what exactly I'm going to do if the floodwaters are still high, as a big part of my plan revolved around surveying boaters...and all the boat ramps have been under water for the last month.

- Job stuff: Did anyone not get the memo about my new job? I'm officially leaving academia after about ~10 years of collegiate life. Regrets? Yeah, a few. On the whole I think I've had a good run at attending and working at colleges, but I wish this last had gone a lot better. The job I left was, without a doubt, one of the most depressing times I've had since I left high school. This, fortunately, was in sharp contrast to my wife's experience working at the same place (in a very different capacity), so there's been some weird feelings about leaving.
Basically, I felt as if I was living in a dark tunnel for the last 6 months and seriously debated seeking professional assistance while the wife was enjoying her job, her co-workers, and the great joy of not having to drive to work.
The new job is in state government. I really have no idea what to expect.

- Looking for a house stuff: So I'm living in my parent's basement. This is not good times. Don't get me wrong, the basement is wonderful. There's a lake out the back where I can go fishing, there's a cute dog that is extremely happy to see us, and there's a really, really big TV (talk about a culture shock after 8 months of no cable).
But we need to get our own place. The problem is there is literally nothing available to rent that is remotely affordable. There was a tornado and over a thousand people were displaced into the area we're moving. The rentor's in the area have apparently responded by raising the rent to astronomical levels. A 2 br, 1 ba, 800 square foot house costs $800 a month! The house is ugly, doesn't come with any appliances, and the kitchen is a piece of shit. $800 a month. And this is in a tiny little town in Kansas. We could buy the house with no money down, and pay less than 500 a month on the mortgage. Annoying.
We will probably end up buying something.

- Harry Potter: So as some of you know, I have not read the Harry Potter books, and I had only seen the first Harry Potter movie. I've been generally dismissive of the entire idea, believing it to be A) annoying and B) a cheap version of Lord of the Rings. However, anyone who continued listening past those initial reasons would have heard me also say that I suspected I would love the books and didn't want to get involved until they were all out.
Particularly tuned in readers may be recalling that the final book in the series hits bookstores this month.
I'm sure we can all see where this is going. On Sunday we watched all 4 of the movies available to rent, and today we saw the latest movie (Order of the Phoenix). I read the first book in 3 and a half hours on Monday, and the second over a slightly longer period on Tuesday. I've held off on buying another book today.
Let's sum this up: These movies are unprecedented. There has never been anything like a 5-part movie that remained cohesive. Unless you want to count TV shows (in which case Firefly looks beautiful), the movies alone are unique. I have no idea how this has happened, but I suspect it has to do with the writer having unprecedented control.
Secondly: The books are a little disappointing. The movie paints a rich tapestry that appears to be just barely explored. I anticipated this being like the Lord of the Rings. The Tolkien books contained an astounding amount of information, from which the movies could include maybe half (often much less). The first two Harry Potter movies contain 90% of what is in the books, to the point I was surprised when anything was even slightly different. My usual rule is Watch the movie before you read the book because books are almost always interesting even if the movie has given something away. In the case of Harry Potter, I'm not how the book became so popular without the movie. The book leaves a lot to the reader's imagination, which of course for me is now tainted by the movies. I can't imagine what I would have 'seen' if I had read the books without seeing the movies, but it wouldn't have been what the movies show. Basically, I'm astounded that this stuff became so important that they had to make movies about it.
In summation: The books are ok, but the movies are fantastic. And yes, I'll still be reading all the books.