Questionable Quotations

From the past thirty-six hours:

My Environmental Conservation instructor on the element lead:
"...it's not radio active, so it's not giving off neurons."
My Ancient and Medieval Art professor on Alexander the Great:
"...he travels - [trailing off] How far does he travel? [long pause] Thousands of miles!"
One crazy guy to another crazy guy on the other side of State Street:
"Hey Gino! Where are my tendermeats? You know I cans tough."
The "small print" description on the plastic canister of Tang mix:
"NATURAL FLAVOR WITH OTHER NATURAL FLAVOR"

Where Is Bill O'Reilly When You Need Him?

For the past couple of weeks, I've been frustrated by the amount and volume of talking among student during two of my lectures. In my Ancient and Medieval Art class, the problem stems from two distinct groups of people: freshmen girls and middle-aged women who are auditing the course, I suspect in order to plan some sort of Eurasian vacation. The women tend to sit far forward if they can, so they're not close enough to hear usually. A group of four freshman girls, however has been sitting only twenty feet away from me, and they've been easily heard. In my Cryptography course the culprits are computer science students, who, like many computer science students, are pasty males with little skill at detecting inappropriate behavior on their part.

In past weeks I've talked to the guys in my math class about piping down, and I've shot the girls in the art history class some sharp looks, but without progress in both cases. On Monday I found the girls talking louder than ever. As a temporary fix to the problem that could be implemented immediately, I threw a ball of paper at the group, but in curved too much and landed in the empty seats in front of them, ultimately having no effect. As a more lasting solution, I went over and talked to them after class, getting myself scowls from two of the girls and gratitude from numerous students who had been equally bothered and less courageous. Sarah disapproved of my paper-throwing, and told me that I should have involved the professor, so I decided to take her advice in my math class. When I went to office hours that afternoon to ask a question, I mentioned that there had been much talking in his class, and he seemed genuinely surprised. Today, when things got bad enough that I couldn't hear him, I stood up and moved closer to the front. Professor Brualdi saw this, kindly waited for about fifteen minutes, and then reprimanded the students in the back. Hopefully things will be better in the coming weeks.

Back On Track

Life's been a bit hectic lately; I've had more than the usual number of assignments due this week, and recent trips to the library have left me with a stack of books half a meter high. Fortunately recovery from my cold seems all but complete now, and I've had the energy to tackle this week sans afternoon naps and even get back on the treadmill for a few minutes each night. (After three consecutive nights I'm caught up to where I was when I left off as the cold began.)

Slush, Stations, and Seats

We've received a fair bit of snow this morning. As best I can tell the sidewalks are still a bit above freezing, but the snow has come down so fast that it didn't melt completely, thus leaving us with a half-inch of slush. I walked through the stuff on my way to and from the Kohler Art Library in the Elvehjem. I'm gearing up for the paper that will determine the bulk of my grade in Post-Colonial Architecture. The topic I've chosen is railway stations. I'm currently planning an emphasis on Grand Central and Union Stations (in New York and Washington, respectively). I'm not sure what my thesis will be quite yet, but I'm thinking that it will have something to do with a change in design I expect to find that corresponds to the decrease of importance in Westward Expansion. I had fun this morning looking at some architectural journals from around 1910. I got a kick out of some of the advertisements. My favorite was for the Never Split Seat Company, an Evansville, Indiana manufacturer of toilet seats.

Since 1959

I popped over to say 'hi' to Nat this evening. Being the overly generous friend he always is, he didn't let me out the door until I had had a beer - Harp Lager - and icecream - Ben & Jerry's Fossil Fuel ("Sweet Cream Ice Cream with Chocolate Cookie Pieces, Fudge Dinosaurs and a Fudge Swirl"). We also started watching Welcome to the Dollhouse, but the slow, painful plot wasn't what I needed in my already drowsy state. I'll have to give the movie another shot sometime soon.

Intriguing Product

Every now and then I encounter a small business with a name so clever I suspect they've never consulted a lawyer. I thought New Country Buffet was a fun name for a little Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, but apparently the Old Country Buffet franchise didn't agree. (The small restaurant is now New King Buffet.) I think I may have found a company name that takes the cake in this category.

The seventh intriguing product is the stainless steel equipment of the Royce Rolls Ringer Co.

Of Bibliopegy And Bibliopolery

This semester has created than they usual amount of frustrations in the book-buying process.

First, my James Joyce course uses a specific version of Ulysses that is not the one that I purchased last spring. The version of Ulysses that Prof. Begam has assigned has some very clear advantages over other editions: It includes some five thousand errors; some are simply periods in places of commas, but other amendments include the reintroduction of sentences lost in the typesetting process. Comparing the two texts that I now own, I'm certain that the assigned edition is far superior as far as the text is concerned. As a book, however, "The Gabler Edition" is lacking. It's only available in paperback, and the quality of the binding is abysmal. I had to exchange my first copy after a single week's use. The book also has some major formatting issues that I think are intended to save space (and thus pages), but it's rather frustrating to have such a wonderful text presented in such an inglorious manner.

Second, Narciso assigned for Post-Colonial Architecture books from the middle of the twentieth-century, most of which are long out of print. One of the books was available at a reasonable price and in a very acceptable condition from an Amazon.com zShop. The book came a couple weeks ago, and I was slightly dismayed to find some highlighting inside, but I wasn't sufficiently frustrated to take action. Amazon.com, however, reminded me yesterday to rate my seller. I gave my_favorite_books 3 out of 5 and figured that that would be the end of it. Not so. I received the following email this morning while I was at class:

Concerning your order for the subject book, you posted the following
feedback:

"3 out of 5: Book arrived promptly, but it was in slightly poorer condition than advertised."

Our description of the book was "Firm tight binding, no spine creases. No highlighting or markings. Light shelf & handling wear. Prompt shipment. Satisfaction guaranteed."

We attempt to describe the condition of each book we list for sale as accurately as possible but we are not immune from errors or unintentional omissions. We state "satisfaction guaranteed" for all books that we sell. Your rating and comment indicates that you were not satisfied. Please accept our sincerest apology and advise us as to how the book should have been described and what action we can take to satisfy you.

Sincerely yours,

Mac Black
My Favorite Books
Lake Forest, California

After lunch I explained my discontent:

Dear Mr. Black,

The book I received, contrary to the description given, had extensive highlighting in the final chapters. I can easily imagine how someone thumbing through the pages may have searched the majority of the book but missed the critical pages; it is an understandable error. If you are sincere in your guarantee of satisfaction, I will gladly except a small refund. Perhaps the $3.49 I paid for shipping would be appropriate. I am grateful for and impressed by your concern regarding this matter. This courtesy will not be forgotten.

Sincerely,

James Lucas Hepokoski

I was credited $3.49 by the end of the business day. That's good service. I will be shopping with My Favorite Books again.

Troublemakers

One of the themes of my Environmental Conservation class that I'm hoping we'll investigate more is the rift between the academic elite and the working class that often occurs when the environment is concerned. Based on comments I hear in discussion, I think that many of the students have little grasp of how their proposed environmental policies will appear to those affected. Still, sometimes you just want to side with the academic elite outright. This is an extract from "Fear In The Fields" by Duff Wilson, originally published in the 3 July 1997 edition of the Seattle Times:

[Mayor] Patty Martin is not a popular politician in parts of Grant County these days.

Since she began raising the alarm about the use of toxic waste as fertilizer, she has been threatened with a lawsuit by a local farmer, been verbally attacked in town meetings and seen the City Council - led by a son-in-law of the local manager of the Cenex fertilizer company - pressure her to shut up or quit.

Many farmers in and around Quincy, a town of 4,030, say they're doing very well, thank you, with the fertilizer and the help and advice they've received from Cenex Supply and Marketing, which sells expertise, financing and farm supplies in the West and Midwest.

They call Martin a troublemaker and fear she's fomenting a scare akin to the Alar alarm that nearly ruined Washington's apple industry in 1989.

In that case, the CBS television show "60 Minutes" reported that a substance sprayed on Washington apples to preserve them in packing was dangerous to consumers. CBS later admitted it had made some mistakes in the story, and the Washington apple growers sued the network. But the suit was dismissed, and in the end, Alar was classified by EPA as a carcinogen and banned for all food uses.

"We had a woman starting that one, too, and a lot of people got hurt by it," Bill Weber, an apple and potato farmer, said at one council meeting, bringing nods and laughter.

I suspect that Mr. Weber is one of the many people who believe that women and apples have had troubled history (pretty much right from the start, I mean), but this kind of comment still gets me.

Highly Encrypted

My cryptography professor is an intelligent, kindly, and well-spoken man; perhaps his only failing as a professor of mathematics is that he is too easily convinced by confused students that he has made a mistake. The prime example came today during an example of the Cipher Feedback Mode (CFB) of the Block Cipher. This isn't really a great cipher (it's no longer considered secure), but it's good for the math class. We're doing fine until Prof. Brualdi tried to give us an example. He didn't have one in his notes, so he was working it out as he went. We didn't go more than two steps before a very vocal and moderately ignorate segment of the class had casued him to beleive he had made a mistake when he had not,and the confusiion compounded as we continued. (It didn't help that we were using only 1s and 0s, which become quite confusing because of the inherrent repetion.) After about 10 minutes of struggling with the numbers, Prof. Brualid figured out where the class lead him astray, and righted things. Finally he asked, "does this look right?" One guy in the back row replied, "I don't care anymore."

Almost Famous

This photo accompanied an column written by Sarah in today's edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, properly credited to one James Lucas Hepokoski.

True Love Is Forever

Here's an romantic story for Valentines Day:

Gay penguins won't go straight
Ananova

A German zoo's plans to tempt its gay penguins to go straight by importing more females has been declared a failure.

The female penguins were flown in especially from Sweden in an effort to encourage the Humboldt penguins at the Bremerhaven Zoo to reproduce.

But the six homosexual penguins showed no interest in their new female companions and remained faithful to each other.

Zoo Director Heike Kueck said: "The relationships were apparently too strong."

A keeper confirmed that the male couples had adopted rocks which they were guarding like eggs in their caves.

The zoo has said that it will try again in Spring 2006, because the penguins are an endangered species and need to be encouraged to breed.

I guess I should amend my statement: True love is forever or until your species goes extinct.

Stereotypes In Love

There seem to be a lot of young men with bouquets of flowers wandering about the streets of Madison today. I saw one tall and lanky fellow carrying long-stem roses. I saw one black guy in a Fubu jacket and flashy gold chains carrying three bouquets with three separate cards. I even saw one bookish kid looking rather embarrassed carrying a bouquet down Gilman Street while rehearsing his lines.

If Madison is any indication, retailers of plant reproductive organs seem to have done rather good business this week.

With Science!

My Enviromental Conservation class gave us homework this weekend; we need to bring in a news article on something related to the environment. No written summary or criticism is needed, just the article. While part of me thinks that this is just a step above bringing in a picture we drew of a representative of an endangered species, I have to acknowelege that the project has propted me to discover and explore a really cool website: LiveScience. There's enough here for me to bring in a couple articles; I have a suspicion that there will be a couple students who forget due to the simplicity of the assignment.

End Of A Long Day / Since 1858

All in all, its been a good day since the sun rose at 6:59. I mailed financial aid materials to Columbia University during shortly after the post office opened at 9:00. I then met up with Sarah, and we walked to College Library so that I could return the DVDs I watched last night. Before returning we stopped at Espresso Royal for mint hot chocolate, at the Community Pharmacy for some Tom's of Maine toothpaste (for me), and at a variety of places in a vain search for decorative feathers (for Sarah). This evening, while I was on an unncessary search for a misplaced sock, I got into the elevator with some 9th-floor guys carying four 24-packs of beer. About five minutes, when I was hanging out with Evan and Sarah a beer started to sound really good. I asked Evan if he had any beer, and Evan said he didn't, but that a beer did sound really good, and Sarah agreed. So I wandered down the hall and bargined with one of the kids from the elevator for two Brew City Lagers and a Brew City Ice. Evan was kind enough to buy, saying that my short expedition for the common cause earned me my can. The lager I tried probably was probably worth about the 67 cents Evan paid, but it sure hit the spot. (The City Brewery of La Crosse, Wisconsin was founded in 1858.)

Light

Nine hours and fourty-five minutes of daylight begins now.

Keats 2x

I just finished Marathon Man, and I enjoyed in quite a bit. Interestingly, I noticed that both films I watched this night alluded to Keats. The students in The Last Picture Show were discussing the poet, and one student criticized "The Nightingale." The reference in Marathon Man was much less obvious, and as far as I know (having never read any of Keats's work before tonight) it may have been accidental. One of the signs above the sidewalk of the street with all of the Jewish diamond vendors advertises KEATS COFFEE SHOP with no apostraphe. Once again, it probably is nothing, but it caught my attention nonetheless.

Waiting For The Sandman

I've been sick for the past couple days; it's not the flu (I had my shot), but its one of the harder-hitting colds I've had since starting college. I haven't been able to sleep, and I'm starting to think that I might not be able to do so tonight. I might watch the movie Marathon Man since misery does love company. I already watched The Last Picture Show earlier in the evening (yesterday, I guess). It was well made, and I'm glad I saw it. I probably could have done with something more cheerful given my current state, but I always take some satisfaction in being able to check-off another entry to Roger Ebert's ever-expanding list of Great Movies.

Of A Broken Heart

An ad in the local edition of The Onion:

Cure Your Valentime's Day Blues
[picture of a heart with much decoration (including a torch, ribbons, and a zipper) and at least four crossed-out girl's names]
10% OFF ALL COVER-UPS
at EXOTICA TATTOO
3769 East Washingon

I bet there are probably a decent number of people around here who will be tempted by such an offer. Having been a lifeguard for a number of years and having seen a lot of tattoos that might have looked good a decade ago, I don't think I will ever be in the position to take an advantage of discounted "cover-ups."

White

Sarah and I just returned from the film Nói albínói (which translates to Nói the Albino), an Icelandic film about a delinquent but brilliant young man in a nowhere-town somewhere on the coast of the island. The plot was relatively uneventful but never dragged, in part because of the use of short, to-the-point scenes not unlike those utilized in Napoleon Dynamite. Nói albínói isn't a happy movie, but it is a comic one; I laughed aloud on more than one occasion. At only 93 minutes, the investment in time is small compared to the entertainment and food-for-thought that the film delivers.

Thank Goodness They're Not Convenient

I'm looking at transportation to the Twin Cities for Spring Break. The Mad-Bus advertises that they offer "DIRECT CREDIT CARD PAYMENT - NO NEED TO HASSLE WITH TIMELY PAYPAL REGISTRATIONS." Maybe I should take Better Bus this time. We'll see.

The Classics

Professor Cahill teaches my course in ancient and medieval art. In the interest of getting us well versed in "the classics," he requested that we go see The General, a silent film starring Buster Keaton that was showing at the Overture Center this evening. A vague suggestion that there would be an extra credit question on the upcoming exam regarding the film was enough to convince me. Besides, a three dollars ticket for the film (accompanied by distinguished organist R. Jelani Eddington) plus a vaudeville-type show before hand was too good a deal to pass up. Apparently this evening was one in a series called Duck Soup Cinema (presumably named after the Marx Bros. film), but it's unfortunately the only one of the semester. I say unfortunately because I laughed 'til I cried during the film, and the variety hour before hand wasn't half bad. I took with me Highlander sixth-floor resident Sarah (with whom I attended the Badger football games) since I knew she liked the Marx Bros, and as I predicted, she enjoyed the evening as much as I did. Highlights included a woman going by name Olive with the (supposedly French) last name of d'Lique, a juggler named Truly Remarkable Loon, and just about everything Buster Keaton did.

Exchange

Since we only get two meals on Saturday and Sunday, I often try to squirrel away a couple of cookies on Friday so that I'll have something to fill the gaps in the day. Yesterday, I grabbed a couple chocolate chip cookies and a couple slices of white bread, the store-bought kind that's only one step above Wonder Bread. I stuck the whole stash in a Gladware container so that it wouldn't dry out. Returning to it after my evening run, I found that the bread had dried out anyway, but instead of losing the moisture to the air, it all transfered to the cookies on top of it. The bottom cookie was soggy to the point of falling apart, and the one above it was very much on the damp side. I know that cookies are rather dry things in general, but this discovery still makes me wonder about Wonder Bread. Do they bake it in a sauna or something?

(Mike, Sarah, Nat, and Claire are all away this weekend, so it's just me and the blog. I tried to stick to the common theme of deserts - ice cream, doughnuts, slushies, and cookies - to keep me from posting too often.)

Slushy

Today marked the first of Madison's two-day Kites on Ice festival. I took a short stroll out onto Lake Mendota to get a better look, but the unseasonably warm day made the surface of the lake more like an Icee than an ice cube. Last year's snow was preferable, but the people in boots seemed to be having a great time anyway. I returned after dark to see a short fireworks display ("nighttime fireworks" according to the man on a cell phone standing behind me).

Tonight I'm reading some of The Odyssey in preparation for Ulysses before I go for my brief run on the treadmill. It's strange to see a number of the characters and civilizations from my art history class appearing in this epic poem. It certainly blurs the line between the real world and fiction.

Hot Now

Krispy Kreme seems to garner intense feelings from people: Many people greatly enjoy their doughnuts; others strongly dislike the company for their extreme popularity. If forced into one of these two positions, I would be among the former. I like Krispy Kreme, and I like twenty-five or twenty-six of the thirty-or-so varieties they offer at a given time, so I was quite disappointed when my close encounter with KK doughnuts this morning didn't pan out.

Mike's mom and stepfather were passing near Madison on their way to Chicago, and Mike decided to hitch a ride with them, and his high school buddy Chris decided to tag along. When Mike's mom came up to drop some stuff of for Mike she handed me a half-box of Krispy Kremes which contained three chocolate iced kreme filled, one glazed chocolate cake, and one chocolate iced glazed. I like the latter two flavors, but not the first. But alas! Mike and Chris, who each grabbed a single doughnut on their way out seemed to have similar tastes. I ended up taking the remaining three doughnuts down to the front desk and telling the RA to give them away as she saw fit.

Does anyone really like 'kreme' and custard filled doughnuts? Would anyone miss them if Krispy Kreme mercifully took them out of the line-up?

Did I Catch You In Time?

Today is International Ice Cream For Breakfast Day!

Napoleon's cousin?

For a short while today, I thought I might be sitting with Napoleon Dynamite or maybe a close cousin of that infamous high school outcast. I went to the Honors Student Organization spring kickoff meeting (primarily for the free pizza but also to be the first to hear what sort of activities will be coming up). Nothing sounded outrageously cool except for the possible opportunity to get subsidized tickets to The Producers, but I'm hoping that the regularly occurring events such as the Chicago trip will happen even if they weren't mentioned.

I was one of the first to arrive, and I soon found the chairs around me taken by a couple of bespectacled white guys, both of whom were first years with a lot of advanced standing credits. And one of them sounded just like Napoleon Dynamite. He didn't have Napoleon's temper (I never heard him say "Whatever I feel like I wanna do, gosh!"), but his voice was quite similar, and he had that same unusual but not unpleasant awkwardness. What actually amused me more was that both guys talked a great deal about their advanced standing credits, saying how hard it was to decide if they should call themselves freshmen or juniors. After talking to me about it for about three minutes straight, they confided in me that they just call themselves "first years" so no one thought they were too proud of their standing. I've actually done just that on a number of occasions, so I know what they mean, but I was still amused that they unknowingly tried to impress the one guy in the room who will graduate at a younger age than they will. I think they would have continued to pursue the topic if I hadn't been rescued by the arrival of my buddy Les Chappell.

Like It Is

My James Joyce class is the most enjoyable in my schedule, owing both to the interesting subject matter and the teaching skills of Professor Begam. Some people to whom I've talked about him strongly disliked the man, for both his perceived arrogance and for his daily use of polystyrene cups. I do wish he'd conserve cups, but I like him anyway. If he is arrogant he's smart enough and knowledgeable enough to get away with it, but really he always seems to have a twinkle in his eye that invites us to smile with him and not to be offended when he finds humor. Prof. Begam also says some delightful things. Today he was just tinge annoyed to find that his classroom full of Christian-raised students had no idea why the passion of Christ is called 'the passion.' He rolled his eyes and said, "very well, once again the Jew will teach you about Christianity." At another moment during the course of the lecture/discussion, he said that "if you're in the gasworks in ninetieth century Ireland and you have consumption...you're going to die!" Laughing he added, "That is the unhappy, sad truth."

The Artist As An Old Man

James Joyce, author of Chamber Music, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake, would be 123 today were he still alive; he died in Zurich at the age of fifty-eight.

Since 1984

Happy twenty-first, Sameer!

People With No Internal Monologue

When international man of mystery Austin Powers awakens from his cryogenically frozen state he is plagued by two temporary side effects. ONE: He cannot control the volume of his voice. TWO: He has no internal monologue, so every thought that pops into his head is voiced. This made for a single very funny scene before Mike Myers wisely drops the gag and moves on with the story. Unfortunately some people in the real world seem to suffer from a lack of internal monologue chronically. I present two cases that worked their way into my life today:

ONE: I was in Environmental Conservation (again), and the lecture was on Yellowstone National Park. It wasn't a bad lecture today to be honest, but it had a little too much room for audience participation. For some reason, this class prompts more comments than questions. There are about three people who actually have a great deal to offer, and I always enjoy hearing from them. Most of the participants just yammer dribble though. One guy with unkempt hair who sits in the front is particularity irritating due to both the quantity and the quality of his comments. The worst came just as Ryan finished talking about the volcanic nature of the region, mentioning that absolutely enormous eruptions had occurred there at intervals of approximately 6,000 years for the past couple million years, and the last one occurred about 6,000 years ago. Ryan didn't even leave us to draw conclusions ourselves, telling us that the pattern predicts an eruption at any moment. But this kid in the front raised his hand, and when called upon he said with a highly amused voice, "hopefully [that volcano is] not as dependable as some of those geysers." I calculate that since he took fifteen seconds in a lecture of about fifty people he just wasted twelve and a half minutes of our time.

TWO: I was looking at the Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator just a minute ago. Maybe I should be embarrassed, but com'on, I'm anxious to read book six. I'm entitled to my guilty pleasures, and I do think that Harry Potter has merit. Anyway, the "news" of the day was that J.K. Rowling warned fans against downloading files purporting to be e-books of the forthcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Like most fan sites, HPANA allows user comments after each piece. Most of them are completely useless and amount to "J.K. Rowling is the best" or "I'm the biggest fan." But a fifth-grade math teacher from Texas going by the name Ravenclawgrrr feels that she has something deeper to add:

Isn't it sad what some people will do to scam others out of money?! I think the worst part of it is that most HP fans are kids who are dying for any info on Harry's saga. It's just wrong to scam old people and kids!

I guess it is wrong to scam little kids when its so easy to just take their stuff by force.

Lutherans and Sexuality

Don't, unless you do

Garrison Keillor, Star Tribune

The ELCA had the good sense to issue its report on sexuality the week before a major snowstorm and so the church's new guidelines on blessing same-sex relationships and ordaining people in an SSR didn't arouse the storm and fury one might have expected. People were thinking about shoveling their sidewalks, a life-and-death issue for those of us in the coronary stage of life. And when you imagine toppling over into a snowbank with chest pains and your last thought before expiring is "Boy, she was right, I shouldn't have," then the whole issue of whether Pastor Sandvik should bless the union of Bruce and Kent -- it's just not that big a deal. Up in Stearns County, you've got Catholic priests blessing snowmobiles, for crying out loud, and on the Feast Day of St. Francis the Episcopalians are bringing cats and dogs and hamsters and newts and amoeba in to be blessed, so what's the harm in blessing two young guys, even if maybe they do fuss over their hair more than a person should?

The report was a lovely example of muddling through, which Lutherans are good at. They are people of great modesty and even greater compassion. And also bravery. The question of SSRs is one that firebrands on both sides are up in arms about and ready to burn villages and blow up bridges. The Task Force was given the assignment three years ago, long before the wave of gay marriages, and it proceeded to hold hundreds of elaborately patient and painfully respectful meetings and discuss the thing to (yawn) death and finally write a report that restated the question in terms you wouldn't understand and took 40 pages to avoid answering it and affirm a policy of Don't ask, don't tell, never mind.

In 1996, the church had said, "Marriage is a lifelong covenant of faithfulness between a man and a woman." It was willing to ordain gay people who were in a chaste, or unconsummated, relationship, a USSR, but not in a sexy one. After due study, the Task Force acknowledged the deep divisions over the whole SSR question, reaffirmed the 1996 position while accepting that people in good conscience might choose to challenge it and asking them to be careful if they do and not make a big show of it but saying that if they do do what they will, probably nobody would give them a hard time about it.

In other words: Nothing has changed essentially, we don't approve, though in a sense we do but probably not, but if you go ahead and do it, don't feel bad about it, we understand.

This is the beauty of bureaucracy. It absorbs and deflects violence and anger by causing confusion and annoyance and writing a lovely amorphous mishmash of sentences like extruded marshmallows and thus the peace is kept. Militants on either side are outraged, but they enjoy outrage, that is their art form. The rest of us are grateful to be spared the sound and the fury and to be able to attend church on Sunday morning without having to wear a badge. As important as sexuality may be, it surely isn't any more important than snow, and if you feel, in good conscience, that God didn't intend snow to be part of your life, then you may want to head for Arizona, which is OK, though we will miss you and I do beseech you to return my shovel before you go, it is hanging in your garage, not that I want to go ask you for it, I don't want to put you on the spot and make you feel bad, though it's hard to understand how you could forget about a thing like that but if you do and you go off to Phoenix, don't beat yourself up over it, we will get along somehow as best we can. This is the Lutheran way.

Trois

I finished Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers yesterday. My first reaction was that it isn't half the book that The Count of Monte Cristo is, and I'm not talking about page count (although that's true too). After sleeping on it, I've decided that my reaction is justified, for I have two significant problems with Musketeers that prevent me from enjoying it as much as I expected to at the onset. First, the three musketeers and D'Artagnan are too easy going; they drink too much and gamble too much. While one might argue this is the source of their charm, it is unacceptable in light of how many good-guys are murdered through the course of the story. If their losses were none, then I could forgive them their indulgences, but as it is, I feel like they fail to do enough. Second, the four heroes sometime seem a powerless as a result of the book being set in an historical context and including major players of French history. Cardinal Richelieu in particular seems untouchable, not in the way that Sauron of The Lord of the Rings is untouchable, but simply because the fictional swordsmen can't be allowed to interact significantly with the real-life churchman. I don't think I'll be reading either of the sequels anytime soon; I've had my fill of Monsieur D'Artagnan.

Double Take

Something about my list of required books has been bothering me. I couldn't put my finger on it, but somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind I knew that there was something odd about the collection of books I've purchased this semester. In the past couple days I began to realize that something seemed slightly familiar about the name of the James Joyce expert who is often sited in my copy of Dubliners. And when I received my copy of Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses in the mail today, I understood why. That same well-known Joyce scholar also happened to edit a little book called The Literature of Architecture: The Evolution of Architectural Theory and Practice in Nineteenth Century America, which has been assigned to me for my course in American post-colonial architecture. The book of annotations for Ulysses is newer, and it simply says:

Don Gifford was Emeritus Professor of English at Williams College at his death in 2000.

The architecture book, on the other hand, was published in 1966 and is far more interesting:

DON GIFFORD is a Professor of English at Williams College, where he has taught for the past fifteen years. He was educated at The Principia College in Illinois, at Cambidge University, and at Harvard University. During World War II he drove an ambulance in the American Field Service before serving in the Army of the United States. After the war Mr. Gifford tried his hand at writing novels and working on commercial films before he settled down to teach, first at Mills College of Education in New York and subsequently at Williams. His teaching career has occasionally been interrupted by periods of work as a consultant to various industries on the process of invention.

I wish I could have had taken a course with him. I certaintly wouldn't have minded spending sometime in Williamstown, Massachusetts. I enjoyed my one brief visit in October 2002, and I've wished for some time to have a chance to vistit the Clark Art Institute, which has an impressive collection.

Downward

I looked at my AIM Buddy List this evening; 36 of my buddies were on, and all 36 of them were away. I continued my reading of The Three Musketeers, but instead of more swashbuckling action I got a tragic account of the brainwashing of an innocent young man by a most evil woman. Everyone I expected to see around the dorm this evening showed up late and showed up drunk. When I hit the Play/Pause button on my keyboard I got "The Downward Spiral" from the Nine Inch Nails album with the same title. I'm not done with the book yet; the bad-guys are still winning, but I'm too tired to continue. I'm going to bed; I'm sure things will seem cheerier in the morning.

My neck of the woods

Ryan, the instructor of my Environmental Conservation course, seems to be a full out Mac-geek, and before class today I had developed a theory that his favorite toy is the 360°-panorama feature of Quicktime. He'd started two of the first three lectures by spinning us around a photographed landscape, and the trend continued today. This time we got the exciting opportunity to look around a farm in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, the suburb directly east of my hometown of Maple Grove. Ryan told us that it was an example of "regulation of landscape." I asked him why he had chosen Brookly Park of all places. He answered that there were only a limited number of sites that have been recorded in a panorama. I think my theory holds.

KO'd

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings have established themselves as sleepy-time. I have two fifty-minute lectures back to back. This first one (Environmental Conservation) moves very slowly and puts me in a state of drowsiness. The second one (Ancient and Medieval Art) is reasonably interesting but takes place in a dark room with padded chairs, which thus far has made sleep unavoidable. I do not want to sleep through Art History; I want to learn the material. I'm considering two option to amend the present situation. I can start drinking a glass with Mountain Dew with breakfast, hoping that the caffeine will keep me awake without making me to antsy to focus. I'm not keen on this idea, since caffeine sometimes makes me feel irrationally trapped. The other option that readily presents itself is to start skipping the first class some days, and just reading the lecture outlines off of the website. I'm not thrilled with this plan either, since I don't like to miss lectures, but I have to say that today's class encouraged me to go in this direction.

The instructor's prepared lecture ended when we still had ten minutes remaining. He managed to start up a loose discussion among the students about Native American's effect on the land and whether European travelers were coming to a largely natural or a substantially cultivated landscape. The lecture had covered shifting agriculture, controlled burns, irrigation and other methods employed by the indigenous peoples, and the following discussion revolved around how invasive or how "natural" the techniques were. Opinions varied widely. One male student argued that it's better to compare Native Americans to river-damming beavers that to the Europeans that invaded the continent. One female student said that the excessive hunting of beavers by natives during the fur trading era proves that Native Americans never had any more respect for the land than Europeans. I tend to fall in between these two views, for I feel that both have merit. But I was annoyed when one girl said she wondered what "the Native American perspective on the matter" was. Our instructor (I won't call him a professor because he had yet to earn is PhD) said that she presented an interesting question, and then he asked if anyone in the room was of Native American heritage. I didn't like where this was heading, so I interrupted, "I'd like to point out that the various nations and tribes of North America would likely have widely varying views on this matter. I've been researching the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; there are two groups of people living there, the Gwich'in and the Iñupiat. The the Iñupiat are the poster tribe of Big Oil and firmly support drilling in the area, and the Gwich'in are fighting tooth and nail to preserve the land. I think it's too simple to think of there being a single 'Native American perspective.'" The instructor said that I had an excellent point. He continued on that his own wife was one-eighth Native American, and that she had been surprised to learn that her ancestors had employed substantial landscape-altering techniques, so we shouldn't assume there is a single view. I didn't try to participate after that.

Limited Visibility

I may not get to be in NYC for their snow this weekend, but we're getting a nice little fall of our own here in Madison. I took a short stroll with Sarah and Evan; I wish more of the people with whom we were sharing the sidewalks had been sufficiently sober to appreciate the beauty of it.

Unclear

I popped into The University Bookstore this morning on my way to class to pick up a new notebook for my MWF classes and a couple of cards for some birthdays that are coming up in the next couple of months. I couldn't find a birthday card I liked (all that had fun covers had irritating attempts at humor within), so I reverted to my usual plan B and tried to find a quirky blank card. I think I succeeded, and grabbed a pair of the same design (which I won't describe beyond saying that they're a touch on the fuzzy side). I went to pay, and the check-out woman praised me for what great cards I had chosen. While I felt 'great' was too strong a word, I simply said that I hoped that the recipients would agree with her. She looked at me with a puzzled expression and asked me who was sick. I assumed she had misheard me (the 'si' sound is in both words), so I said, "oh, no, I said recipients." But that didn't seem to do if for her. "Recipients:" I continued hesitantly, "the people who will be receiving the cards." This was apparently what was needed to clear things up, for she smiled and gave me a good natured "oh, I see!"

Joe Ienuso, Chair of the Emergency Management Operations Team and Acting Vice President of Facilities Management at Columbia University emailed me just a few minutes ago and warned me that New York City may be getting up to a foot of snow this weekend. I wish I could be there to go walking through Central Park early one of these snowy mornings.

Spring 2005 / Ywimpled

Today marked the first day of classes in what is presumably my last semester here at Madison. I'm taking seventeen credits, and my course list is as follows:

Introduction to Cryptography
James Joyce
Environmental Conservation
Art History: Ancient and Medieval
The Rise of American Post Colonial Architecture

I started the first two classes this morning. The math course went as expected, although I had the distinct impression that there are few math majors in there besides the professor and myself; most of the pasty male-dominated class seemed to be from the computer science department or the engineering school. James Joyce was another matter entirely. We took attendance, and then our professor sighed and said that it was time for him to try to dissuade us from taking the class. He spoke at length about the tediousness and difficulty of reading Ulysses and quoted criticism from a few of the novel's more esteemed detractors. He suggested we read one of particular episode of the book tonight so that we can see if we really want to continue. (The episode he recommended is generally known as "Oxen of the Sun," a name given to it by Joyce himself, although never within the pages of Ulysses.)

I've finished Thursday's actual assigned reading, so I've been "reading" the section. In truth, I've found it to be impenetrable thus far, but intriguing nonetheless. Heck, just a title like "Oxen of the Sun" has me interested. Still, sentences such as 'Before born babe bliss had.' are quite challenging. Even individual words give me a run for my money. This is almost certainly the first time I've ever encountered "ywimpled." For this word, I did a quick Google search. jheem on Wordsmith.org says "The y- prefix is from the earlier Old English ge- prefix, which like its cognate in German, is one of the signs of the past participle in Old and Middle English...A wimple is a nun's hood which covers the nun's head and hair. It's sort of like a Christian burqa, but different from a snood. So, ywimpled would mean wearing a wimple or being a nun."

I think this class has the potential to be one of the most highly educational of my college career.

Back In The Madtown

My last week or so in Minnesota was quite cold, and today I confirmed that the phenomenon extends at least as far eastward as Madison. As a result, I've been constantly wearing the scarf that my dearest friend Claire made for my twentieth birthday. It's a beautiful thing, crocheted in long stripes of white, green, and charcoal yarn; with the fringe at both ends included its about two meters in length. I think fringe looks right on a scarf, but so far it's been quite a neuscence (and will be for couple more weeks, Claire warned me). Lint from the fringe has been getting everywhere. I was in the shower a couple mornings ago, having not touched the scarf for about ten hours. My hair was shampooed and I was soaping up when I felt somethng on my tongue in my closed mouth. What did I find? Some of the green. Later that day I was guarding at the pool and I felt something on my eyelashes. What did I find? Some of the white. Today looked down at my Cheerios. What did I find? Some of the charcoal.

Back In Action

We bought a copy of DOOM 3 for my Dad when Best Buy sold it for thirty dollars as an after-Christmas special, but it ended up sitting unopened until I completed the last of my graduate school applications. I haven't played it for more than 100 minutes or so, but I'm already very impressed. The atmosphere is chilling, and the simplicity of the weapons is refreshing. There are no alternate fire modes, which makes the gameplay manageable for my dad and sister haven't done too much gaming since DOOM II, which didn't involve looking up and down, but only left and right. I've played a few other games (primarily Counter-Strike and Jedi Knight II), so the three-dimensional environment is nothing unusual, but I'm appreciating having a single fire-mode since it allow me to focus on the more important process of switching back and forth between a gun and the oh-so-helpful flashlight. If you like computer games, I'm already sufficiently impressed with this one to recommend it, although I'd suggest waiting for a good deal.

All Good Things

I finished Stephen King's The Dark Tower series today. I've been reading the quest of the gunslinger Roland Deschain for...how many years now? Five, I suppose. That's not nearly so long as the journey has been for many readers, but it's long enough that I'm sad to have no more ahead of me. It was well-written and engrossing throughout, and I was left with no doubt that King earned his Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003. He is a gifted storyteller, and The Dark Tower captures his ability to bend language, creating new words that by the end of a story seem as familiar as any we can find in the Oxford English Dictionary.

tuO 'nippirT

?tey elgooG htiw dehcraes uoy evaH

The Haul

Christmas is about family, love, togetherness, peace, and good will toward all. That said, here's some of the cool stuff I got:

Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon
Blue Man Group: Audio
[The] Flaming Lips: Zaireeka
Hero
The Royal Tenenbaums Original Soundtrack
an awesome NYC panoramic 2005 calendar

I went to see The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou at the AMC with fellow Highlander resident Sarah Linwick. I enjoyed it, but it was a letdown after Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. I think Sarah had similar toughts about the film.

It was, in fact, a merry Christmas for me, in part because of new material possesions but mostly because of family and good friends. I hope everyone reading this was as fortunate.

Grey

I just finished my last final. I was doing terribly for the first hour and a half, and then I had a bunch of breakthroughs in the last 30 minutes. I finished a minute past the official end time, five minutes before he actually gave the last call, and I felt great. Then I talked to other people about the test, and I found out that I had made an incorrect (although logical) assumption about what was meant by an ambiguous problem. I have no idea what grade I will receive on that test and in that class; it's a big question mark.

We had our first real snow last night, although it wasn't even a quarter inch. Still, it made me enjoy my walk to the exam, and brightened up an otherwise dreary day. I'm headed home tomorrow, and posts will become infrequent as usual. I expect I'll be back full-time when the next semester begins in late January.

Press Conference Question

Since President Bush and President Putin are such good friends, shouldn't George be able to say Vladimir's name correctly? (That would be "vla-DEEM-er" instead of "VLAD-i-MEER.")

Intriguing Product

At this time of year we hear "Jingle Bells" and "Winter Wonderland" on the radio, in malls, in restaurants, or just about anywhere that isn't a synagogue or a Moslem temple, and we think of the merry ringing of little bells as we are wisked over a snowy landscape. But are your sleigh-pulling horses properly bedecked? If you're not nodding an emphatic yes, sir and you don't want your neighbors to think you're a total Scrooge, you'd best get your act together!

The sixth intriguing product is Forgedale Sleigh Bells, available through Oley Sled Works.

Blog Ecology: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

This great blogosphere of ours is a place where two of the three Rs of waste management are taken quite seriously but the other is ignored completely. There is really no incentive to Reduce since posting is both easy and generally free. Reusing and Recycling are themselves quite easy; in fact, it is usually easier than coming up with something completely new. Most of the Reused material one encounters is not the result of copying but rather just the fact that very few bloggers live particularity interesting lives or are experts on interesting subjects. Most of us just live normal lives and have our gripes, our good days, and our strange experiences on this crazy ol' Internet. As for good material that gets passed around - well, I think that may be what the blogosphere has going for it. Information is being spread in a totally new way, and it will be a while before we learn all of the advantages and disadvantages of the system.

But most of the stuff out there isn't particularity good. I certainly don't recommend reading this blog unless you know who I am and care at least a little bit about me. You won't find any great literature, philosophy, or treatises here. But I do try to maintain some standards. I try to limit posts as long as this one to three a month. I try to keep my ellipses in check. (Haven't we all seen blogs that look like this?...yeah...I think we have...but you know...I guess this is just easier that selecting proper punctuation...) I try to keep my gripes to a minimum. And I try not to use completely generic content, like the results of internet quizzes.

My suitemate Mike vented his frustration about this matter earlier this month. In a post on The Glog, he proposed some biting replies to heavily Recycled material encountered on other people's blogs. For example he suggested:

When someone posts their results of some stupid quiz

"Awesome! I always wondered what sort of (19th century Peruvian peasant) you would be. Now that I know, I'm a more complete human being and no longer have that tremendous void in my life."

And Mike is right to be irritated. Most quizzes are ridiculously stupid, and most of them have no more than, say, six possible outcomes. But even tired old material can be entertaining if its well done. Shakespeare borrowed and plagiarized more than anyone, but the way he combined worn out genres in new ways and generally did everything better than his contemporaries and predecessor allowed him to create works that were immensely popular during his own time and were able to remain popular over the past four centuries.

I'm not sure if we'll ever encounter a Shakespeare of the blogosphere, but there are certainly people out there who do better the same things everyone else does. There are even a handful of good quizzes out there. I found "The Country Quiz," which makes some sense, since countries tend to have behavioral characteristics analogous to those in people. The quiz isn't tedious (there are only six questions), but it yields 64 different results, which all seem to have a mix of admirable and not-so-admirable traits. Here's what it told me:

YOU'RE FRANCE!



Most people think you're snobby, but it's really just that you're better than everyone else.  At least you're more loyal to the real language, the fine arts, and the fine wines than anyone else.  You aren't worth beans in a fight, unless you're really short, but you're so good at other things that it usually doesn't matter.  Some of your finest works were intended to be short-term projects.

I this is a reasonable three-sentence summary of me if you take it with a wry smile. And I can't complain about being compared with a country like France, which, for better or worse, has never blended in to the European landscape. If you're interested in seeing your own results you can take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Octopus Cannon Hits McDonalds

Sete, France - Armed with a high-pressure hose and a bucket of octopi, hundreds of protestors in this Mediterranean town on Saturday pelted a McDonalds restaurant due to open this week with the slimy seafood.

Up to 500 people gathered on the banks of the Sete canal, across from the fast-food outlet, playing music and yelling anti-junk-food slogans across the water, as police barred them from reaching the restaurant itself.

Aiming the hose across the water, they catapulted fresh octopi - a local delicacy, known here as the "pouffre" - towards the town's first McDonalds, which had been set to open on Saturday.

The crowd held up slogans slamming junk food, dubbed "malbouffe" in French, as well as work conditions in the fast-food industry.

Driving home their point, the protestors were serving up traditional Setois dishes - one of which is the tielle, a fragrant octopus, tomato and onion pie prized by locals and tourists alike.

The demonstration caused the opening of the restaurant, the first fast-food outlet in the port town following years of resistance by the former communist mayor, to be put off until next week.

A group led by French militant farmer Jose Bove pulled down a McDonalds outlet that was under construction in the southern town of Millau in 1999, earning Bove a jail sentence, although the restaurant was later rebuilt.

Since 1985

Happy nineteenth, Mike!

I don't know what windex tastes like...

...but I have to guess that it tastes like Coca-Cola's new energy drink Full Throttle. The Coke product, which comes in a black 16-ounce can, gets points for having a distinct flavor (Rockstar tastes almost exactly like Red Bull), but it loses them all for tasting really, really bad. I bought all three of these drinks at Walgreens on my was back from my Shakespearean Drama exam so that I would be able to crank out book reports to be turned in tomorrow morning (which is now this morning) at my Russian History review session. I didn't buy anything else, so when I plopped these three over-priced energy drinks on the counter to pay for them, I commented with smile to the check-out girl, "I guess you haven't been selling too many of these this week." She replied matter-of-factly, "Oh, no, we have."

Publication

I have sent my portfolio to the publishers to be printed; I should have the hard copies back before Christmas. In the meantime, you can view a PDF version of the book here. If you catch any errors, feel free to let me know; I'll be happy to work out additional kinks in case I ever do a second printing.

On the downside of publication news, I didn't get the job at The Badger Herald. I wasn't rejected outright, though. Apparently some of their current or past page designers unexpectedly became available for next semester, and they're already trained in, so they're preferred. I guess I'll have to look for a job elsewhere if I want any income next spring. I wonder if The Daily Cardinal is hiring...

Since 1958

Happy forty-sixth, Dad!

Italia

I went over to Nat's place thinking it would be for just a few minutes, and I ended up watching an Italian movie from the 1940s and drinking a fair amount of Tuscan wine. We had Sangiovese Cancelli 2002 Coltibuono, a "red table wine." It had a fresh taste, and I thought it had a strong aroma of berries; it definitely lends itself to everyday consumption, as the website suggests. It also had the pleasant effect of taking away the pain in my arm which had started an hour before when I tripped climbing the stairs of the Highlander. The movie was Roma, città aperta, a tragedy, but a engaging one.

Some Of The News That's Fit To Print

I interviewed with the Badger Herald this evening in hopes that I will be offered a position as a page designer. One of my interviewers graduated from Maple Grove Senior High, and we chatted about the school's short history. I liked what I saw; the office looked like a pleasant place to work, not the dimly lit room full of lines of computers that I for some reason imagined. I should know whether or not I got the position sometime next week; I have no idea how many openings or applicants there are, so we'll just have to wait it out.

Concentrated coolness

I think the Hummers are cool looking vehicles. If they weren't hazardous to the environment and extremely dangerous to everyone else on the road, I would be totally into them. They look sharp and have a fabulous advertising campaign. Unfortunately, Hummers are hazardous to the environment and a danger to everyone on the road, so I actually hate the things and spit on anyone who is so selfish that they would buy and drive one.

In this day and age the vast majority of Americans could get by with a pretty small, efficient vehicle. The gas-electric hybrids that are starting to be seen around urban areas are a significant step in the right direction. Unfortunately, most of the efficient cars (hyrbrid or otherwise) lack pizzaz. Toyota did a good job making their Prius a lot cooler when they redesigned it last year, but Honda has failed twice with the nerdy Insight and the boring Civic Hybrid. Ford's Focus, Toyota's Echo, and anything put out by Volvo are just not doing it for me.

Fortunately, there are some cars out there that have the cool factor of Hummers and Cadilacs without their unforgivable downsides. I think more American are becoming aware of the Smart ForTwo even if they can't get their hands on them due to American emissions standards. These little guys make the Mini Cooper look huge and even have reserved parking in high traffic areas of some major European cities. There are a couple lesser know cars that are high on mileage and 'cool.' I just discovered the Tango by Commuter Cars. It's an electric car with an 80 mile range, so it's definitely not for everyone, but since it's slimmer than many a Harley it can zip right between lines of gridlocked cars. (That's a legal maneuver in California where they're marketed.) My favorite of all, however, has to be the Carver. It's not in the U.S. yet, but I'm hoping it will be here by the time I can afford it.

T + 5

I had an enjoyable Thanksgiving break and an enjoyable Thanksgiving dinner. We had a classic dinner of turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce followed by slices of both pumpkin and blueberry pie. I didn't complete as much Russian History reading as I intended, but I did complete my lifeguard in-service training, so I'll be able to work over the winter holidays. The highlight of the visit was getting to see Claire on Saturday, which was made even better by Dad's homemade pizza. Interesting the worst meal of the trip was also pizza, although it was from Boston's, a horrible new restaurant in Maple Grove that should be avoided if at all possible.

My trip back was thoroughly uneventful, probably better described by the word 'boring.' The videos were Stuck on You and The Runaway Jury. Reading the much better book version of The Runaway Jury is a much better use of your time if you are considering watching either of these. I've been busy with grad school aps since I've returned, and I've also been preparing to apply for a job with the Badger Herald, since I'm already in the application zone.

Homeward Bound

I caught the Mad-Bus back to the Cities yesterday afternoon. The had free Red Bull this time, and I took the risk of drinking two on the ride, but the caffeine and the confinement of the bus seat did not cause the sense of entrapment that I feared. The tiny TVs on the bus showed Saved! and 50 First Dates, and I enjoyed both films.  Jenna Malone is an impressive actress, and I felt the rest of the young cast of the first movie, none of which I had seen before, were able to hold their own as well.

Today I visited the dentist; all checked out well. I also visited the printer I plan to use for my portfolio.  RiverPoint Media Group, Inc. was recently formed out of Mendota Graphics and Munson Xpress, and I found all the staff members I encountered to be friendly and helpful.  I still have a week's worth of work or so to do on my portfolio, so hopefully I'll be getting the job to the good folks there on or around the first of December.  I'll see if I can post a PDF version here on the site once I get it done.  I've got to say, visiting the place and seeing the materials really has me excited about this project for the first time.

The sound of Milwaukee

I spent the better part of today in "the Genuine American City" and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. I worked on my personal statement on the ninety-some minute bus-ride over. When we arrived at the Milwaukee Art Museum our group of twenty or so went in separate ways, and I wandered the museum by myself. The major exhibit was "Masterpieces of American Art, 1770 - 1920: From the Detroit Institute of Arts," which was okay, but less focused than I think an exhibit should be. Grouping works based on where they currently reside seems foolish and unenlightening. After finishing my pass through those galleries, I set off in search of 20th century Italian Art, particularly any work by Medardo Rosso, but I was unsuccessful in achieving my specific goal and only moderately successful in achieving the more general one. Like the Art Institute of Chicago, this museum largely ignores Italy after the time of Carravagio. My searching did yield the unexpected pleasure of conversing with one of the museum guards named Ivana, a 22-year old art education student at UW-Milwaukee. She's from the Czech Republic, and encouraged me to visit Prague as soon as I have the chance. Ivana was most certainly one of the most knowledgeable guards I encountered, but she was trapped in the "Folk and Self-Taught" art section, which we both disliked. I think she was happy to have a little conversation.

At one, we boarded the bus and headed over to a dumpy little part of town for reasons unknown. I stuck with Eva (with whom I've now shared two art history courses) and her friend Rachel, and we ate at a Greek place called Apollo's. I had a good gyro and reasonable balavá. We wander the area for a while but found little of merit, so we walked back to the museum area, stopping it at a Borders and an Old Navy along the way. I used my time at Borders to begin reading Stephen King's The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower, which has me tingling with anticipation. I was not disappointed by what little I had a chance to experience. We got back to the museum in time to watch it close its wings, and then we bussed home again.

InTACOSication

Mike came back after a good number of drinks with some food from Taco Bell. Apparently Mike, in his alcohol-induced enthusiasm ordered all the items on the taco menu, so he arrived with a bag of five or six different types of tacos. I generally avoid tacos because they almost invariably contain cumin, one of the three foods that I most inconveniently do not like. (The other two are bell peppers and fish; other foods I dislike, such as flan, don't really cause much of a problem for me.) Realizing the steak taco would probably be free of cumin, I gave it a shot and was rewarded for my intuition. It's nice to know that there's something for me at Taco Bell, should I ever end up getting my dinner there.

75¢

The city of Madison, like most major cities, has a significant homeless population. I'm glad that some charitable organizations and our campus paper, The Daily Cardinal are currently calling attention this fact. The primary goal seems to be the establishment a new shelter, since the current one is unable to help all those that need it. I support this effort, and were I a resident I would gladly vote for it should it come up as a referendum.

That said, I was a little thrown this evening by my encounter with one homeless man on State Street. On our way to the Towers for dinner, Mike and I were asked for change by a man of about 30, but I was laughing at something or another that Mike had just said and wasn't able to respond. Feeling a bit guilty about it, I decided I'd bring him a piece of fresh fruit from dinner. When Marget and I were together, she would often give homeless people fruit since its a nutritious food needing no preparation, and that habit hers was one of those I greatly admired and appreciated. So I grabbed an apple and a napkin as I headed out the door, and kept my eyes peeled for the guy. I spotted him about 10 meters in front of me, but just as I got close to him, another man approached him and asked for 75 cents. The beggar to whom I was intending to give the apple pulled out several dollars worth of quarters and gave the other man three coins. I had passed him by another 10 meters before they parted ways, and I would have felt weird doubling back. I don't really know what to make of the whole thing, but I'll take the apple along with me tomorrow. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of people who could use it.

3¢

My Shakespearean Drama professor used the phrase 'Mac(k) the Knife' in class today, and it occurred to me that I had no idea what that meant. I've been aware of the phrase for many years, but I never asked about it. This evening I decided to find out. Quick Google searches for "Mack the Knife" and "Mac the Knife" were not instantly helpful, so I ran upstairs to consult my nearest and dearest English major. Sarah, like me, had heard those three words used together but did not know their combined meaning. So I returned to the Internet for answers. I was assuming that 'mac' or 'mack' was a verb, so I went to the Oxford English Dictionary entry for the verb 'mack' (there was none for 'mac'). I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find a very helpful example of using 'mack' to mean "to be or act as a pimp." The OED gives us:

1971 Who took Weight? 160 I was sho'nuff macking. I had nine..whores.

So that cleared that up. Getting back to 'Mac(k) the Knife,' I returned to Google, did a little more browsing, and found my answer within a minute or two. It seems that either spelling is legitament, so I'll use 'Mac,' which I prefer; I suspect this is because of that elusive Dave Matthew Band song "MacHead" or my past relationship with a MacLeod or both. Getting to the point here, it turns out Mac the Knife is the nickname for Macheath, who is a criminal mastermind of London in The Threepenny Opera, which I believe is a play and not, as the title indicates, an opera.

Since 1953

Happy fifty-first, Mom!

Fire/Water

It's raining gently on the Madtown this evening, but it didn't stop someone over at Memorial Union from launching some nice fireworks. I didn't see anything big, but there were lots of loud bangers. I wonder if those tend to hold up better in the rain than the big fountains. I suppose the big stairwell windows of the Highlander may have been among the best places to see the show and stay dry, although I do miss my westward window over at the Langdon.

Since 1983

Happy twenty-first, Nat!

East Sjælland Island

I attended a performance of Michael Frayn's Copenhagen this afternoon at the Overture Center, a relatively new addition to State Street and a very impressive performance arts facility. The cast of three was well chosen, and the minimalist set design (three chairs) was quite effective. I felt that the play was a bit slow and its repetition of the "key" scene worked better some times than others. This interesting formula certainly made the play seem fresh as a whole, but caused me to feel that the end had arrived numerous times before it actually did. Perhaps the only story with more false endings is Stephen Speilberg's film A.I., which I also enjoyed, actually in a similar way. I was impressed with the playwrite's bold use of Heisenberg's uncertainly principal; he wove a general explaination of it into the dialog in a way that I feel demanded the audience to keep on their toes. All in all, it was a play I'm glad I saw once but would not choose to see again.

الأم ميشيل

Mike's mom was in town this weekend, and she was so extraordinarily kind as to take the two of us out for dinner both this evening and last. Perhaps even more delightful was the fact that they let me choose the restaurants. Last night I selected King of Falafel, an Arabic restaurant just a few blocks down the road from the Highlander. I think we were all very pleased with the food, and shocked at how reasonable the price was. I had a fabulous bean soup and lamb on a bed of gently seasoned rice. We shared falafels and humus as an appetizer, and Mike and I both finished with decent baklava.

This evening we went to a slightly fancier place called Cafe Continental. The place was quite busy, but their schedule had left a table empty for 90 minutes, so they admitted us directly. This restaurant, too, proved to make for a very enjoyable dining experience. I started with the best cream of mushroom soup I've ever had, and moved on to a rather interesting dish from their specials of the day, which included thin pieces of steak wrapped around a soft cheese, breaded, skewered, and fried. It was served with sliced tomato and fresh mozzarella. The menu was reasonably interesting, and the ambiance was most pleasant, being neither too loud nor too dark.

Shadows on the windows

Happy Halloween, all y'all.

No single explanation, no central destination

For the past four hours, there has been an unending stream of cars creeping down Gilman Street and detouring on Henry over to Langdon. Mike and have absolutely no idea where these people are coming from or where they are going; there is practically no parking in this piece of Madison beyond what is taken by those who live here, and it seems strange that so many people are in their cars during the peak hours of the activity. I went out to take some photos of the long line of cars, and Mike accompanied me, making sure that I was aware of the few cars that were headed eastward instead of westward. Mike was (self-admittedly) very drunk from his earlier excursion with his visiting high school buddy Brett. It was of no consequence however, as Mike is the most impressively functional drunk I've ever met; I wasn't really aware of his inebriation until he called across the street to a stranger dressed as Yoshi (of Super Mario Land fame). After I was done shooting, we decided to walk the loop that we often travel when dining at the Towers or the Statesider, meaning that we traversed about three blocks of State Street, which was absolutely packed. It took us about ten minutes to travel what normally takes two or three minutes, stepping on fragments of Halloween costumes as we went.

Mexican Cow Train?!

A rather bizarre occurrence interrupted our Shakespearean Drama lecture this afternoon. Just as Prof. Knowles was discussing the Jewish ghetto in Venice (which makes this the fourth of my five classes this semester to address ghettos created for minorities), we heard the whistle of an old steam locomotive, and 8 or 9 crazed individuals entered the room in a variety of strange costumes, cow suits being the apparent favorite. They ran around, making a lot of noise, although the only words I caught were in Spanish. Once the last cow was gone with an ¡Adios! and a swish of the tail a couple people tried to start an applause, but I think most people would agree that Prof. Knowles consistently provides such lively and pleasant lectures that interruptions are really not welcome diversions.

The professor seemed a bit annoyed while all this was happening but ended up with the last laugh. Once the room was clear and the three people stopped clapping he simply stood, staring down at his notes - as if dismayed with our generation - and then staring out at the audience - as if to see if we realized how stupid we are sometimes. I like the fact that his excellent understanding of comedy is not wasted upon him.

What You Will

I attended an absolutely marvelous performance of Twelfth Night this evening with Jen, a friend with whom I've shared a couple of classes during my time here at Madison. The production was originally playing at the venue where I saw Othello last month, and the American Players Theatre has been touring since their outdoor venue closed for the season. The final showing was this one in Memorial Union, which apparently contains a rather impressive little theatre. I was surprised by the muted ending to an otherwise uproarious comedy (a choice by Shakespeare, not the directors), but it didn't feel out of place. My only quarrel with the entire to-do was that we were stuck indoors on such a fine night as tonight.

A Swing And A Miss

I got hit up for some change by a bum outside of Walgreens who tries rather hard to win 'em over with humor: "Spare change? I'm trying to collect enough to buy a box of screws, a drill, and some Viagra. My girlfriend wants me to screw her all night long." The same guy told me last week that he accepts Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.

Four For Four

The Red Sox have been my no. 2 team ever since they lost to the Twins at my first baseball game, back in the summer of '92 or so. Living in Massachusetts for two years only solidified their standing in my heart, so tonight's victory will keep me smiling for a long time. My hat's off to all those guys who've worked so hard to finally overcome the curse of the Bambino.

Intriguing Product

On Wednesdays I am unable to return to the dorm system for lunch, so I often smuggle a bagel or two out of the dining hall to munch on during the day. The bagels in the Highlander are locally made and really nothing special except for the kooky information on the bag regarding "Care of Bagels" and "Preparation." You can find almost the same text on the site, but here's the essay on Preparation.

Try a sliced bagel, toasted, with butter or cream cheese and jam. Our bagel, even after it has been cut in half, is sometimes too large for the conventional toaster. In this instance, the bagel must be compressed after cutting in order to fit into the toaster slots.

The bagel will make anything taste better. Consider using it in the construction of your next sandwich. A traditional favorite is composed of lox (smoked salmon) and cream cheese strategically placed between the two halves of a sliced bagel; perhaps a slice of tomato or onion can be added to liven up your concoction. But, it is important to note that your bagel will always taste better when it is hot, so please take the time to heat it.

You will discover that the bagel has many uses; it can be used in any situation where ordinary bread may have been used in the past. Feel free to use as many bagels as you please without worrying that the supply will dry up, because at our bakery you will be able to find Bagels Forever.

The fifth intriguing product is Bagels Forever.

Meg Slekt

I met up with my family for a final morning of breakfast and cards. I paid my first visit to an IHOP, and found it to be similar but superior to a Perkins. After we said our goodbyes and Dad dropped me off at the Highlander, I met up with my classmate Nat and we headed off to Kohler Art Library to kick off our research for papers we're writing for Italian Art of the Twentieth Century. Mine will be on The New York Times Building that was designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and is currently under construction on 8th Avenue. I am very impressed with this architect's work and equally in admiration of the way his workshop is organized to fully utilize all of its human resources. Could RPBW perhaps be a future employer? After I returned from the library I ate the piece of sour cream raspberry pie my parents picked up from the Norske Nook on their way here. I'm not sure if there's anything truly Norwegian about that pie, but it sure is as good as the rest of their cookin'. It was a nice encore to the weekend of good meals with the folks.

המשפחה שלי

Waking at 6:40 this morning wasn't too bad, and although the hotel continental breakfast was no better than PRH food, I had an enjoyable time playing Hearts with my family. For lunch we went to a Ella's Deli, which serves a great number of Kosher foods and favorites of the Jewish-American culture. I started with a very tasty matzo ball soup, moved on to a well prepared Ruben and impressive coleslaw, and finished up with a rather typical banana split. While I thought the soup was reason enough to stop in at Ella's, the decor serves as another attraction. A diner might very well feel like the interior of the place is a result of a circus colliding with a toy store. Every inch of the place seems to be decorated with moving parts and loud colors, but it's so much more authentic than, say, the Times Square Toys "R" Us, that it isn't nearly so off-putting. It's definitely worth a visit if you're ever in the Madison area.

Regarding This Blog's Ability To Help You Find Jesus

My most vocal critic who goes by the clever moniker of "JamesSux" commented on my 20 October post:

James, you are so lame. Why do you write stupid nonsense? Oh, your eyes meet, blah, blah. Is this a romance novel?

Dude. It's my blog. It's called (as you can read at the top of the window) "The Life and Times of James Lucas Hepokoski." Because this blog has only one title, we can safely conclude that it is NOT called

Entertainment For Everyone

or

You Should Read This Blog Because It Will Make You A Better And Happier Person Who Is Very, Very, Very Close To Jesus.

If you hate me or what I say here, don't feel compelled to read this blog. I assure you, not all of the cool kids are reading my blog on a regular basis. It's okay to read other things. I personally enjoy reading many things that are not this blog. Such as books.

私の家族

I met my family again today; I showed them the Elvehjem museum quickly, and then we caught the 80 out to Allen Centennial Gardens, where we meandered and discussed what we might like in our own yard. The gardens are less spectacular than they were during the first month of school but still make for a nice stroll. We walked back to the Highlander to pick up Mike, and my parents met one my favorite neighbors (who also happens to be one of the multitude of Sarahs in my life), albeit so briefly they didn't quite realize it. Once Mike joined us to make five we headed down to Ginza of Tokyo on State Street, and we all enjoyed some Japanese cuisine. After our walk back in the rain, we discovered the Prius was trapped by the UW homecoming parade, so we sloshed over to my room for a game of hearts, which Mom won with ease. We're getting togther in the morning tomorrow, and we've agreed to meet at 7:30, which is pretty early for a Saturday morning unless your in the Hepokoski household. It is good to see them.

La Mia Famiglia

My family came to visit me for MEA Weekend, a four-day break that comes to public schools throughout Minnesota each October. They arrived in the middle of the afternoon and brought me a few things I had been missing, including my copy of No One Is Really Beautiful, some jeans, and the mail that has been piling up at home. We went out to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow at a theater near the southwest corner of the Madison beltway. After the movie, which I enjoyed despite its (perhaps intentionally) clunky dialogue, we headed over to Biaggi's, an Italian restaurant that is part of a small chain that just expanded into Maple Grove. I had some good gnocchi, a very impressive balsamic vinaigrette salad, and some of my mom and my sister's veal parmesan. It was a enjoyable evening and a very welcome change of pace. They'll be here through the weekend, so there's still more to which I can look forward.

Ego Tripping at the Gates of Humanities

I was walking back from Van Vleck this evening as the last light in the sky was disappearing. As I passed the Humanities building on my way into Library Mall, I caught the eye of an rather beautiful young lady who appeared to be of Indian or Pakistani heritage. We both smiled as we walked towards each other, and for two or three seconds our eyes connected. The moment was sharply interrupted a moment before we passed each other when she tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and let out a hushed exclamation that I suspect was something unladylike. She regained her balance without falling, so I can without too much guilt simply enjoy the memory.

Midterm Madness (Day Two)

I'm through the worst of the midterm experience. The Modern Algebra exam this morning was far easier than I expected. Looking back, I realized I missed a step of one proof, but I feel like I probably earned at least 15 out of 25 points for that one anyway, and I'm hoping that I got full or nearly full credit on the other three problems. When I finished I had lots of time to spare and nobody had left yet, so I was a little worried that I had missed something. I looked over the whole exam, but I found nothing. I guess there's no use in worrying now.

Midterm Madness (Day One)

I had my first Twentieth Century Italian Art quiz this morning, and I felt it went well. I'm not a fast writer, but I felt I was able to discuss the chosen works reasonably well. I grudgingly skipped Russian History to study for the test, but I dropped by to hand in my paper which was also due this morning. On my way over to the art library where I did my studying, I was exposed to what might have set a new low for cell phone conversations I would have rather not overheard: "She just drank soooo much...yeah...well she just threw up all over the bed...no, she has the top bunk..." Some girls around here should not have cell phones.

Saturday at the University of Wisconsin

Today was an all-around life-on-campus day. I woke up in time to say goodbye to the people who crashed on our floor for the night (Mike's sister and her boyfriend), then studied for the upcoming Art History exam until brunch, which I ate at the Statesider on my way to College Library. I met my friend and unofficial math tutor and we studied Abstract Algebra for a couple hours. In my attempts to express my appreciation, I bought him a sandwich and a cup of hot chocolate. As we were leaving, we had a random encounter with another former Langdonite and fellow student in my math class. I took a nap after getting back and went to dinner when I woke up. At dinner, Mike and I had another random encounter with a number of students from our dorm. (Granted, it wasn't as random, since we're on the same meal plan.) I vacuumed my floor after returning and returned to studying Art History until the rioting and screaming outside my window notified me that our football team beat Purdue. On Wisconsin!

8

The floors in the Highlander are quite small; they're comprised of a single hall with six rooms, two landings in the stairwells, and elevator access. I've come to mentally nickname the inhabitance of each of the rooms on our floor.

806 "The RAs" - Leah and Amanda both hold that title here.
805 "Those Guys" - They're, as best I can tell, typical Wisconsin undergrads: nice guys with an affinity for beer.
804 "The Nerds" - Those guys have more computers and more 12-sided dice than anyone else around.
803 "The Nerdetts" - Those girls have more computers and more 12-sided dice than anyone outside of 804.
802 "Los Estupidos" - Those two girls always scowl at us or pretend not to see us for reasons unknown. I think it might have something to do with the tiny Kerry/Edwards sticker way up on the corner of our door (and I'm serious; it is discrete). Should they be Las Estupidas? Probably, but I maintain that they are kind of man-ish, especially the obese one.
801 "We" or "Us" - It depends if we're the subject or the direct object.

Our relationship with Los Estupidos was made even more strange when the thin one's friend visited and was overly nice to us in a way that made us sure that the other two really hate us. It is truly weird.

Tall Buildings

I attended a lecture on the history of architecture in Chicago. Covering 201 years in an hour and a half, it was extraordinarily brief, but the eighty-something woman giving the talk proved most lively and it was a highly enjoyable lecture. The lecture focused most heavily on skyscrapers, which are widely (although not universally) considered to be a Chicagoan invention. I sat next to Professor Buenger, who teaches my course in twentieth century Italian art. Professor Buenger, who I suspect to be about 50 years of age, and I were probably the two youngest people in the room, which was comprised mostly of friends of the library. A gentleman gave a brief introduction on the matter of the recent book sale the library held to raise funds, and he added a comment that they always encourage donations to the library, especially from young folks. Of course he was looking right at me as he said it, and we all had a good chuckle.

After that lecture, we swept over to the Elvehjem Art Museum to catch the end of a lecture on Xu Bing, a Chinese artist who is currently being featured in the Elvehjem with a gallery of his work and a special year-long installation in the main room. This makes two evenings in a row with the good professor: a new record for a non-major undergrad perhaps?

The Fullest Day

Today was perhaps one of the fullest days of my life which began and will presumably end in the same bed. I awoke at six to write a formal analysis of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop design for the new The New York Times headquarters that are being constructed in Manhattan. I ate breakfast and then made the usual tour of Russian History lecture, 20th Century Italian Art, Shakespearean Drama, and Russian History discussion.

The first two classes came off without a hitch, but in Shakespearean Drama, our professor decided that we needed an in-class dramatic reading to more fully appreciate the hilarity of the Pyramus and Thisbe play-within-a-play in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Volunteers were few, and the professor became rather animated in his attempt to find a Pyramus. I was sitting two-thirds of the way back, but there I was with a huge grin on my face, being amused by our professor's antics, and that's what did me in. He picked me out of the more than a hundred students in the room, and I found myself, a math major, reading Shakespeare to a room full of English majors and feeling altogether jittery about the whole thing. I think I did alright, really. I switched two words, added a 'the,' and mispronounced 'vild,' but I must have read ten or fifteen lines for each of those three mistakes. I'm not cut out to be an actor and certainly not a sight-reader.

I continued to be rather verbal in Russian History discussion and enjoyed that class. I had an hour or so back here to get started on my math homework before I set off for the Elvehjem Art Museum for my fifth class, European Architectural History. I got to drop in to the office of my professor for a few minutes before I attended a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum, and consumed some very good cranberry bars and raspberry punch. By the time I got home, it was time for the final presidential debate, in which both candidates were their strongest yet. I've been working with mixed results on my math homework, but it's time for bed now.

Compatibility

Okay, Firefox and Safari users, it may not be pretty yet, but I think I've managed to get The Life and Times to work in your browsers. I'm sorry it took so long.

Masterful Production

Fatboy Slim's newest album, Palookaville, came out a week ago today, and I've been listening to it a couple times a day since Thursday. It is a truly impressive piece of music, an equal to its critically acclaimed predecessor Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars. The album has a lighter feel, as if Norman Cook (a.k.a. Fatboy Slim) was imagining a party on a secluded beach instead of one in a jam-packed dance club. Palookaville takes another step away from Slim's first two more purely techo/remix albums Better Living Through Chemistry and You've Come Along Way, Baby. As it turns out, the general absence of big beat grooves like "The Rockefeller Skank" or "Ya Mama" isn't at all problematic. The first single, "Slash Dot Dash," fills this position somewhat, but the other 11 tracks support themselves just fine with catchy lyrics and a variety of talented vocalists. With Palookaville Cook has shown he his a multi-faceted artist, and I can only hope that his next album is not another four years away.

Master of My Domain

I managed to secure James-Lucas.net this weekend. (JamesLucas.com was selling for $950, JamesLucas.net belongs to a man named James Lucas who was uninterested in selling, and James-Lucas.com is in use by some artistic type.) I'm not willing to pay for hosting yet, so it will just be forwarding everyone to this blog for the time being. It fun to think of the possibilities, even if I'm still lacking the skills to realize them.

Intriguing Product

There's been a lot of talk in the post-debate discussions about how polarized our nation is at the moment, and it certainly seems true. I'm not really sure it divide along a Bush-Kerry line, but rather a pro-Bush-anti-Bush line. It's hard not to feel strongly about the man, one way or the other. Anyhow, in thinking about this, I recalled a rather intriguing product I encountered at Simon's Rock that not only smells nice but preaches unity.

The fourth Intriguing Product is Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap.

Rocker Reunion

Today I saw ex-Rocker Brian Ziff-Levine again, and he was able to regale Mike and me with numerous hilarious tales of our classmates during and since our time at SRC. Strange drug-induced behavior, improbable romances, and accidental pregnancies kept us entertained for an hour and (in my case) laughing hysterically for much of that time. Ahh...good times.

Also I downloaded a lot of bagpipe music. We'll see how long I continue to play it.

Since 1989

I had my second beer tonight, and this time it was a Keystone Light. From the Coors website I learned the following: Introduced in 1989, Keystone Light is a refreshing light lager that is Always Smooth, Never Bitter™. Keystone Light is 4.2% alcohol by volume and has 104 calories per 12-ounce serving. It was fairly weak and thus easy for a novice beer drinker like myself to down. I didn't choose it; I was visiting my friend and art history classmate Nat, and one of his engineer-suitemates thrust the can into my hand.

Our water is consistently clear again, but the chain in our toilet broke, so we're reduced to flushing it by hand. I'm glad these problems didn't overlap, because this is unpleasant enough. I've decided to leave my Live Strong band on the shelf for this weekend, since I don't like the idea of dunking it in the questionable tank water. It's the first time I've made a conscious decision to not wear it since Rachel gave it to me in New York. It's weird not having it on my wrist, I've grown so used to it.

The Value of Uncertainty

After mulling over the things that President Bush and Senator Kerry were saying about anti-terrorism tactics, I decided that the discrepancy could be fairly well captured with the following allegory: If Bush and Kerry were trying to protect a house from a gang of armed robbers, Kerry would grab a shotgun and patrol the house, moving from room to room, checking all the doors and windows. President Bush would take a bazooka and keep it trained on the toilet. Kerry would acknowledge that yes, a toilet could prove to be a breech in security and yes, it is a pretty nasty little hole, but he'd stress that it's not the opening to be concerned with just now. And I suppose Bush would in turn call Kerry's cautious patrolling of the house "flip-flopping."

Hydration

The City of Madison has been flushing all of the hydrants over the past few days. While I'm glad to see that fire safety is a priority, it has been quite trying at times. Our water has been repeatedly turned brown as the process stirs up mineral deposits in the water mains. At home in Maple Grove, we were usually affected for a single afternoon each year. Here, for whatever reason, hydrants near us have been flushed over the course of the work-week. This morning was particularly bad, as the problem compounded with our normal water-related vexations of rather warm "cold" water in the kitchen sink and rather cool "hot" water in the bathroom sink. Ultimately I ended up wandering around in my bathrobe while running the shower and both sinks to get clear water of the appropriate temperature in each one. It really made me feel appreciate living in a place where I have enough water to cook, clean, and drink, and made me feel a little guilty about being picky about the mineral content and temperature. I've been doing a little reading at The Water Page. It's an interesting, although often sad topic.

Lifeguard Training and First Aid

I passed the pool portion of my test, and found the 500-yard swim to be a piece of cake. And I came in second, only 50 yards behind the frequent swimmer. Due to the small size of our class we needed much less time to than the allotted two-and-a-half hours, so we were given the chance to practice each rescue. It was rather nice, although we ended up going long as a result. With the Red Cross stuff included, I was in class for 445 minutes today. I have a major headache, mostly from the pressure of twelve feet of water; I'm headed straight to bed.

CPR for the Professional Rescuer

I've just returned from the Badger Chapter American Red Cross, where I recertified in CPR for the Professional Rescuer. It was a small class and we burned through the skills tests by combining all the scenarios that we could into three long ones (adult, child, infant), thus avoiding repeating the very basics ("check the scene to see if it is safe") over and over. I have an in-the-water skills test on Wednesday to renew my 3-year lifeguard certification. It's hard to believe it's been that long. It's also hard to believe that the certification I earned for CPR/AED in May is completely redundant now. I couldn't have avoided it, but I sure wouldn't mind having the money back.