For Unhappy Spouses Everywhere

I took this picture today near Conneaut Lake Park and I thought I'd share it with you.

Go Away Duck!

Who You Are And Where You Belong

I miss the mutant food court.

I miss the homeless guy in the corner eating his club sandwich and stroking his thick, scratchy beard.

I miss the stairs and the way they creaked on the way down but not on the way up--perhaps a kind of alerting system for the mutants as to detect intruders.

I miss the table I always sat at and the cryptic poetry scribbled all over it in ink so thick that even after years of being there it still got on your arms.

I miss the little old lady at the juice bar that no one ever went to.

I miss the walls with the peeling paint, the floors with the deep, black scuffs, and the windows that looked out over nothing at all.

But most of all I miss the companionship. I miss the simple fact that none of us really belonged there. Despite the fact that we were all outsiders we always came back. Maybe we just wanted to see that the place was still there. Maybe we needed to know that there was somewhere in the world just for us. But maybe, just maybe, the reason we always came back was to see those we knew would always be there. To see the people who we might never have seen--who might never have existed--if we hadn't peered down into the darkness and decided to find out what was below. But we knew. We all knew. What we would find--what we all eventually found--was the one thing we always knew was there.

And I miss it.

Chocolate Milk = Love

My roommate won’t get me chocolate milk. He’s going to McKinley’s and he won’t get me chocolate milk even though I want some.

In other news, physics lab today blew. The whole thing was slightly interesting except for the fact that it wasn’t. I mean, getting to see that equipotential lines actually exist and aren’t just a figment of Dr. Petasis’ imagination was cool and all but I think I understood the concept after about q = +4.00 nC. By the way, nC is not a unit of time but I figure if Han Solo got away with saying a parsec was a unit of time I can work it like that too.

But today wasn’t completely bad. Jon, Sarah, and I spent ample time at the playground north of Crawford Hall after the fantastically awesome picnic in Brooks Circle. I rode on the purple dinosaur for a good portion of the time but split the remainder of my time evenly between the fire chief car and the airplane that looks like a whale. I also rode the swings for a bit but decided to get off when a family came to the park to have an outdoor meal (I would normally just say “picnic” instead of “outdoor meal” but I already used the word “picnic” once in this thing so another time might be slightly awkward). The family had a little boy and he was really good at golf. He had this big, blue, plastic golf club that I doubt was regulation size by PGA standards but I’ll let it slide.

I also learned today that the dopamine producing neurons in the substantia nigra that are killed resulting in Parkinson’s disease are destroyed by means of laser death ray. While this may seem far-fetched at first, when you really think about it it’s not that crazy of an idea.

Well that’s all I have to say at this point in time.


P.S. My roommate just got back from McKinley’s and he brought me chocolate milk!!!

Run-in With The Man

I was throwing a lacrosse ball against the back of the Wise Center today and a security guy drove up in his van and told me to go somewhere else because there were windows around. I told him that after playing lacrosse for 12 years I think I know how to avoid windows but this only made him angry. He told me to go around to the parking lot side and throw the ball there but I told him that I couldn't because the bricks weren't smooth enough. Oh well, I still got about two hours of throwing in and it was a blast.

Also, at one point the ball hit a crack between bricks and the ball flew off into the ravine. I went down to retrieve it and it was very exciting. I got to jump across the water and everything. I felt like an Aztec or maybe a Mayan or Incan.

Tomorrow I'll go back and if the security guy comes by again I'll just run. Anyway, tomorrow is Wingfest and such.

I Think I'm Obsessed With Quiznos

I had a dream last night which wasn't really like a dream at all. All the dream was was a flashback of late August when I was at Quiznos. I naturally wanted the Mesquite Chicken sandwich but the guy behind the counter told me that people preferred the new Chicken Milano 10:1 compared to any other thing on the menu. Now that's pretty good for a sandwich so I took him up on his offer and got the Milano instead of the Mesquite. I sat down at the table with my root beer and took a bite. Long story short, I realized that the sandwich I had in front of me was horrendously bad and I longed for my Mesquite.

Needless to say, I woke up from the dream crying.

The dream also reminded me that on that same day I had gone to the driving range and hit the ball picker-upper guy with a nice lofting 9 iron. This in turn reminded me of the time back when I was about 15 and had hit the ball picker-upper guy and he had gotten really mad and came over and threatened to break all my clubs.

P.S. Today in lab we induced Parkinson's disease in a rat.

Einstein Ain't Got Nothin' on Shafiqur

Today in thermo Shafiq told the whole class that I made a goof on my quiz. It wasn’t like a—Hey, guess what? Rob is an imbecile.—but more of a—Hey, guess what? This may be the only time you have the opportunity to score better on a graded assignment than Rob.
And that’s what I like about ol’ Shafiq, he’s not afraid to proclaim the superiority of one student over another. In fact, he’s not shy about proclaiming anything. Such memorable quotes include:

"Physicists are better than Nazis."

And let’s not forget,

“As a physicist, you have a certain responsibility to society, due to the fact that you are better than everyone else.”

In fact, there are many memories that come to mind when I think back on my time with Shafiq.

1. At our very first class Shafiq tells me that I should consider being a male cheerleader because I look strong and I could lift up all the girls. He asks the class if they agree.

2. Shafiq, seeing that my last name is foreign sounding, tells me in front of the class that he’ll go easy on taking points off for grammar and sentence structure on the first essay.

3. Shafiq comes into class on Halloween wearing a gorilla mask and asks for his treat.

4. Shafiq regails us with a tale about his childhood bb gun and how he shot a chicken with it against his mother’s wishes.

5. Shafiq tells us he’s having difficulty with his teenage daughter regarding clothes. He proceeds to have us list all the fashionable brand names on the board and asks if anyone in the class considers themselves stylish and would consider advising her on clothing decisions.

6. We learn about Shafiq's invention he came up with to give his sister an electric shock.

I'd list some more but I'm lazy. In conclusion, Shafiq is totally sweet.

The Eighth Plague Grandmaster

There are people outside my dorm room window sword fighting with foam weapons. One kid’s got a hockey stick, and while you’d think that would be unfair, it’s really not because everyone else has ganged up on him.

I’ve been playing a lot of chess lately. It’s computer chess. It comes with the Mac OS X operating system. It’s funny, Windows machines come with solitaire and other brainless games like pinball, but Apples come equipped with chess and chess alone. I really wish I could assert a correlation between the games that come with the operating system and the intelligence of those who use them but I can’t because I’ve met Roger Ebbs. Anyway, I’ve been playing a lot of chess lately and I’m really good at it. What usually happens is that I make a move, the computer takes my piece and I press the “undo” button so I can try another move. I keep doing this until I find a move that doesn’t allow the computer to take my piece and then go through the process again for my next move. Needless to say, I win a lot. I think I might graduate to playing biological organisms after a few more rounds of computer opponents. Maybe locusts. I think locusts would be the best insect chess players mostly due to the fact that they kicked so much ass in the Bible.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say for now.

"The Colors, Duke! The Colors!"

It didn’t rain at all today. It was nice.

The All College Celebration was yesterday and I didn’t go. I did, however, sneak over to the shindig at around 8:00 and swiped myself a few popsicles. They were those really good popsicles, you know, the ones that are long and cylindrical and have layers that are different colors and flavors. I’m pretty sure that they’re called “Lick-a-Color” and are made by Popsicle which is a subsidiary company of the Good Humor corporation. In fact, I’m not just “pretty sure,” I’m actually “completely confident” that this is true because I just finished researching it on the Internet.

The outside doors on my dorm are locked because there is nothing of interest here for non-residents such as a dining hall or super-fucking-sweet ping-pong table. We do have a ping-pong table but it is by no means super-fucking-sweet. We also have an air-hockey table but Vince lost the paddles last year and now we have to use our hands which tends to get painful. Sometimes we use ping-pong paddles instead, but that gets the ping-pong dudes kind of angry and I end up hiding behind the Pepsi machine, which used to be a Coke machine but was changed because Pepsi offered the college a better deal on soda which up here is called pop, in order to escape their wrath. Anyways, since the doors are locked, it’s very difficult for people who don’t live in this dorm to get access to the building. That is, unless somebody sticks a small twig in the outside doorframe by A-Tower which is often the case. So today I was in my room, which looks out over the hill leading up to B-Lounge, and I saw these two people trying to climb in the window. The first guy got in pretty easily because he was really scrawny. He also had a goatee. Have you ever noticed that a lot of little scrawny guys have goatees? Well, he got in fine but his girl friend which could quite possibly have been his girlfriend, was a different story. This girl was normal sized but she couldn’t quite get the hang of climbing in. She lay halfway through the window with her legs hanging outside for a little while and it appeared as if she was giving up. I, of course, didn’t want to see that happen so I opened the window to shout some encouragements and advice in her general direction.

“Pull with your arms!”
“Flail those legs!”
“Don’t give up!”
“Retrieve your purse!”
“Go! Go! Go! Go!”
“Stop, drop and roll!”

All in all I couldn’t quite understand why her friend couldn’t have just opened the door for her from the inside and bypassed the whole window struggle.

I had Sloppy Joes for lunch today and they were amazing.