I Know What I Did Last Summer

Today is September 12th.  This date officially marks the end of my summer - it's time to get down to business.  I can't really remember when the last time I posted was.  I just know it was a while ago.  Thus, I give you an update on this most significant of days, explaining what I have done for the past six weeks, and more importantly, what I plan to do for the upcoming months.

Sometime around July 20 I boarded a bus in Portland, ME and drove to Boston, MA where I boarded a plane to fly to Baltimore, MD where I got off a plane and boarded another one where I flew to Dallas, TX where my aunt picked me up in the airport and I boarded a car and was driven to her house.  I spent a few days in Dallas, going to cool places like the Apple Store, the Nasher Museum, Primo's,  and a place that served a lot of obscure beers (I forgot the name, but if I remember this topic I will explain why this does not matter).  

Sometime around July 23 our fellow stadium-mate John Vigeland drove the Lexus From Texas™ across the vast expanse of Texas megalopolis from Fort Worth to Dallas, and retrieved me from my aunt's house.  We drove to a hare krisha temple where we were served vegetarian Indian cuisine and only requested to donate money.  The food was delicious and we were quite full at the end of lunch.  We spent the next few days in Fort Worth meeting John's friends, going to get ice cream at Braum's, and preparing for the Great American Adventure™.

On July 26, we awoke ourselves from our slumber at the early hour of 6am.  We packed the car, ate some food, and set out on our adventure by 7:30am, ready to conquer the Eastern Seaboard.  Our destination was Nashville, TN, as we had heard about an excellent blue grass jam session set to occur at 9pm that evening at the Station Inn (complete with blind banjo player!).  As we drove east from Fort Worth, we promptly got lost.  

We soon found our way back on track, set the cruise control to 75mph, and pointed the car towards Nashville.  We arrived approximately 12 hours later, enjoyed the blue grass jam sesh, local beer, and pizza, and then walked along Broadway for a bit.  Nashville is a sweet city.

Now, so as to not bore you all with a day by day description of our road trip and all that occurred, I will simply list out the next few stops because, frankly, typing out an extended description of each simply does not do the trip justice.  Check out the facebook pics if you want more.

1. Nashville, TN (already explained)

2. Marshall, NC (rafting the Pigeon, karaoke in Asheville, etc.)

3. Charlotte, NC (Halo 2 all day and laundry)

4. Richmond, VA (request further explanation)

5. Shenandoah National Park, VA (much needed respite from alcohol and civilization)

6. Washington D.C. (Elliot's pool)

7. New York City, NY (fuck the police... and the prices... and the tolls...)

8. Cherry Valley, NY (chilled in a debris hut)

9. Boston, MA (pretended to buy engagement rings, saw really cool ceramics)

10. Naples, ME (helped my parents move, rope swings, etc)

We stayed in Naples for like ten days and then went to Algonquin Park in Ontario, CA.  This drive took a long time, but the destination made the drive well worth it.  We stayed at my family's cabin for ten days and then we were off to Northfield!  We left quite early in the morning, and toyed with the idea of driving straight to Northfield (18 hours).  We would have accomplished this except for two things.  One, we got slightly lost and probably went about an hour out of our way, and two, we were detained at the U.S. border for about 45 minutes, suspected of carrying marijuana from Canada to the U.S.  I kid you not.  Let me explain:

Looking a bit scruffy, unkempt, and generally "progressive", John and I drove through Sault Ste. Marie, ON toward the American border.  We made our way onto the International Bridge, connecting Canada and the U.S. and were politely reminded by a road sign to "Smile!" because we were on camera.  We met the Border Patrol agent who politely asked for our passports.  We gave them to him, he took them into his little shack, and then told us to wait.  Another officer came out of a different building carrying a still-unidentified piece of metal equipment and strictly directed me to drive alongside him as he walked.  We were to pull into the garage bay that was open to our right.  As we pulled in, it became apparent to us that there were probably about nine other officers along with the previous two, all just chilling in this garage bay.  We were instructed to exit the car, walk to a table, and empty our pockets onto said table.

Having done so, the agent then rifled through our wallets, smelled my hat (wtf?), and the following exchange occurred:

Officer: Where are you coming from today?

Me: Algonquin Park in Ontario

Officer: Really.  Did you go to Hemp Fest?

Me: No, sir.

Officer: Were you anywhere near HempFest?

Me: No, sir.

Officer: How do you know each other?

Me: We went to school together.

Officer: What was your major?

Me: International Relations (should have said "horticulture")

John (interjects): I was studio art!

Officer: Who is the car registered to?

John: My father.

Officer: Well let's get this all straight.  This car is going to be searched completely.  If we find anything at all, you two will be headed to prison and the car will be seized.  I bet your father wouldn't be too happy about that.  So, let's make this easy.  If there's anything at all that we should know about or that you shouldn't have, tell us now.  Or else, this could get real messy.

Me:  I can't think of anything (nervous breathing, heart pumping out of body)

They search the car, and two funny instances occurred.  One, the dog freaked out at one point, clearly smelling something.  All the officers got a little excited, and it turned out that they found a box of Kashi Go Lean that we had sitting in the trunk.  Two, an officer was going through our stuff in the back seat and came across a plastic baggy full of tea leaves.  He held it up, examined it, and proclaimed, "Guys! I've found the mother lode!"

After they found nothing (phew!), we were free to go.  This, combined with taking a wrong turn later in the drive, forced us to stay at an AmericInn in Wausau, WI and drive the remaining four hours of the drive the next morning.  We arrived in Northfield on August 31, having completed 4789 miles of driving between July 26 and August 31.  Our road trip was effectively finished.

In Northfield, I helped John move in, chilled with Viveka a bunch, and just generally relaxed.  I avoided real life for twelve days, and awkwardly pretended I was in college again.  I ate at Tiny's, went to the Cow, went to the Reub, went to Ho Bro's, went to the Hideaway, ate Basil's gyro pizza (twice!), napped in Memorial while watching baseball, and tried to avoid walking around campus and being that guy.  I guess napping in Memorial sorta messed up that plan though.  Oh, I also got the new phone numbers for the yellow security phones for Memorial and Cassat.  Word.

But, all good things must come to an end and so too did my time in Northfield and my summer.  No longer can I avoid supporting myself and getting a job.  Right now, it looks as if I'll be moving to Minneapolis and working for a start-up I got involved with this summer.  Things will become a lot more clear in the coming week, and I will keep you all updated as to what is occurring.  In an ideal world, I will have solid plans at the end of this week and hopefully be moved out there by the end of the month.  Be optimistic.  

Coincidentally, the end of the month is homecoming.  I am doing my very best to make sure that I am back for that, as I would like to avoid being tarred and feathered, being banned from the blog, or having a penis drawn on my face with Sharpie.  I really want to be able to jump on Mark and Alfredo and BK while they sleep so soundly.

A couple good albums

I just turned in my first quantum homework set. It was a beast.

With that done I thought I'd take a little free time on a post.

There were a few music posts this summer, so I thought I'd contribute with two albums that I've been listening two quite a bit over the last month.

The first is the album Manners by Passion Pit. I've got a feeling that they may be to 2010, what MGMT was to 2008. I mean this in the sense that MGMT's debut came out in 2007, then in 2008 they started gaining considerable popularity on college campuses. I could see the same thing happening with Passion Pit. There are some similarities musically between MGMT and PP also, but the other band that came to mind when I first heard them was Chromeo. They both seem to have the same 70's/80's pop sensibilities. That said, PP is quite unique from these bands as well.

The singles are: "Sleepyhead" and "Little Secrets." Little Secrets would be the better pre-gaming a party song, and I will say that this song should be played when I visit for the alumni meet. (I have my flight ticket now, so you can save your sharpies).

The other top album songs that won't be sinlges are: "The Reeling," "To Kingdom Come," and "Make Light."

The other album is Up From Below by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. iTunes says that they are a 10-piece band, and you can hear it in their sound. They're a little bit folksy, a little bit hippie-ish at times, and always pretty good.

The single are "40 Day Dream," and (probably) "Home." I listened to 40 Day Dream a few times before I realized that I was tapping along in 6/8 time. This prompted me to start looking through my music collection seeing how many other songs are written in 6/8 that I didn't realize. It wasn't all that rare, but this one may very well be my favorite.

The other top non-singles are: "Janglin," "Carries On," and "Up From Below."

On the subject of music. Just read a pretty funny review (if you can call it that) of the Beatles complete remastered collection last night.

one time i moved to pennsylvania

Hi yall! So here’s the promised update.

Like many others on this blog, my past month has been commandeered by the forces of “Grad School” and “Moving.” There’s been a lot of tedious crap, like buying all my own insurance and wrangling with the PA driver’s registration people to get them to admit that I legally own the car that I legally own. But I did some graduate-level calculations and it turns out that the cool stuff about starting grad school and moving out on my own outweighs the bad. And as of last week I’m set up and good to go out here, so I’m pretty stoked.

I moved out here to central PA in mid-August, so I guess I’m almost up to my 1-month anniversary. I still don’t quite feel at home. I think the tipping point for when I’ve completely reset my home location is when I can completely zone out and just walk home. I cannot do this yet--I’ve walked/driven past my house a few times. Give me a week.

The move out here was decent. 1000 miles is longer than I’ve ever driven, and I was happy that our vehicles made it (and that my dad was able to do the return journey). I was driving a 93 Buick Century that my grandma gave me. I know, haha grandma car, but it was an excellent deal for yours truly because a) I got a free car, and b) my grandma is no longer a danger to the drivers of Illinois. You’re welcome Mark and Alfredo. The car itself is in almost perfect condition, and it has only about 37k miles. Additionally, I’ve found that I could reliably pick up women over the age of 45 with this car. This feature will likely go unused.

It turns out they ream you across the Indiana and Ohio turnpikes, fyi, I think I paid about $20 in tolls for those two states. Also, I know the Appalachians aren’t really super tall mountains, but driving on them in the dark, at the end of a 10-hour driving day, and surrounded by semi drivers with an apparant death wish is a tad harrowing. We did not crash, though, and were able to find our way to this weird outpost of civilization in the middle of nowhere known as State College.

State College is a small town, certainly not as small as Northfield, but still small. The weird part is that it’s very dense, and then drops off to nothingness at the feet of the mountains. So when you’re near campus or downtown, you feel like you are in a city. Also, the population of the city (non-undergrad) is listed on Wikipedia as being about 40k. There are about 38k undergrads on this campus. So you can imagine the overwhelming nature of anything they do. 

 Also, the whole “existence of a nightlife” thing kind of threw me too. There’s no shortage of bars and establishments with cover charges and scores of attractive people crammed in. And seeing all the house parties and frat parties around here on weekends (and not on weekends) has shown me that partying around here is really big business. PSU is the top party school in the nation, you know. We even had Tila Tequila and Tucker Max visiting last week, if you believe the school’s Daily Collegian. They also ran a hard-hitting story last week about some masked guy that was walking around masturbating in a girl’s dorm. I’m 98% sure this was not one of my roommates.

Speaking of which, I live in a decent house with two other astro grads. They’re both around 27, so I’m definitely the youngin around here. They’re both pretty good guys: one’s from India and one’s from Denver, and we get along well. The house atmosphere is orders of magnitude more subdued than Stadium 110, but I can cope with that. I will miss the 110 atmosphere though.

I’ve made some new friends out here too, which is always a good thing. All my fellow first years (there are 6 of us, 5 guys and 1 girl) are great, which is fortunate because I will be spending a considerable chunk of my next few years with them. We even share an office (right now), it’s friggin adorable let me tell you. Including my fellow first years, most of my friends are astro-related, but I’ve met a few other grads/undergrads and hopefully I can continue this so that I do not become an astronomy-obsessed hermit.

Of course, I’ve been doing a healthy amount of work since I’ve been here as well. I teach a night lab with 25 students, some of whom continually and incorrectly refer to me as “Professor Terrier.” At least in emails. This lab has been a lot of work and I’m not very good at teaching yet. I think with a few more weeks I’ll be alright; right now I’m kind of at a stage where I can either be coherent or time-efficient, but not both. My classes put out a lot of work as well… I’ve been doing lots of homework/reading. It’s all very interesting though, so I’m happy. Two of my courses are the core astro courses, one is a computer modeling course, and one is a seminar in exoplanets. I’ll be a friggin exoplanet exoexpert in a few months, try not to get too jealous. I’ll hopefully be starting research at some point this year also, but I haven’t talked to the people that I want to work with yet.  

So, I could write more here but it would probably bore you to tears. And I have to save some interesting stuff for next time. If you don’t want to read everything above, here’s the TL;DR: I moved to PA, I like State College, I like PSU, I’m making some new friends, there’s an assload of people here, and I’ve already started my ride on the speeding freight train of learning that is graduate school.

One final funny thought: the Collegian ran a story last week about guys in one of the frats cleaning a bathroom. They mixed bleach and ammonia, producing not a super-duper cleaning fluid but a cloud of chlorine gas that was five times the lethal concentration. No one died, but they did get sent to the hospital. PSU represent!  One things for certain: the campus paper at PSU kicks the snot out of the Carletonian.

Living in a Post-Stadium 110 World

Today is Labor Day.The unofficial and symbolic end of summer for many Americans, Labor Day also marks the beginning of the American football season. Add this holiday to the list of American holiday's that are not usually celebrated in the way they were originally intended. I'm not saying that it is necessarily a bad thing that we don't celebrate the industry and labor sector of our nation for which this national holiday was created for, especially since it was largely a political move in a time of labor unrest/strikes, the red scare, and scary economic times.

And although several schools of all levels have already started, forcing students to end their summers earlier and earlier each year, and the fact that Carleton doesn't start until Sept. 14th, I thought I would take time today to reflect on the past 3 months and to look forward to what lies ahead after summers end: the coming school year.

First, Summer 2k9:
I friggin love summer. When done correctly, a summer can be the best 11ish weeks of the year. Its sad that many grown ups do not have the vacation time that allows freedom to live as they want to, exploring desires, hobbies, possibilities, and places that they do not have time to do when controlled by their jobs. I'm so much happier and relaxed in the summer. Don't get me wrong, I love the school year and being at Carleton. But there is something to be said about having more time, and being in a less stressful environment.

Summer Camp kept me busy, although it was definitely the hardest year, because of new challenges that took the form of new roles/expectations as well as difficulty with supervisors. But I also think that if you stay anywhere in the same manner for 4+ years, you get antsy.

Then camp ended. And the past few weeks were relaxing, but also somewhat difficult. Living with either of my parents is much harder than anticipated, even for this short amount of time. But the weather has been just beautiful and Chicago and Oak Park from the hours of 5:00pm and 9:00pm is just beautiful.

Summer was great. But it is now truly gone. Oh, how I'll miss it. I'd write a eulogy, but I'll know it'll be back.

Now, Junior Year:
In a week, I'll officially start my Junior year at Carleton. As noted above, I will come to a Carleton where Stadium 110 does not exist. Because of this, I will try to live life in a manner that would make Stadium proud - abundant BBQs, Daily Show watching, debauchery in the form of stuffed onesies, all day drinking (to the fullest extent possible), looking classy, etc. [on a related note, I almost bought the StirCrazy that Toto owns... I still may the next time I go to Target]

So, what is Junior Year gonna look like?

• 12 potential freshman on the Swim Team
• A good amount of time in Northfield for Winter Training
• PUERTO RICO for our Training Trip
• BK in Hill
• Alfreddy on 2nd Burton with everyone else in the world who matters
• Me living in Dow in the same room that Paddy Foran and Ted Mullin lived
  
• My new job as one of the Head Lifeguards, meaning a lot of time at West and with Brooke/Andy
• More history courses
• Deciding whether to go through with the Teaching Licensure Program at Carleton
• Taking Piano lessons in the winter
  
• Figuring out about next summer...
• I'm a student rep to the Alumni Council - it may be a resume builder, but it actually might be cool too, we'll have to wait and see.
• Turning 21
  
• Hopefully reading more, eating healthier and flossing

It's going to be interesting year. To be honest, WHO KNOWS WHATS IN STORE? We'll just have to wait and see. Last year, I had no idea what to expect out of Stadium (in fact, I was a little nervous) and look how that turned out.

So Goodbye Summer - see you in 9 months - and Hello Junior Year - how the hell are ya?