Sick day

I'm feeling ill today, I've had a cold for the past three or so days. I'm working from home, doing low-key things like reading articles and reviewing my projects.

When I was a little kid, I would get excited whenever Dad would take a sick day. Not that I wanted him to get sick, but I got extra Dad time. Even if Dad was lying on the couch, sipping ginger ale, holding a bucket close, just in case, I was glad to just be around him.

One time when Dad was sick, Mom and I were downstairs doing an experiment, we were learning about how water expands as it freezes. I asked Mom why, and she didn't know, so she sent me upstairs to Dad, who was lying ill in bed. I asked Dad why water expands as it freezes. Groggily, Dad told me to go get my Ramagon set.

Ramagon is a building toy that never took off; I have no idea where my set came from. It had a bunch of spokes that would connect to hubs. It was good for making truss structures. I made a bunch of little L's with the Ramagon, two spokes sticking off of a hub at right angles. Dad told me about how these L's are like water molecules, with the tips of the spokes representing hydrogen and the hub representing oxygen. Water, as a liquid, is a bunch of these L's sitting in a puddle, but, frozen, the water forms structures out of all of these L's stuck together, spoke to hub, hydrogen to oxygen, and that's why water expands when it freezes.

I let my rabbit out of her cage today, she's running around. I'm sitting on my futon, and she keeps jumping into my lab and nipping at the articles I'm reading.

Library card and flow

I basically spent Wednesday evening through through breakfast time on Saturday (that's lunch time in your timezone) working on writing fancy simulation code for my research. I had avoided human contact for three days, and had spent all my time talking to perfectly logical robots.

I had such a great time, feeling very focused, so I wanted to get a copy of Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I went to the Enoch Pratt Free Library, downtown, and walk up to the desk to apply for a library card:
"Can I get a library card?" I ask.
The librarian: "Sure, can I see some ID?"
"Sure." I hand over my driver's license.
"Is this your current address?"
"Not exactly, it's my parents' address, I can get mail there and everything, so it's no big deal."
"I need some ID with your current address on it."
I look through my wallet. Nothing else has any address of mine on it.
"Do you have a bill or a bank statement sent to your current address?"
"Yes, but not right here, with me."
"I need something with your current address on it."
"So, if I had come in here, and lie, saying that this is my current address, I could have a library card?"
"Yes."
"But I can't unsay that."
"Right."

Q How do you drive an engineer insane?
A Tie him to a chair and fold up a roadmap the wrong way.

If your system incentivizes people to lie to you, and this matters to you, you've failed at making a sane library-card-granting-system.

This event with the librarian gave me a headache. It took, literally, hours for it to go away. I needed to drink decaf coffee to mellow out. I never drink decaf!

I was upset out of proportion to the actual "tragedy". I didn't care because so much about the book that it deserved a headache. I was grieved because the reason why I didn't have it was so incomprehensibly irrational. I use less secure identification when I vote. The librarian vetoed my government ID, and would have preferred official mail sent to my house, which would have been easy to forge.

Arrgh!

PS I went home and requested a copy of the book over interlibrary loan. It'll be delivered to my campus soon, and I don't have to hassle with parking downtown to get it.

Puzzles and coffee

I was sitting in the coffee shop run by A New Faith Community. There were two little brain teaser toys sitting on the coffee table in front of me. I reached for one. The man on the couch next to mine reached for the other. I'm charmed by subliminal suggestion like that.

I was doing Sudoku puzzles. "Oh, are you doing Suhnookoo?" "Uh, yeah."

Meanwhile, other men were talking about people who consume a lot of sugar. Literally filling a glass half full with sugar, adding warm water, stirring, and drinking this sludge. Filling a coffee cup with sugar, then adding coffee to fill in the cracks. "It's like putting jumper cables to your head." "You can feel your pancreas shrivel." One of them got to talking about Sudafed, somehow.

"No, Suhnookoo," my companion corrected. I told him that it's Sudoku. We did matchstick puzzles and shared riddles. I can't remember the exact way he phrased his riddle, it seemed a little funny to me, but I found a sensible version here:
The man who built it doesn't want it
The man who bought doesn't need it
The man who needs it doesn't know it.
What is it?

Folding aluminum foil

One time, when I was a kid, my brother, Spencer, and I went over to our neighbor, Matt's house. He was called Matty then. Or Mr Matty-Mo. Matty got out a roll of aluminum foil, and tore off strips an inch wide for each of us. We folded the aluminum foil in half, then in half again, and so on, and we tried to see who could compact their aluminum foil into the smallest ball. Eventually, we were chomping down on the foil with our teeth. When we realized that it was physically impossible to further compact the aluminum foil, we shrugged and went on to the next thing, making paper airplanes or pretending that the floor is lava.

www.toothpastefordinner.com

Auntie

We drove up the dirt road to the farmhouse. It was after midnight. We were greeted by a Saint Bernard, Rufus, who ran up to me, and almost knocked me down. When we got in, Auntie gave me sugar cookies and hot chocolate. I got into my pajamas, the ones with the feet, and went to the bed she'd gotten ready for me. The next morning, I woke up, very late. Auntie had already gone out and gotten eggs and fresh oranges. She made me an omelet with cheese and mushrooms. I thought mushrooms were gross, but I ate the omelet to be polite. I decided that I like mushrooms, after all.

Mike the Jehovah's Witness

Mike was probably my best friend at my high school. We had a lot of classes together, but we got most bored in government class.

Mike had a little watch that didn't have a band; instead, it Velcroed to the inside of his binder. We'd start class each day by Mike placing the Mafia watch in the pencil tray, as we sang, 'Mafia Mafia Mafia'.

We drew pictures. We drew pictures of Mr Miller, our health teacher, patronizing Lazy Joe's Used Food Store. One time, Sra Stevens, our Spanish teacher, was gone and we had a sub. The sub passed around an attendance sheet. We signed our names, but added names for some people who were technically not in our class, like Amanda Hugginkiss and Mike Rotch and Lazy Joe. Sra Stevens teased us about this when she got back. 'Who is Lazy Joe?' Mike and I mumbled something about Lazy Joe's Used Food Store. Sra Stevens was disgusted. Brian said, 'Yeah, you know Lazy Joe's Used Food Store, it's in Aberdeen, out on Paradise Avenue.'

One time, Mr Miller had a substitute, and Mike was taking his class at that point. The substitute was lax and let the students go through Mr Millers cabinets. The sub had a very fine beard. Some of the students found vaseline and rubber gloves. After that, I would say, 'Hey, Mike, I hear that Mr Miller's breaking out his vaseline and rubber gloves.' 'I bet he's going to grease down the floor. Wheeeeee!'

Mike and I rode the bus together. That was scary. Our bus driver, Miss Doris, would stretch her fingers when the bus was stopped, in such a way that we presumed that her hands had arthritis. We were sure that eventually her hands would fall apart and the steering wheel would slip and the bus would careen into a ravine.

Richard rode the bus, too. One time, he sprayed me with Victoria's new perfume. Sometimes he threatened me with violence.

Mike tells me that, the year after I quit high school, they were riding the bus to school, and Richard was throwing trash out the window for no reason. Trash! Like a disposable water bottle and paper towels. Miss Doris' bus was stopped next to another bus at a stoplight, and the driver of the other bus rolled down his window, and told Miss Doris that someone on her bus was throwing trash out the window. Miss Doris yelled, 'RRRRRICHARD!'.

Mike and I went to the tech high school; this school was populated primarily by losers, so when I say that we ate at the loser table in the cafeteria, this means that we were the losers that lost out on even being losers. I would buy the school lunch once a week. One time, I got macaroni and cheese. I scooped a hole in the macaroni, poured in ketchup at the condiment station, then covered the hole over with more macaroni. When I returned to the loser table, I stabbed the macaroni and my friends were amused to see it bleed.

Mike the youth leader

Mike was a funny youth leader. Most youth leaders fit into at least one of three categories.

1. Seminary graduates who haven't gotten jobs as pastors, and are trying to use the job as a stepping stone


2. Parents who want their kids to be able to hang out with other kids, but not unchaperoned. I've been to youth group meetings where there were more parents than kids.


3. Burned out druggies who became Christians. These are the best youth leaders, because they tell stories about drugs and promiscuity and living under a bridge; these stories always end with, 'But that was before I was a Christian.'.

Mike didn't have a crazy troubled past that I can recall; he had been married, but divorced, he no kids. He just cared about teenagers. He was middle aged, and didn't have a beard. He kept talking about how he'd been at a Newsboys concert before they made it big.

He was our youth leader when the hip contemporary church was still young, so there were about five kids in youth group. Four of us were well-behaved kids of well-behaved church people, but the fifth kid, on any given week, was some kid from a tough home life who Mike had befriended, because this kid needed a grown-up friend who was stable.

We ate a lot of Doritos and ice cream, and we drank a lot of Mountain Dew. Somehow, I'd always get to sleep on time. I don't know why I'm so much more sensitive to caffeine now than I was when I was 14.

After a couple of years at the hip contemporary church, Mike moved to a house in the middle of the woods in Virginia. He was able to hunt on his new property.

Jus chillin

I think my high school government teacher, Mr Milanoski, is a libertarian. At least, his teaching led me to libertarianism.

One time, we had an exercise about the government's involvement in our lives. Mr Milanoski told us to write down everything that we did on one day, and then to figure out how each thing we did was connected to the government. For example, watching TV was affected by the FCC, or eating a snack was affected by the FDA. Mr Milanoski asked us if anyone did anything that didn't have to do with the government.

Riley said he had something.

'What?' asked Mr Milanoski.

'Yesterday afternoon, I was jus chillin.'

'Were you doing anything?'

'No, jus chillin.'

'Were you watching TV?'

'No, I was jus chillin.'

'Were you inside? Was the air conditioning on?'

'Jus chillin.'

Fire at 216 South Stricker Street

As I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, I saw flashing red lights and heard sirens. This is not unusual for me; I live three doors down from busy Pratt Street, and I often wake up in the middle of the night to sirens. Except, this time, they weren't going away.

I hopped out of bed, grabbed my phone and keys and a cardigan, popped on some flip-flops, and bolted out the door. I thought the fire was on Carey, a couple of blocks away, and I would have an interesting opportunity for some citizen journalism.

As I opened the door, I was hit with the smell of smoke: 216 South Stricker Street, a boarded up house across the street from mine, was on fire.

I talked with my next-door neighbors‚—'Which house is it? What's happening? What caused the fire?' They pointed out the house, but didn't know why the fire was started. I still don't know.

I ran upstairs to wake Matthew—he slept right through the noise. He didn't come down to watch the fire—he said he had to sleep.

I went back out the door. I met Angel, a neighbor from around the corner. She had come to check on her mom, who lives on my block. She shared a cigarette with Rudy, another neighbor I'd not met before.

The firemen had to cut down the front door with an electric saw because there wasn't a proper door—this was an abandoned, boarded-up house.

'Crazy shit' was a line that I heard a lot.

When I introduced myself to Rudy, he said that I sounded Irish.

I try not to sound like a PhD student to my neighbors. I try not to walk around the neighborhood wearing polo shirts, because my neighbors mostly wear T-shirts, and I want to blend in. I normally annunciate carefully, but when I talk with my neighbors, I try to mumble more and I guess I sound funny. Irish, though?

I mentioned to Rudy that I know a man who lives in abandoned houses. I hope that this man I know isn't the one who started the fire. I hope he's okay. Rudy suggested that the fire had been started by someone using candles to get some light and heat. Rudy was angry that someone would do something like that, lighting candles without proper candle holders, because that's how fires get started—it's irresponsible.

I told Rudy that I'm not Irish, I'm from the burbs. 'The burbs?' he said, 'We've got burbs right near here.'

'I'm from Bel Air, the burbs burbs. If my parents' house were to burn down, then it would just burn down. Here, if a house catches fire, it can send a whole block up in flames.'

There were eight fire trucks there by the time the fire was put out. Only one hose truck and one ladder truck actually did anything. The firemen got out a stepladder and broke the windows on the third floor. Smoke came billowing out.

I find the Internet terribly stressful.

When I was thinking about moving into this neighborhood, I was taking a walkabout, and one of my neighbors-to-be called out to me. 'Hey, you!' I didn't pay any attention—why would a stranger talk to me? It turned out this guy, Jimmy, wanted to show me how he'd opened up his garbage can, and saw a rat twitch at the bottom. He had been startled. It turned out the rat was dead, and had twitched because of how Jimmy had shaken the can as it opened. That dead rat immediately made my life more interesting, and I'm glad that Jimmy stopped me.

On the Internet, there's oodles of dead rats. The only dead rats that matter are the ones that are the most dead or the most ratty or the ones with the most witty captions written in big block letters with drop shadows.

I think a lot about whether I'm reading the blogs that are the funniest or most interesting or most edgy or most entertaining. I always have dozens of tabs open in Firefox, and I'm always switching between them. It's rare that I'll just sit down and read an article all the way through. I have thousands of unread posts in Google Reader.

When I read my friends' favorite links on Delicious, I don't pay attention to who sent me which link.

I don't care if a blogger lives next door to me or in South Africa, I care if what they say interests me. In cities, stuff matters because it's close to you. I had spent fifteen minutes, earlier this evening, talking with my next-door neighbor, Darryl, about a puddle.

On the Internet, stuff only matters if it's interesting, if it stands on its own two feet. This is why I'm diligent about defriending people on Facebook who aren't either interesting acquaintances or real friends. I don't want to read 25 things about someone I don't really know who isn't witty.

As the fire died down, people scattered. The only ones left on my block were me and two men with beards, smoking cigars. One of them had a hat that said, 'Take the edge off'; the back of his red jacket said something about the NRA pistol team. Another man walked up, they gave him a light; he walked on. One of the cigar smokers dropped the remnants of his cigar into the puddle that bothers Darryl and me so much.

I think a lot about how it takes a long time to read books, so I should take my time to pick the best books to read.

Today, I was stressed out, so I went to the McKeldin Library at College Park, where I'm taking classes this semester, to find a better translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra—I had read that the translation that I have (by Thomas Common) butchers the language. I couldn't find a good copy. I wandered around the campus and I accidentally found a farm. I stopped and watched the sheep and pigs, and I took pictures. It was good for me.

It's stressful finding the most interesting stuff. I can spend hours on the Internet, because I think the next thing to pop up will be more interesting than the thing before. It never is.

It didn't matter that I wasn't looking at the most interesting pigs—any pigs are interesting if you've not seen a pig in months that wasn't in bacon form.

If I write because I like the act of writing, I can write whatever I want. If I want to get published, though, I need a voice. I need to say something new. I need to say something shocking. This is true of my research work and of the books I want to write—if I'm not novel, if someone else has scooped me, I don't matter.

So, Darryl and I had been talking earlier this evening, a couple of hours before the fire. Our street doesn't drain properly, so there's a puddle in front of the house on the corner. The water is stinky and draws rats. Darryl periodically tries to sweep the water down Pratt Street. I told him I'd call the city—it's their responsibility to make sure the street drains properly.

Darryl and I also talked about how people leave litter on the street and how that draws rats. There are a lot of boarded-up houses on our block, and a few houses being flipped. The housing market is bad, so these remodeled houses are just sitting there, not being properly monitored—one of the houses being flipped has been broken into, and the owner isn't doing anything about it. I used to not care much about boarded up houses, and I'm not looking for the most boarded-up house on the Internet, but the four boarded-up houses across the street affect me, especially when one of them catches fire.

With water draining from the hose truck, the puddle was bigger than it had been since the snow melted. Sorry, Darryl. I'll call the city in the morning.

After all my neighbors left and the firemen had packed their hoses away, the firemen stood in a circle, telling stories. They were in the middle of the street, and I was on the sidewalk, and I knew I couldn't just walk up and listen. Still, I overheard one of them say something like, 'Did you see that woman around the corner go like...'