Category: personal

AFK

I leave tomorrow (well, today, really) morning for Wisconsin for the rest of the week. Jancey and I are checking out Beloit College in the hopes that it will either be so wonderful that we will not mind spending the next few years in Wisconsin, or bad enough that we can be relieved that we don’t have to move to Wisconsin. Either way, it should be a good trip. I’ve never been to the state, so I get to check another one off my list. Woohoo.

Anyway, I don’t know what kind of internet access I’ll have while there, so I might not post again until the weekend. I know you’ll miss me.

My parting tidbit — looks like Bush picked Condi to replace Powell. This means, presumably, that any tempering effect the Secretary of State had over the last four years will no longer be applicable. One interesting note — Bush Sr’s SoS thinks it’s a bad move.

Unitarian Universalism

This morning my father and I attended service at the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg led by Reverand Howard Dana. I’d been there many years ago on the recommendation of a high school English teacher, and toyed with the idea of returning, but didn’t until I got an email from my dad asking if I’d like to go with him to check it out. When we sat down he whispered, “If they start talking about Jesus, we can leave.”

But Jesus was mentioned only once, and then it was in reference to him as a teacher, rather than him as God. This was balanced by the pastor’s use of words like “mazeltov” and “oy vey”. Instead, most of today’s sermon — entitled “The President of the United States” — focused on the election, dealing with disappointment, not being discouraged into inaction, and remembering that “this too shall pass”. It was a little startling to hear a pastor so strongly anti-Bush, and so unapologetic about it, but the sermon was well done. While Dana was clearly coming from a place of disappointment, his words were gentle and sometimes funny, recognizing the general feeling of despair in the congregation, and offering encouragement and hope. He seemed to be a man talking about what he felt, what he believed. But what surprised me most was that I wasn’t bored.

I’ve made fun of the Unitarian Church because they have no one creed, no core tenets, but I do admire their ideals, and it was heartwarming to hear the pastor lovingly call his congregation “godless intellectuals”. Waking up early enough on Sundays to make it to even the 11 AM service is not something that’s likely to happen with any regularity, it was a good experience and if I ever happen to be up early and have nothing to do…I might just go to church.

The start of a very long day…

I’m going to bed. I spent all day at the polls in Camp Hill and New Cumberland, and I’d like to believe that the efforts of MoveOn, my sister, my mother, and, to a lesser extent, myself, helped win Pennsylvania for Kerry.

Right now it looks like all the networks are calling Ohio for Bush — but CNN is holding out. Their argument is that the margin is less than the number of provisional ballots and that if the margin continues to narrow, it could become significantly less than the number of provisional ballots. Ohio’s Secretary of State says that Ohio law allows for the counting of provisional ballots on the 11th day after the election. Absentee ballots must be postmarked by November 2, but don’t actually have to be received until the 10th day after the election. So, at least at this point, it looks like we’ll be waiting a week and a half before we know for sure.

In other Election Day news, there were highly disappointing results in 10 states which approved amendments to their state constitutions banning gay marriage. These days it looks like maybe we are one nation under God after all, but it’s a highly divisible nation, with liberty and justice for some.

Not that I’m bitter.

Election Day

Of course you know this. Go vote.

I had trouble sleeping last night, partly because I was trying to go to bed far earlier than I normally do so that I could be up at 5:30 in the dark, but also partly because I felt a little bit like a kid on Christmas Eve.

I’ll be at the polls in Camp Hill and New Cumberland for most of the day, then to Johanna’s house to watch the results come in. Every time I have watched the results from Johanna’s house, the Democrat has won. I hope we continue the streak.

If you don’t know where to vote, try http://www.mypollingplace.com to find out. If you run into problems at the polls, call Common Cause at 1-866-MYVOTE1. If you have a voting emergency and must talk to a lawyer immediately, call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Then send me an email because I really want to know if anyone experiences a “voting emergency”.

Be safe tonight. Stop gnawing on your fingernails before bone is exposed.

Culture

Last night Kevin, Ben, Johanna, Jon, & I set out to get ourselves some culture, Harrisburg-style.

We began the evening at The Design Museum @ Fathom where they currently have a Chindogu exhibit. I like the idea of Chindogu. I enjoyed the exhibit at Fathom. The humor quotient was good. The art quotient was low. But if you need a bit of a chuckle and happen to be downtown on a Friday or Saturday evening, it’s worth the price of admission (which happens to be $0) and the few minutes it’ll take to peruse the items on display.

After checking out some of the crazy things the Japanese create, we headed across the street Miyako (nee Tokyo Express) to consume some of the wonderful things the Japanese create. While no sushi around here is of the blow-your-mind-delicious variety, Miyako is nearly as good as Sapporo East (my local favorite). They even gain a few points by being the only area sushi place I know of to also hold a liquor license. Despite the sluggish speed of the service we managed to dispose of an inordinate amount of fish and rice and left the restaurant ready to explode with culture.

The last stop of the evening was Shady McGrady’s where we took it upon ourselves to create some culture of our own. Meet Cigarette Man and his pet camel:

As you may or may not be able to see, he comes complete with argyle socks and curly chest hair. We’re artists, I tell you. Full of culture.

I should be asleep

The subject line pretty much says it all. I should be. But I’ve been neglecting my ever-faithful blog and I feel like rambling for a few minutes. Who cares if I have a Statistics test tomorrow.

I haven’t been updating lately both because I’ve been busy and because I just haven’t felt like I’ve got much of interest to say. So don’t expect this post to be interesting.

My busy-ness has a lot to do with my current enrollment at HACC (Harrisburg Area Community College for those of you not in the Harrisburg area), but not as much as it should. I was expecting that I’d at least have a little bit of trouble juggling 12 credits and my normal life, and while I have been neglecting some aspects of my normal life, I’m also rather underwhelmed by my classes. Of course no community college is really going to be a bastion of education, and I hate to sound like a snob, but I’m pretty appalled at the caliber of the courses I’m taking. The professors are not top notch, to say the least, but the bigger problem is the complete apathy of most of the students. I hear a lot of jokes about HACC being the 13th grade, but I was unprepared for how true it is. Two of my professors are pretty clear that they know better than to ask us to do any work and the other two seem to expect that we won’t but ask us to anyway. I have, at least once in every class, felt pressure to be stupid in a way I haven’t experienced since I left Red Land seven years ago. Meanwhile, the students all have that glazed over look that makes me wonder if anyone in the class is alive or if HACC has brought in a number of cadavers to make their enrollment numbers look better.

I hear a lot of good things about HACC. I am not questioning the integrity of the people who have related them to me. I guess the key is taking classes online or in the evenings when it’s a more adult crowd. Somewhere along the line I must have accidentally become an adult — I don’t know how I’m going to survive another semester of high school.

Anyway…The rest of my time recently has been spent hanging out with Kevin or working on a new site for The Circle School. Both are infinitely more fun than being at HACC, and I’m really excited about the CSS stuff I’m learning from Kevin for application on TCS’s site. I hope to eventually implement some of it here, too.

On a completely unrelated note, my mom keeps talking about this John Kerry quote that she loves, and while I’m nearly as underwhelmed by him as I am by HACC, I do like the quote.

“… not pray that God is on our side, … pray that we are on God’s side.”

Good night.

Wrath of God?

Florida’s Desperation Growing After Storm (washingtonpost.com)

Things like this make me understand the South a little bit better.

In Amarillo, TX, I saw a storm that came on so suddenly and with such fury that I thought I’d probably believe in a vengeful God if I lived there, too — there was nothing to do but pray as hail pelted the car and the water level in the streets rose to six inches in five minutes.

If I were in Florida now, as it gets slammed over and over, to the point that Dunkin’ Donuts trucks are being commandeered, I’d probably feel a need to believe there was a reason for that, too.

It’s all well and good to explain the scientific reasons storms develop, but science doesn’t do any good while it’s happening. Even if praying doesn’t actually do any physical good, well, you know what they say — any shelter in a storm.

Fireworks & Gmail

I’ve been such a slacker. Excuses: burn out after the trip, home very infrequently so internet access is scarce, taking classes full time stifles my brain, etc., etc. Two quick things:

1. Went to see the fireworks last night in Harrisburg. Pyrotechnic display itself was pretty good, even worthy of our quest to be considered a real city. The music accompanying the fireworks, though, seemed to be of a “Places I’d Rather Be” theme. Each song highlighted a different US city or region. IE, “New York State of Mind,” “Country Roads,” “Viva Las Vegas,” etc. I’m sure this was meant to be patriotic, creating a portrait of our entire beautiful and diverse country, but instead it just kind of felt like we didn’t have anything closer to home worth celebrating. It’s time to start acting like a big dog, even though that might, in some cases, seem even sillier.

2. I have 6 gmail invitations and can’t think of a single person to give one to. This makes me feel like I don’t have any friends. If you’d like one, or would even take one from me just to make me feel better, email me and I’ll hooketh you up.

Lines of lightning

I’ve just returned from Columbia, MD, where I spent the evening with Rich at a Counting Crows concert.  I saw them twice last year but didn’t think I was going to make it this summer since my sister, my normal CC partner, is out of town, but Rich offered to accompany me, so a great tragedy was avoided.

I’d never been to Merriweather Post Pavilion before and was leery of an outdoor venue as they aren’t as intimate, but, although it’s a different experience to see a band outside, Merriweather has good acoustics and huge monitors.  The only drawback was that I absolutely could not see the stage, but we were so far back I would have been able to see only tiny figures even with an unobstructed view.

The music more than made up for the lack of visuals, though, as it always does.  They played a great set, more acoustic than I’ve ever seen them (as Adam pointed out).  Adam seemed genuinely happy tonight, not in the sloppy drunk way he has purportedly been in the past, but in an at-peace-with-the-world kind of way.  He’s originally from Maryland and his family was in the crowd, as were a number of his friends from Berkeley, so that may have been part of it; additionally this was the last show they’re going to be doing for quite a while, so he may have also been feeling relieved — but I’d like to believe that he’s just doing better overall than he was 10 years ago after he suddenly became famous.

They played beautiful renditions of ‘Richard Manuel is Dead’, ‘Mrs Potter’s Lullaby’, ‘Omaha’, a great acoustic ‘Accidentally in Love’, and…well, just go check out the setlist.  It was all fantastic, but the highlight of the evening for me was their ‘Rain King’/‘Raining in Baltimore’ medley.  I was hoping they would play ‘Raining’ as it’s one of my theme songs when I’m feeling the peculiar loneliness of a long distance relationship (a recurring theme in my life currently in full swing), and their “song sandwiches” (I know, these are called alts, a terrible non-descriptive term) are one of my favorite parts of seeing CC live.  ‘Raining’ is a bittersweet song, perfectly suited to Adam’s bittersweet voice and the bittersweet feeling, and tonight’s version captured it wonderfully.  “Three thousand five hundred miles away / but what would you change if you could?”

Their final encore, ‘Holiday in Spain’, was perfect as well, and another song I’d been hoping to hear.  The note of wishful desperation usually present in Adam’s voice for this song was absent in lieu of the anticipation of his upcoming vacation written plainly across his face.

I’m sorry they aren’t planning to tour again any time soon, but I’m glad I was able to make it to the show tonight.  Sometimes I think that as I become less angsty I’ll stop identifying with the Counting Crows’ music and Adam’s lyrics — but it’s been nearly eleven years now and they still move me in new ways every time I hear them.

Easton Museum of Pez Dispensers

sunset chaser :: Easton Museum of Pez Dispensers

Jared came down from Massachusetts yesterday and today we drove 2 hours to Easton, PA to visit the Easton Museum of Pez Dispensers.

You see, Jared collects Pez dispensers. I briefly dabbled in it without getting obsessed, so he knew I’d be a good person to visit the museum with. Plus, I’m probably closer to it geographically than anyone else he knows. But anyway, when he suggested it, I figured, why the hell not?

It was a lot of fun. If you ever happen to be in Easton (yeah, right), I recommend it. The museum is basically one big room with 1500 dispensers displayed in a variety of ways. A lot of the dispensers have been re-painted or otherwise altered to create what they call “Fantasy Pez”. These are less authentic, of course, but it was fun to see what some people did with them.

I won’t waste a lot of time describing the museum as I took nearly a hundred pictures, most of which are posted in the gallery for your enjoyment, but it was clear that the proprieters love what they do and had a blast putting together all the displays. Because of that care, and the energy of the museum, I had a blast.