Nebuchadnezzar's Fancy

I woke up at 1:30 in the afternoon today. Chalk that one up to working the night shift and feeling a little under the weather after my run in the cold cold air yesterday. So today was pretty much a slacker day from the start. I finally got out of the house late in the afternoon to check on a friend's apartment while he's out. I also went to the bookstore and got another book by Christopher Moore. He's one of my new favorite authors. Most of all, I needed to get a grill cover from Lowe's to protect my grill from the winter.

Being a slacker day, I didn't really feel like dressing up much. I threw on a pair of jeans, a collared shirt with the buttons undone, and an old baseball hat because I was having a bad hair day. Yes, even with hair this short I can have bad hair. I didn't shave either. I looked like a cross between a country hick and a frat boy. Before I left I looked in the mirror and said to myself "Wow I really look like a douchebag!"

I walked into Lowe's, trying to just get in and out real quickly before I ran into anyone I know. It isn't good for a young officer to be looking shabby in public, even if it is the weekend. Something was amiss though. I realized that a lot of the young ladies in the store were giving me significant looks. A chick with her friends gave me a double take. And the smiling cashier girl flirted her way through the transaction, finally looking me in the eyes and saying "You be sure to come back and see me real soon now!"

In my haste to get my shopping done, I had forgotten one of life's most important lessons: Chicks like douchebags.

Lesson learned ladies. Lesson learned.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/31/kansas.doctor.killed/index.html

I've been cruising the local Kansas City airwaves, and there are a lot of fundamentalist Christian radio stations that have been calling for this guy's death for weeks. Well congratulfuckinglations you bastards.

This is a re-post from my blogspot. I thought it was pretty funny and has some good links for you to enjoy!

Tonight I read a post in one of my favorite blogs, www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com, and it directed me to an article in the New York Times about gentrification in Harlem. As I was reading the article, I developed an urge to eat vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. Not even kidding. So I walked down the street to the gas station and got ice cream. On the way back, I made friends with a skinny little cat that lives in the parking lot landscaping. She meowed at me a bit, then got bored and went to lay down underneath a Jeep Cherokee.

I've been meaning to check out the World Names Profiler (http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames/Default.aspx) for a while now, and I finally got around to it tonight. The site's a giant index of phone book listings from around the world (mainly North America and Europe). You enter your last name into the system, and it spits out where around the world the highest concentrations of that name live. Unsurprisingly, the largest concentration of Garveys (proportionally speaking) is in Ireland, with Australia, the UK, the US, and New Zealand trailing far behind. The top Garvey cities are Belfast and Armagh. Curiously enough, the third most Garvey-populated city is Appleton, Wisconsin. Arlington, Virginia comes in fourth. If I get posted to the DC area, I may add to my brethren living there.

The movers have come and gone, I've had my last night at the bar with my friends, and the bags are packed and waiting to be loaded into my car in the morning. This shit just got real, son. In the morning, I am going to drive 820 miles to Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama.

Last night was my last night in Ann Arbor. I cleaned out the apartment and then hit the bar. I hung out with Ashley and we reminisced. Later I met up with the Arabic bunch (plus Greg, my roomie from freshman year.) That was great. We all took Alabama Slammer shots. I'm gonna miss those guys. But I'm already looking forward to sending them postcards...

My parents took me out to dinner tonight. Before we left, they gave me a card with $500 in it. I was really touched. I mean, they had to cover the cost of my sister's cat surgery, so I know that they've been spending money like crazy lately (the cat's fine, don't worry.) After dinner, I visited my surviving grandparents (they both live close to home.) They wished me luck, and grandpa shared some of his war stories.

A few minutes ago my dad popped his head into my room to suggest that I go to sleep, so I'm not tired on the drive down. He just came back to tell me that I should pretend that never happened, because I'm a fully independent adult now, and I don't need to listen to him. I would have gone with I'm a commissioned officer, but that'll work too. I still think it's good advice though, and I am definitely hitting the hay after I finish this.

So there are gonna be some fun things along my travel route. Mammoth Cave Nat'l Park, Fort Knox, Elizabethtown, Nashville, the Jack Daniels distillery, and Davy Crockett's birthplace. I don't actually have to be in Alabama until Tuesday night, so I could take a side trip or two on my way down ;)

I've been reading "The Steel Wave" by Jeff Shaara. It's about D-Day and its aftermath. Basically the gist of it is that Gen. Rommel was the greatest commander either side had during the war. That guy could lead. I figure it's good to be exposed to that before heading off to six weeks of advanced leadership training. Although I'm not sure if I'll do what Rommel did and hand out accordions as rewards to subordinates.

The next time I write something, I'll be down south!

Now if you'll excuse me, this driver needs his sleep.

Goodbye 1330 North University Court
So long ancient carpeting
Farewell shower that never drains properly
Ta ta oven that hasn't been cleaned since Bush Sr. was in office
Have a good one silverfish
See you in hell deathtrap parking lot that's only big enough for six cars, yet Prime in its greed insists on squeezing nine in, resulting in nicks and scratches on every car. I'll miss you most of all.
It's been swell lousy internet connection
It's been a pleasure outrageous monthly rent
Adieu cramped bedrooms with two people in them

Cause I'm moving on up
To the east side
To a deluxe apartment in the skkkkkyyyyy
Moving on up
To the east side
I finally got a piece of the pie!

I spent all day today running the garage sale. We didn't do too bad for a hot and rainy day--$70 in total. I now love minorities. Not that I didn't before you know, but damn. Little old Indian ladies and Hispanic families bought a ton of my stuff. Look out for those Indian women--they drive a hard bargain.

I had a few CDs by this Spanish singer named Christian Castro. He's pretty obscure, and I was almost certain that no would buy them. But this Mexican family came in, and the mother goes "omg! Christian!!!" or something like that en espanol. And I made a sale :) Overall, CDs have been selling well. So have computer games, clothes, and flashlights. The Indiana Jones movie and the Red Wings championship have paid off for me. I sold my Indiana Jones hat to a little boy who loved it, and I sold the Red Wings beer coozy that I got from the Miller Lite girls at Good Time Charley's. Yay.

So that's been my life for the last several days. Packing things, finding things to sell, working in the garage, etc. It'll be a relief when the sale ends tomorrow, and when the movers come on Tuesday.

I played with my sis's new kitten, Izzy, yesterday. She's real cute and friendly. The bad news is that she was spayed earlier this week, and the incision site is infected. It didn't seem that bad yesterday, but my sis says it's gotten worse today, and she's taking Izzy to the animal hospital. I've got my fingers crossed that she recovers.

You can see pics of Izzy (under her previous name of Stella) here:
http://search.petfinder.com/petnote/displaypet.cgi?petid=10918958

It's been such a busy week, and the time ahead is only going to get worse. I've been scrambling to 1) put my things together for the neighborhood garage sale this weekend, 2) get things moved into one part of the house for when the movers come on Tuesday to haul it down to Texas, and 3) get ready to leave for Alabama next week Sunday. And of course my friends and family all want to hang out with me too. It's really funny about my parents too--they keep pressuring me to get everything done as quickly as I can, then they turn around and complain that I'm not spending enough "time with the family."

I was expecting my parents to be a little sentimental about my room, and maybe keep my furniture and things I don't need for active duty in there. Like a guest room perhaps? But no, apparently my parents are hell-bent on turning it into a rec room. Which means that I have to get every last thing out of there by the time I leave. So that's a lot more stuff for the garage sale. Or more likely the trash can.

One of the more exciting things going on this week is the arrival of my sister's new cat! Susie's plan to live with our 16 year old cat, Molly, in her new apartment didn't pan out. We all said that it was a stupid idea to move a cat that old from her home of 14 years to a completely new place, but I guess that Susie had to see how freaked out Molly got to be convinced. So instead she's getting a very pretty shorthair mix from the rescue shelter. I'm going to help out with settling her in tomorrow :)

In between lugging boxes of junk around, I've started reading the book "Blood, Sweat, and Tea." It's based on a blog written by a London Ambulance Service driver about his experiences saving lives and dealing with the weirdest people on calls. It's touching, wacky, and insightful. I think it's rekindling my interest in medicine too. Maybe I'll volunteer to take the combat medicine course when I have the time...

That's it for now. I'm going to finish up some packing, then head back to Ann Arbor for my friend Katy's birthday.

In the meantime, to keep you occupied, check out this blog:
http://randomreality.blogware.com/

I ran the 5K today. I didn't do as well as I had expected. 25:50 and 236th place out of 1475 runners. It was kind of disappointing after running a practice 5K in the arb in less than 20 minutes. There is a world of difference between running in the flat wheat field in the arb and running up the hill on Maple Street. That, and I think the trail charts in the arb don't have accurately measured miles.

This was only the second time I've run competitively, and the first time doing the 5K. So I forgot to position myself towards the front of the line at the start of the race. I was dodging grandpas and women with strollers for the first half mile. That alone probably added a minute or two on to my time. The thing that kills me is that I was doing amazingly well for the first two miles. Despite fighting through the pack of slower runners, I was flying. I ran the first mile and a half at about a seven minute mile pace. I was even in first place for the First Presbyterian team for half the race.

Then the hill came. I hate hills. I cannot run uphill to save my life. And this hill was bad. It was so bad, the race director actually sent out an email the night before, apologizing for having to end the course on this hill. It was 1.3 miles of steep, continuous slope. I tried to charge up it, but I had to stop and walk four times. To be fair, about half of the runners walked at least part of the hill too. It just felt wrong though, to be walking any portion of a 5K. And a lot of runners passed me on the hill, including three of my teammates. Grrr.

I did get to annoy the crap out of this one girl though. She would pass me when I walked, then I'd pass her when I ran, then I'd get tired and walk, and she'd pass me again, etc. This kept up all the way to the finish line, where I am happy to say that I sprinted past her. I also sprinted past a guy who decided to slow down five feet away from the finish line to show off for a camera. He realized that I was bearing down on him, and tried to rush across before me, but I showed him the consequences of hamming it up lol. But yeah...the hill was bad. I wanted to swear out loud when I was running it, because it was costing me so much time and causing so much pain. But I couldn't, because I was wearing a shirt that said "Team First Pres" in big bold letters on it. So instead, every time I exhaled, I muttered "shit" "fuck" and "balls" very quietly. Kind of like The Little Engine That Could, only older and more jaded. I think that the initial shock of finishing so much slower than I was expecting is wearing off though. I might not have run a sub-20 minute race, but running my first competitive 5K ever in 25 minutes, especially with that godless hill, is still respectable. It's around 8:10/mile on average, which is good.

After the run, we all went to church. It was really funny to sit in church and take communion in my short shorts. Interesting side story--I keep meeting interesting girls at random places. Naturally, now that I have two weeks left in Michigan. Like I met a cute friend of a friend in Amer's last week. Today, I met this cute girl on the First Pres team. She told me that she's a senior. We didn't have the chance to talk much because the race started pretty quickly, but I thought we hit it off decently enough. We ended up going to church with the group. Imagine my surprise when the pastor called all of the members of the youth summer mission trip up, and she joins them. Apparently when she said that she was a senior, she meant in high school. Oops. AA Community High too...eww. Hippie.

The 5K is right around the corner. About 36 hours away. I've had two great runs recently though. On Wednesday, I just ran around the arb. I ran two sub-7 minute miles! Then today, I actually mapped out a 3.1 mile course, and ran it in 19:50. That was awesome! I was thinking that it would take me at least 24 minutes. But then again I've never actually timed myself that far. I'm a little nervous though. This is the first time I've actually competed on my own. I ran in the Air Force Marathon a few years ago, but I was part of a 4 man team. My name and time are going to be publicly posted...sigh.

I've been on kind of an environmental kick lately. Turning off lights, driving less, getting those reusable grocery bags that make me look like a woman, etc. I'm also considering getting a typewriter. They're cheaper than laptops, don't require electricity, and they just have a certain cache. Plus printers are my mortal enemy.

So one of the big events of every summer is when me and my sister decide what the official song of the season was. Previous winners:

2003: Hey Ya!
2004: Yeah!
2005: Hollaback Girl
2006: What a great year. So many songs. Tie between Promiscuous and Hips Don't Lie
2007: Umbrella (ella-ella ay-ay-ay)

What will be the song of summer 2008? Love in This Club? 4 Minutes?

I just checked out my google calendar, and I realized how little time I have left in Ann Arbor. I don't head down south for two and a half weeks, but I'm probably only going to be able to spend maybe a week in A2. Between the garage sale, doctor appointments, and the movers, I'm going to have to spend at least 7 days in Livonia. It's so easy to just fall into the summer mentality, and just think you have forever to hang out with your friends and do fun things. But the real world is lurking just around the corner...

Lots of excitement and stuff going on...

It's down to the last week of running before the Dexter-Ann Arbor run. I'm feeling good about it. I had some problems with shin splints early on during vacation. But I've got a good stretching regime down (wall pushups work miracles), I've got the new equipment that I need to support my legs and absorb shock, and I've got good motivation. I went for a run yesterday. The first 2/3rds or so was great. I ran really far really fast, and I felt great. But after I ran up the ridgeline in the Arb, then decided to run up the hill between the line and the Geddes exit, I wasn't feeling so hot. I was tired and felt kinda woozy. I also realized that I was sweating pretty badly on the hills, but had stopped sweating completely on the flat stretch afterwards. If you remember, it was hella hot and humid that afternoon too. So I figured that I was heat stressing a bit, and just slowly jogged my way back home. But the good thing is that I had really good progress, with no leg pain :)

I just talked to my rotc friend Karl, who arrived in Alabama for the same LT-training that I'm going to start in 3 weeks. Apparently we've been getting worked up and nervous about it for nothing. He IM'd me to let me know that he's on a three hour lunch break, and that his hotel room he's staying in on base has a fridge, microwave, dvd player, and cable tv. Just like field training. I need to make sure to bring my immunization records though--apparently some folks were missing theirs.

I was browsing my way through late-night cable a few nights ago, and I stumbled upon this call-in sex advice show on the Oh(!) network. It was hilarious. A nice old lady taking the weirdest calls from people. You should all watch it.

Some people watch Desperate Housewives or Tila Tequila as their guilty pleasure. I watch Cheaters. I don't why, but it's so horribly compelling. Maybe because everyone on it is such trailer trash, and it makes me feel better about myself and my relationships, lol. And Joey Greco is such a scumbag host. In the episode I watched before the call-in sex show, a white guy suspected that his black girlfriend was cheating on him. Which of course she was, with a young black guy. When the black guy was confronted, he did this hilarious "she's got a boyfriend? A WHITE boyfriend? Aww hell naw!" thing. Then he talked about how the brothers have to stick together and he actually pumped his fist in the air and shouted "solid." This was balanced out in the next case, where a white guy with swastikas all over his back and arms was cheating on his girlfriend. What trashy but amazing TV haha.

To finish this all off, here's a nice video of Joey Greco getting paintballed by yet another piece of white trash:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4J8eADCtmrk&feature=related

The thing is, even though I don't like the cheaters, you can't help but sympathize with them a little bit. I mean, what would you do if someone barged into your own home with a camera crew and started asking questions? I might shoot too.

So the big excitement this afternoon was a strong gas smell in the house. We all got out, the Glen Arbor fire department showed up, lots of fun. Most of the gas had dissipated by the time the gas company experts got here, but they developed two theories. Either the furnace was leaking gas through a pipe leading to the second floor, or (more likely) the water heater was releasing a lot of exhaust, which was rising through the vents in the door up to the roof. Anyway, it's all been taken care of. Although I think I'm going to get a pie or something from the bakery and take it to the fire department to thank them for their trouble. It's a volunteer department, and I felt kind of bad dragging them out in the middle of the day because of a gas smell.

Before that happened though, I wrote some letters and made a trip into town. It's so nice living on the edge of a small town. I can just take a relaxing 10 minute walk down the road to the post office, run a few errands, and then return to my fortress of solitude in the woods.

That's all the news for now. Tomorrow we're going on an orgy of wine tastings. Fun fun fun!

I went for a run yesterday, and I got some pretty significant pain in my lower right leg. This worried me, because I'd gotten the same pain a few runs earlier. I'm almost certain it's shin splints. So no running for a few days. I went into town today and got a new pair of shoes and some gel inserts. I'm also going to do these stretches that will help to strengthen my leg muscles. Hopefully this'll be out of the way by the Ann Arbor run on the 1st.

It was raining today, so we went to Traverse City to see a movie. We ended up seeing Narnia. It's strange how the movies that are supposedly "anti-Christian" like The Golden Compass make me feel stronger about my religious beliefs, but the good Christian movies that are endorsed by Focus on the Family leave me wondering. Narnia was entertaining, no doubt, but the thinly-veiled religious references kind of annoyed me. Particularly when Aslan (the lion who's basically an allegorical fill-in for God) didn't rush in to help the four English kiddos (including the alarmingly attractive Anna Popplewell) when Narnia was in trouble. The little girl character confronted him about that.

So it's an obvious question regarding why God allows suffering to happen. It's one of the hardest and most important questions in any monotheistic religion. Back in the day, it was simple--there were good god and bad gods (thank you Ralph Williams.) But how can an omnipotent and loving God allow suffering to occur?

CS Lewis's answer (through Aslan) was that "you can't expect the same thing to happen twice." Apparently he did step in and save the day in the first movie (I didn't see it). So the reason why he didn't this time...God's gotta be original. LAME. The other conclusion that you can draw is that the Narnia people suffered because the four kids didn't have faith in Aslan. OK, that's more believable. The First Commandment and all tells us to believe. But that still doesn't seem to match the notion of a God who has unconditional love for His creations. So...not agreeing with Lewis there. Otherwise a decent movie though.

Today the whole family went down to the southern end of the county. We had lunch at the Cherry Hut, which supposedly has the best cherry pies in the country. The food was pretty damn good! And, it turned out that our waitress is a junior at UofM! She's a political science major, and is even taking a course with Prof. Greene that I took last semester. What are the odds of that? In bumfuck, Northern Michigan, the waitress wearing the ridiculous (but still oddly appealing) German-milkmaid-ish white and red uniform is actually a fellow Wolverine, in the same field of study. I might add her as a facebook buddy. Maybe I can score some free pie that way.

Then we sort of drove lazily along M-22, checking out little towns and attractions. We stopped in Frankfurt, and went to Gwen Frostic's art studio. It's a nice little place, set back in the woods. I bought a couple of wood-block prints, to decorate my new place once I get settled in Texas. I wanted something to remind me of Michigan, so I got a forest scene with some pine trees and a pretty white birch, and another print of a white-tailed deer leaping through the brush. Then we went into the town itself. There was an outdoor sports shop, and I went in to look at the kayaks. Some of my friends from ROTC are talking about getting motorcycles. I'm more fond of kayaks myself. They're ever so much fun. Now the main problem is going to be how to find a carrier small enough to fit on top of my cobalt...

We stopped at a roadside stand selling fresh asparagus on the way back. It was one of the cool things you only see up north, where you just take as much as you want and then put money into a box on the honor system. That stuff was so good at dinner.

The plan for tomorrow--go up to the tip of the peninsula, and check out the lighthouse there. Then I'm probably going to do some trail running back at the dunes. And I suppose I should write letters to the kids at field training too.

Today was great. My sis was all psyched up about going to climb the dunes. We made it to the top of the dune climb, then her asthma started acting up and we had to go back down. Later in the day though, while my mom and sis were off shopping, I went back to the dunes on my own, and went all the way over the dunes and the trails to Lake Michigan. It was nice and sunny. A little bit chilly, but after trudging up my third or fourth hill, the cold wind started to feel nice. There was no one--seriously no one--on the beach. I had something like 5 miles of prime lakefront property all to myself. It was very relaxing, and a good workout too.

Whenever I'm doing physical things, I have a tendency to let my mind wander. I think about the strangest things. When I was about halfway through the dunes, I started to think about the discovery channel special that was on last night about the risk of an asteroid hitting the earth. I guess the dunes looked kind of post-apocalyptic or something. One thing that struck me was how scientists were saying that we would have about 10 years warning if an asteroid was going to hit us. Not just a few weeks, like in the movies. So a camera crew went out and asked people on the streets what they would do if they knew in advance that an asteroid was going to strike. There was the expected "I'd quit my job" or "I would travel all over the world too see everything before I died." There was also a group of giggling teenage boys who said that they would get in all of the sex they could manage. Maybe this is just me, but my response would be something along the lines of "I would use those ten years to build the sweetest underground shelter ever, and stock it with enough food and water to last for decades. Then I would pray that the asteroid hits the other side of the planet." I mean, if the asteroid strikes even remotely close, it's all over. But if it's outside of North America, having a nicely stocked bunker would probably be a good thing. And hey, after I have my sweet shelter, then I can focus on getting all the sex I can manage. Actually if I was still in the Air Force when the asteroid hit, I could try to transfer into a space and missiles post, and be in a nice sturdy shock-absorbing missile silo when things went down. But that's enough about asteroids. For now...

Tomorrow we're going to Gwen Frostic's studio. She was a lady who made these beautiful wood prints of things in the forest surrounding her house. I think I might get a print or two to decorate my AF dwellings. Bring a touch of Michigan with me. And later we're going to check out a place that claims to have the best cherry pies in the world. More updates to come!

Today I drove up north to Glen Arbor with my family. My little cobalt both held all of our crap and still got 29 mpg, so I am very proud of her. I love northern Michigan. There's always something surprising here. Like driving on some backwoods road to discover that you're all of a sudden in Mesick--the town where my rotc friend Kevan is from. Or turning into a driveway for a produce stand to discover that the road is completely blocked by a dead deer. The random oil rigs on the drive up (BTW, apparently oil was found underneath the costco in Livonia?), the bald eagles just sitting in a farmer's field, getting messed up directions from my garmin satnav that took me right by Traverse City West high school (where another rotc friend, Ariel, went to school).

We rented a cottage for the week. It's pretty sweet. The drive up makes it seem like it's in the middle of nowhere, but once you go over a hill--BAMN! you're actually on Lake Michigan. It's so nice and peaceful. Even as I'm writing this, there is a deer grazing on the grass not even eight feet from the window. I'm planning on doing some cool and intense activities like running (yes running) the dunes, kayaking the Crystal River, and running along the lakeshore. And I'm going to switch that up with reading and lounging. Glorious lounging.

On a side note, we dropped by the Borders in Traverse City to pick up some reading material. While I was browsing through the cheap books, a barista from the cafe came up and flirted with me a bit. Or at least I thought she was. Perhaps I've brought this up before, but I have the hardest time figuring out when women are or are not interested in me. I thought she was being more than friendly though. I guess I'll never know. But I do seem to be doing pretty well with the barista crowd. Those of you who have known me for awhile know that I first met Ashley when she was a barista at Beaner's. And I've noticed that I've gotten attention from a few baristas since. So this means that I can officially expand the types of women who are interested in me: crazy girls, bisexuals, religious girls, and baristas. I like to imagine that I have a sort of nerdy but attractive look that plays well to the coffee-house crowd. (Kindly correct me if I'm wrong).

Anyway, that's that. I'll be keeping up my posts while I'm up here. For a little backwoods cottage, this place has a pretty solid internet connection.

I found this poem in the new yorker this week (my parents got a subscription, I guess so we can appear intellectual-like). It's kind of funny and speaks to me as a midwesterner:

A Primer

by Bob Hicok

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into clay a mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word “truth,”
can sincerely use the word “sincere.”
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we’re not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you’re from Michigan.
It’s like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there’s a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
“Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball”
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn’t ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. “What did we do?”
is the state motto. There’s a day in May
when we’re all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he’s from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.


I totally know that mosque, and I blurted out laughing when the "corn corn corn mosque" part came up. It's pretty accurate.

Ann Arbor is beautiful in the summer. Except for the fact that there are a lot of panhandlers and not a lot of students for them to target. So I get the full court press when I'm around town. I was hit up twice just walking from the Union to Amer's. The thing that really gets me? Several people walked by the panhandlers, and they didn't bother them. Yet 100% of the time, I get hit up. It's like I have a sign on me that says sucker. I'm not even dressed up--I'm wearing old jeans and a t-shirt. I haven't shaved in a week. I look like a bum, or at least a guy who doesn't have money. Do I have a generous face? Do I look like I suffer from liberal white guilt?

Anyway, working out's been fun. I had a really bad run on Monday, but I made up for it with a freaking 18 mile bike ride through Kensington and Island Lake. And then today I had a pretty decent run through the muddy arb. I've been motivating myself by thinking about how I'm not just representing myself at the 5K, but I'm also keepin it real for the Air Force and First Pres. It's good, because whenever I'm tempted to slow down or quit, I just think that there are people counting on me to not embarrass them, haha.

I'm going to miss Ann Arbor. But one thing I am not going to miss is the pretentious people who live here. In both the Union and Amer's, I somehow ended up sitting next to people who embody the pretentious liberal asshat stereotype. Both were belittling middle America. One was putting down the midwest. At least he wasn't a New Yorker complaining about how hard it is to find a good bagel here, because then I would be obliged to shoot him.

I'm going up north to Glen Arbor this weekend for a family vacation. That'll be nice. Reading, relaxing, running the dunes...fun times. And my first real road trip for my cobalt. It'll be a good practice run for the epic trip down south. Exactly one month left to go!!!

I've been back in Livonia for a couple of days this week. While I was running in the forest trails in Rotary Park, I had to pass a couple walking their dogs, including one ugly-ass pit bull. It was a narrow trail, so I had to pass close to them. As I was moving past them, the pit bull jumped up and started to claw my leg and try to bite me. And its owners just ignored it. What a bunch of jerks. Who takes a pit bull to a public park and doesn't keep on eye on it?

I ran 4 miles with the First Pres team today. It's a good little group. I'm the only student in it. There's a 30-something dentist, a couple of older but experienced marathon runners, and a French guy named Olivet. They're not too fast, but fast enough to push me decently enough.

Speaking of church, my parents are keeping up their search for a new church in Livonia. I guess they went to some Bible Church on the outskirts of the city last weekend. They said that the service was nice, but they didn't like the fact that everyone in the church leadership--the pastor, elders, deacons, etc--was appointed. The Presbyterian Church elects everyone, but I guess that's not that common of a practice.

I've been sorting through my stuff in my room, and there's a lot of crap to get rid of. So for the first time ever, my family's going to take part in the neighborhood garage sale! It'll be a nice middle-class suburbia experience for all involved. Plus a lot of Arabs who live in the area usually come to shop, so maybe I can haggle in Arabic.

In stranger news, my grandma has been pestering my mom for padded wonder bras for some reason. My 93 year old grandma. So my mom got some for her, and some new sweaters too. Naturally, me and my sis spent the rest of the day making snide comments about whether the sweaters would be big enough for grandma's new giant hooters. Hey, sometimes it's either laugh or cry.

So Derek went off and downloaded filesharing software onto his computer, getting us kicked off the internet for a day. Which is why I'm chilling at Amer's now, living large off coffee and free wifi.

When I left the apartment, the upstairs neighbors were being jerks. They've always liked to throw loud parties, but now that the weather's nice, they've started moving out onto their balcony. From which they throw crap. The morning after every party they throw, the ground is littered with beer and pop cans. It's a field day for the can-gathering hobos. I noticed that they've started tossing cigarette butts and sometimes even lit cigars off of there. Some of them land on the wood floor of our patio. If I get back to the apartment tonight and all of our stuff has been incinerated, I will lynch them.

One cool thing that I've started doing a lot is hanging out with some of my close friends and just reading. Even as I speak, two of my friends are on their way to Amer's. We just borrow each other's books or go over to borders to get new ones. And we pass the hours reading and talking. It's low key fun, and it's great! I had forgotten how nice reading for fun is. The strange thing is that I'm actually reading things that I would have covered in class--like Middle Eastern subjects and political stuff. Right now I'm reading "Orientalism" by Edward Said, which is basically a critique of the Oriental studies of old (imperial connections and such) and it is the foundation of modern liberal Middle Eastern Studies. It is one of the most important books written about the Middle East since the Koran. And yet we weren't required to read it as undergrads. Well at least I'm covering it now.

I walked in on Derek jacking off to anime the other day. I always suspected.

I also had a pretty bad spat with Sarah, which is remarkable considering that we're not seeing each other anymore. I think that's been mostly resolved though. Fights suck.

I also signed up for the First Presbyterian 5K team for the Dexter-Ann Arbor Run! I've never done it before, so it ought to be interesting. I'm also kind of worried about who my teammates will be--a bunch of intimidating pro runner types, or a bunch of AARP members? Hopefully it'll be somewhere in between.

That's pretty much it. I'm also going to Selfridge with Karl tomorrow for a bunch of stuff, and I'm going home this weekend for Mother's Day.

Have a dandy week!