inconveniences.

i just realized it is september and i cannot undertake my annual reading of LotR (i always start in september, get to Frodo's departure by sept 22, weathertop by oct 6 and then just read to the end) because my copies of the novels are packed away in storage because no one has bought my house.

bah. we need to move so i can get my books back.

out west.

i gotta say, eisenhower had a wonderful idea with those interstates. they may let you "drive across the country without seing anything" but i tell you, there isn't a lot to see. the craziest thing about the west/southwest is how flat everything gets and consequently how far you can see, even if there isn't a lot there. i am used the horizon being bounded by hills and mountains. storms roll sluggishly in from the west, first clouds, and then later rain.

out there it is so flat, you can see the storms miles away. the clouds seem to be dragging curtains of rain across the landscape. and when you have the cruise control set at 90mph, you run into those storms quicker than you would think :)

the rest of the pics from the trip are here.

7 states so far...

they get bigger out here.

drove through pennsylvania, the northern tip of west virginia, and half of ohio mostly in the dark. nothing to report there, other than that john digweed's bedrock 11 disc 1 is good for staying awake while driving.

southern illinois is the most boring so far. there is seriously nothing there. indiana at least had curves in the highway. and indianapolis. skyscrapers! civilization!

on the other hand, then you get to st. louis. i was actually kind of disappointed in the mississippi river up here, but the arch is pretty cool up close, and there's a nice park around it. the dog had fun.

so far only driven through oklahoma in the dark. first impression: flat.

we'll see what happens the rest of the trip.

go west, young... person.

in a few hours, i am leaving to drive my sister to phoenix, az to start her new job.

there's a reason they're called "flyover states" i'm pretty sure, being that i've only ever flown over them before. now i will be driving through them.

4 days with my sister and her 75lb labrador retriever.

it's going to be an experience, at least.

earthquake.

i find it deeply ironic that i never felt one in any of my visits to the west coast, but now one hits while i'm at home.

on the other hand, given the amount of time i spend here, i suppose statistics are in favour of it. still very weird. i wasn't sure what was happening, and then afterwards, i thought, was that an earthquake?

yes. yes, it was.

it even woke up the cat.

slippery slope.

i used to have a phone that was just a phone.

then we discovered texting is better than calling in many circumstances.

and i started syncing my calendar to my phone.

then i went back to school and discovered mobile email is useful when you're not at home for 11 hours a day.

and so is web, because you can check weather and train schedules. and read things when you're waiting for the train.

now i have an android smartphone >_<

unintended consequences.

saturday i was bagging my own groceries at the store, and finally an employee walked over to help. she promptly picked up the bag with the pie in it that i had carefully laid on its side to keep the pie flat and turned it vertical in the cart. i was like, "um, there's a pie in there, it's supposed to be on its side."

she said, "oh, you clearly know what you're doing," and walked away.

i was thinking to myself, yeah, and i can do this better than 90% of the people here because it was almost my first job. i did work in a grocery store in high school, starting as a bagger an chekcker like everyone, and eventually ending up in the bakery.

it wasn't my first job, though. that dubious honour goes to a job my mom got me when i was 14, working at a dry cleaner's for $5/hour cash under the table.

see, mom wanted me to go to work early. i guess to instill some kind of work ethic in me and help me learn the value of a dollar and a day's work.

i have spent most of my adult life trying to avoid working and figuring out how to get paid to go to school for the rest of my life.

welcome to summer.

i have 9 mosquito bites.

new jersey is a dangerous place.

"so now i am off to the doctor to get my turbuculosis test checked and start the hepatitis b vaccine series."

"are you going somewhere?"

"princeton."

still angry.

this has been going on for several months, and i have not yet made a post about it because it is making me angry and i was hoping it would go away.

several republican governors and members of various legislative bodies have decided that cutting funding to education would be a good way to balance budgets in this not-quite-post-recession era.

i'm going to say this as simply as possible: cutting public education is anti-democracy.

i wish i could engage in wild conspiracy speculation, but part of me is cynical enough to think it really is just short-sightedness.

however. a democracy needs an educated public to function. that's all there is to it. if your unwashed masses can't think critically, read at more than a third grade level, and understand statistics, you don't have a functioning democracy. you might have an oligarchy, or a plutocracy, but you don't have a democracy.

while i'm ranting, education isn't job training either, so mr. president, you can shut the fuck up about needing to graduate more engineers. no one needs to do multinational corporations' job training for them. their job is to train workers. the job of education - primary, secondary, and tertiary - is to educate citizenry who are able to use the limits of their natural intelligence.

admittedly, the united states as a country is anti-intellectual, so everything that's going on fits right in and no one really cares. except me, apparently. and this is my soapbox, and what else is the internet for?

besides cats, of course. i have no objection to cats.