Self-Titled

The SLO heat wave has thankfully faded away. I think it’s safe to remove my lemonade IV drip now. I don’t think I could have taken another day of 100+ degree heat. It’s terrible when it’s so hot you sweat without even moving. I envy Hawaiians, you can get away with walking around in your swim suit in public all day long without drawing strange looks. I’ve always favored hot weather over cold, but I guess it’s true that it’s easier to overcome cold than heat. Fans are the greatest invention ever. I tried our AC, but apparently it just blows regular air. It’s cool at night again now. I never thought I’d welcome the cold nights here. Unsurprisingly, the coldest place I could find in SLO was the grad lab. It was about a thirty-degree difference between the lab and outside. Talk about heaven!

My house mates got back into town today from a week-long camping trip. It sounded like fun; I wish I could go camping too. It’s been so long since I’ve done the real thing with the Boy Scouts. I miss swimming in a lake, building camp fires, and exploring the country side. Maybe one day soon.

Some people like to work on their computers with the lights off, and I can’t for the life of me understand why or come to like it.  You can’t very well see the keyboard, your desk, or anything really.  You have to squint into a bright light bulb for hours at a time, which I’ve heard isn’t good for your eyes, and it doesn’t seem to actually make the monitor easier to look at.  I’ve seen offices partitioned into “light” and “dark”, and it’s just silly.

If I ever get stuck working in a dark office, I’ll bring my own lighting and force anyone who wants to enter my office or cubicle to don the sunglasses and unfold the umbrella I will provide them to help shelter them from the unholy rays shining down upon them.  The least I can do is be sensitive to their condition.

I was in Seattle last night. I had planned to fly home to San Luis Obispo at 7:20 PM and ultimately arrive at around midnight. But the fates had other plans.

Katherine dropped me off at my hotel and I was already running late. I ran through the glass doors, up the stairs, and entered the elevator. The elevators there required guests to slide their room keys to operate them. Judging by the title of this post, can you guess if my key worked? So I ran to the counter and had them fix it, then returned to the elevator and rode up to the sixteenth floor. I packed hurriedly and shot back into the elevator and headed for the lobby. When I stepped out, I found a line had formed where there was none before, and it took what felt like forever to get up to the counter. Everything was supposed to be billed directly to Microsoft, but of course they hadn’t heard of any such thing and were ready to happily charge everything to my credit card. I didn’t have time to work it out, so I told them they were supposed to bill Microsoft, left my phone number at the counter, and bolted out the front doors again.

Katherine was still there and drove me to the airport. We arrived at 7 PM and I hustled to the check-in counter, only to be told that my flight had been delayed by two hours and everyone who had checked in early (like we were supposed to) had been put on an earlier flight so they could still make their connecting flights. I could still take the delayed flight at 9 PM to San Francisco, but there wouldn’t be a plane there to take me to SLO. Katherine called a travel agent to arrange for another flight out of SF to SLO, but there wasn’t a ticket available until Monday. We looked into renting a car at the SF airport, but a one-way rental would incur a $400 drop off fee, which I didn’t have on hand. I could either take the delayed flight, spend the night with some family in San Mateo near SF, rent a car there Sunday morning, and drive down to SLO, or take a 7:25 AM flight out of Seattle to Salt Lake City and ultimately arrive in SLO at noon on Sunday. I picked the early flight.

I almost died getting up in the morning, getting only four and a half hours of sleep. The flight out of Seattle was delayed by forty minutes, and my schedule had only allotted me thirty minutes to change planes in SLC. I had to run for five minutes through three terminals with two bags and arrived to find the door of my plane already closed. I was breathless and about ready to keel over from stress and sleep deprivation and breathlessness. The crew was gracious enough to open the door again just for me. I was the last one to get on, by which time everyone else was already seated and waiting. I think the stewardess had already given the safety speech. It was one of those small planes, where the overhead compartments are much smaller, so it took about a minute of crunching and squeezing before I could shut the overhead compartment door and sit down again.

But I made it. Kiss my ass, fates!

I threw my back out in class today. I sat down and felt something go. I’m writing this with only my left hand, so I’ll be brief. Ouch! How old am I? God. I can hardly move without sending a spasm of pain down my back.

Okay, I just slowly and painfully and switched into a crossed-legged sitting position that feels pretty good on my back, once I settled into it, so now I can type with two hands.

I had only ten minutes to catch the bus after my class ended and I barely made it. I couldn’t even stand up straight. The highest I could bend was about halfway. I tried to walk that way, but I gave up because it hurt too much and I figured I looked ridiculous. It was so embarrassing. I figured out that I could run pretty well bent forward like that, and it probably looked somewhat normal, so I used that to get most of the way to the bus stop near Mott Gym. I spent the rest of the evening crouching and hobbling around my living room and kitchen like a hunchback, using furniture and tables and banisters as crutches, and lying on the couch watching TV.

I’m hideous! Look away!

The Christmas card poem that didn’t make it:

Greetings Bill and Maria!
I had a great idea
To send you my love via
…
I’m writing this in a pizzeria
In a galleria in South Korea
I hope I don’t get diarrhea
In their bathroom I could get gonorrhea

My roommates and I tried to cancel our TV service last week. Dish Network told us they would charge us a cancellation fee because we were apparently signed up for an 18-month service plan. That didn’t make sense because we started the TV service when we had only six or seven months left on our lease. So apparently they felt they should sign us up on our behalf. How thoughtful.

While dealing with the cancellation fee, another shady act came to light. We started our TV service as a bundle with an existing AT&T phone service. A few months later, that bundle inexplicably “expired” and the two services were separated into individual bills. They conveniently failed to notify us that the elapsed time of our service plan reset to zero when the bundle expired. So after several months of paying for TV service, we had still officially only paid for zero of the 18 months of service. Makes sense from a money-grubbing-bastard point of view.

Maybe it’s just better to avoid package deals and pay month-to-month. They’re all crooks.

When I was young, I wished I could write all my Christmas thank you cards using mail merge and get away with it. Good manners, bah! I think if I did do it, the electronic or printed format would give me away. Maybe if I printed using a cursive font?

Happy New Year, everyone! I had a great night. Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera and snap a few shots of my friends and I. I guess one of these days I’ll remember. Maybe if I get a slimmer camera.

My watch was off by about half a minute from the cell phone network time again, just like last year. The people around me were counting down to my watch while everyone else was staring intently at their cell phone screens, waiting for the minutes to hit zero. So there were two ‘Happy New Year!’ cheers at the party. Aaaaakward. My watch is synced up to a local time reference, so screw network time.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to take dancing lessons. I’d like to learn ballroom, swing, and salsa dancing. I used to know three swing moves, but I realized last night that I had forgotten the coolest one of the three, so my dance moves are woefully inadequate for impressing the ladies. Learning more about wine would be really cool, too.

I bet it’s pretty hard to express your anger as a musician if you play the harp. I just don’t see it happening. Whatever you did, it seems like it would come out cheery and sweet. Bummer.

I just got my first care package in the mail in years from my grandma. Mmm…cookies! I forgot how nice it is to get this stuff. Incidently, I was drinking a beer at the time, so I decided to combine the two. Not bad.