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.