stay in the shallow end

Last Sunday, an atrocity of unspeakable egregiousness was committed. Our team, Viva la New Mexico!, is the Charlottesville Rec League Kickball Champion. As a symbol of our triumph, we were awarded a trophy. Witness me enjoying the sweet taste of victory out of said trophy:

Some local DC’s decided to try to steal our glory for themselves. After stalking us to our celebratory banquet, they blended into the background unnoticed (as the ordinary always do) waiting for the one moment we turned our backs.

Then today, 9/11 (coincidence? I think not), our fearless captain received a communication from the perpetrators depicting our trophy in several compromising positions.

But are their legs any stronger? Their throws any further? Do they not know that the trophy itself is nothing? It is merely a symbol of our dominance. Have they not read Deathly Hallows? They have not defeated us, so they cannot lay claim to what is ours! The trophy is ours! It’s the wizard, not the wand! Viva la New Mexico!

Kate and I went down to Richmond to hit up Costco and Stony Point a few weeks ago. While were at Stony Point, we had P.F.Chang’s for lunch, and I ordered the Kung Pao Chicken. As usual, I asked the server to make it extra, extra, ridiculously super spicy. First of all, P.F.Chang’s has more people working there than any restaurant I’ve ever seen. I feel like we never saw the same person deliver food around us twice. In any case, when our food came out, the girl who brought it to our table looks at my dish, and says, “Absolutely do not eat one of those peppers. They are insanely hot. I know you’re brown and everything, but they are insanely hot.” She was brown as well, so by the unwritten rules of who’s allowed to stereotype, this comment was perfectly acceptable. Having been warned by a fellow brown person, I was a little apprehensive. I waited for her to get out of sight and slowly put a chili in my mouth. Boy was I disappointed. Hot, but nothing notable. I reversed my previous position and made a mental note that she was racist.

When we went to Costco, it was a Saturday afternoon, which is prime sample time. You could have two meals in Costco when they have all their samples out. One lady was offering three varieties of Tasty Bite, which makes pretty decent instant Indian food. As I approached the table, she held out a small cup of lentils and said, “Would you like to try some of your food?” She was perfectly friendly, and honestly, I don’t even think she realized she said it. It made my day.

I was looking through the Google searches that led people to my site, and it was mostly what I expected: my name, charlottesville restaurants, etc. Then I noticed this:

So today had been pretty much one of the most craptastic days in awhile. We’ve been having all sorts of issues with Speedy for the last week, the worst symptom being that she is running around the house barking herself to sleep every night. We put the gate up over the bedroom door to keep her in the bedroom and hopefully accelerate the process of her getting bored and going to sleep. This moment is marked by her “sigh of capitulation”: the barking turns into whining, and the whining stop with a huge sigh and she plops down and goes to sleep. Unfortunately, last night, there was no sigh of capitulation, so we finally gave in and opened the gate. We are very easily manipulated late at night, and she knows it. We need to fix that.

Anyway, she runs around, barks a little bit, comes back into the bedroom, and goes to sleep at around 2:20 AM. Little did we know that she was on a march of destruction. She gnawed on some of lpk’s shoes and, but nothing too bad; she saved the real destruction for me.

I got a new man-purse yesterday for toting around gadgets and stuff, and I put my digicam, ipod, and gps into it. She decides to pull it down, get stuff out, and use them as chew toys. My digicam is salvageable, it only received some damage to the viewfinder, which I never use. My gps is completely destroyed, but luckily it’s within 90 days of purchase on my American Express, so they’ll refund the purchase price for me. Don’t leave home without it!

Anyway, I left for school feeling all crappy, and after a minute of walking, it starts raining. I get to the bus stop, and my bus which normally takes 5 minutes takes 20, while I’m standing in the rain. By the time I got to class 15 minutes late, I’m completely soaked. Class was actually awesome, so that was good. After class I realized I forgot my power adaptor and had to come back home for it. Then I had to go back to school for journal club, and I came home after that. At that point, I decided to write off the day, go to sleep, and hopefully wake up and salvage what was left of it.

And that brings me to the awesomest dream ever. This dream was a throwback to dreams I had as a little kid. I’d be chased by a mechanical Tyrannosaurus Rex across the school playground, and there would be do government agents or something behind it’s red glass eyes trying to decide how they were going to kill me. My dream today was updated a bit for modern times:

It started at an amusement park that was a cross between Jurassic Park and Busch Gardens (or at least the Busch Gardens I remember from nearly 15 years ago). The dinosaurs decide to attack, like dinosaurs are wont to do, and there’s total pandemonium. Everybody’s running around trying to save themselves, and we (I don’t recall exactly who “we” is), are using this parking garage type structure for shelter. Every now and then a pterodactyl pokes it’s face or claws in, or a Tyrannosaurus Rex chomps off a piece of the building. We have a bunch of near misses and watch a lot of people die when the US Military finally shows up. They parachute in these enormous robotic dinosaurs designed to attack the real dinosaurs and a battle begins. It’s reminiscent of the AT-AT battle scenes from Star Wars. All of a sudden, a gruff voice behind me yells for them to call off the robotic dinosaurs because they won’t work. That voice belongs to Jack Bauer.

And now you see why this is the awesomest dream ever. Jack Bauer starts yelling at the commanding officer that he needs to call of his robotic dinosaurs, because they will only make the situation worse. Of course, people in power never listen to Jack Bauer, so he goes off to resolve the situation himself. In what was obviously poor judgement on our part, we go with him: People that tag along with Jack Bauer always die. Unfortunately, my recollection of the dream gets spotty at this point. The last thing I can remember happening is that we’re on a bus being chased by a T-Rex (almost exactly like the chase scene from Jurassic Park, except with a bus). Some military is on board, and tried all sorts of weapons against the T-Rex with no effect. Finally Jack Bauer breaks a back window of the bus, takes aim, and brings the T-Rex down with one shot. Apparently Jack Bauer is an expert of dinosaur anatomy.

I woke up around this point completely refreshed and in much better spirits. Once again, Jack Bauer saves the day.

… that I don’t have my cell phone or my camera on me, a hen passes me on the sidewalk as I’m walking home on JPA. Yes, a hen. At first I was thinking, “Oh how cute, a hen.” Then after I passed it, I realized that it was just the scout, and soon an army of poultry will march on Charlottesville and destroy us all. Come to think of it, the hen did look kind of like Turkitron:

Turkitron: Enjoy those tacos now, for in a thousand years, they will be illegal…heh ha ha ha hah…I think we all know why.

Meatwad: We know why?

Turkitron: ANTI-TACO LEGISLATION! Disestablishmentarianism.

With all the news sites and blogs that I track and all the crazy stuff happening in the world, it’s rare that I come across something that catches me completely off guard. I did a full-on double-take when I read this, though:

Pirates armed with grenade launchers and machine guns tried to hijack a luxury cruise liner off the east African coast Saturday, but the ship outran them, officials said.

Read the full details of their escape at the Washington Post here.

I wonder if they had a parrot.

These two kids were in front of me in line at Lowes. You can’t tell so much by the picture, but they looked to be seventeen at most.

They bought a plastic funnel, about three feet of flexible clear plastic tubing, and some epoxy. It was so awesomely hilarious that I couldn’t stop laughing.

It’s amazing how chewable Bic Round Stic pens are. The pen shown here was brand new before my one hour class today.

Bic Round Stics were my weapon of choice in high school for non math related writing. They were cheap, which given my propensity for losing things, was the primary decision making factor. The chewability was just a bonus. I gnawed my way through many a pen, producing frankenpens far more grotesque than the one shown above. Usually I would gnaw the cap until there was nothing left but shredded plastic and then move on to the back of the pen. My insatiable urges for bic chewing led to two amusing incidents in high school.

The first was freshman year in World History. I had already worked my way through the cap and was chewing on the back of the pen. The pen tasted kind of funny, but I didn’t realize that the pen had exploded in my mouth for quite awhile. I gnawed, felt something on my lip, wiped it, and saw the ink on my hand. At that point, my mouth and teeth were black, I had smears on my lips and face, and the pen was dripping all over my desk. I had to interrupt the teacher’s lecture and explain why I had to go to the bathroom. On the plus side, I got to chew gum the rest of the day to help get rid of the ink.

I don’t remember when the second one happened, but it was the only time I’d thought that I had a serious pen chewing compulsion and that I should probably do something about it. If you look at the cap above, you’ll notice that the rim of the cap is tapered to an edge, a result of me grinding the end down between my teeth. Anyway, at end of one of my classes, I was packing up my stuff and putting my pen away by pushing it into the cap which I held between my front teeth. Well, I pushed too hard, it slipped between my teeth, and I ended up stabbing myself in the back of the throat with the aforementioned sharp edge of the pen cap. It was pretty painful, but I was far more concerned with the blood filling up my mouth and dripping down my throat. I was in the bathroom for a few minutes spitting the blood out and continued to do so throughout the day… not fun.

In hindsight, rather than purchasing pens to accommodate my bad habits, I should have purchased pens that would force me to adopt better habits. Perhaps I’ll do that now. I’ve always wanted a Fisher Space Pen.