Seagulls

As I left my apartment this morning I got the feeling that I was forgetting something. I wasn't 30 steps past my front door when I realized that I had forgot my cell-phone. And wallet. And keys.

Fortunately, this has happened before I I have come prepared: I always keep my Bart cards in my computer bag. What if I forget my computer bag, you might ask? Well, I have no business going to work if I don't have my computer with me.

While at work I saw Lisa on Google chat. She let me know that the Whole Foods next to our place is opening Wednesday. Hooray! Lydia is so happy she's throwing a party.

Walking home today I saw two seagulls eating muscles. When I walked by I scared one of them away from it's prize and found that though (s)he had still been picking at it, it was empty. Stupid seagulls.

It's hard to use celery in the amounts it is usually sold in. My trick: celery soup.

This annoying world

Very often I find myself in situations where I'm expected to just know things that I don't in fact know. For example, what is the proper etiquette for riding a bus? You can pick up pretty quickly that sometimes you have to pull the cable to let the bus driver know, but sometimes the bus driver just stops of his own accord. How do you know which stops are required and which have to be asked for? And when are you supposed to pull the cord? Is it anytime after the last stop? Well, that makes sense if there are a limited number of "optional" stops (which are presumably widely known to everyone in the world but me). But maybe the bus driver is willing to stop just about anywhere. If that's the case you should pull the cord at the last possible moment so (s)he doesn't stop too early. But now you're in the business of gauging how quickly the bus driver can stop. Come on now! I've driven a van before but I have absolutely no experience driving a bus.

This happens a lot in my life. Am I particularly absentminded? Perhaps. Bu either way I'm stuck in a world where other people honestly think I should already know X,Y, and Z and plan on me knowing X,Y, and Z, and when I don't I'm the big jerk. I can't get mad at them since when they explain it slowly it makes perfect sense.

"Haven't you ever noticed that I always leave the house at 7:20?"

"No. I can honestly say that I've never noticed that before."

A short scene dramatizing my predicament:

Me: Which way do I turn the screwdriver to get it to go in?
Person: How do you not know that? Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.
Me: What does that even mean? The screwdriver is spinning. When I turn in this clockwise the top goes right but the bottom is going to the left, when I go counter-clockwise its the opposite.
Person: It applies to the top part, duh. It's much more obvious in dreamspace.
Me: I don't remember my dreams.
Person: Well, sure. But you can remember the ones you saved, right? By thinking about the red button?
Me: What are you talking about?
Person: How do you not know how to navigate dream-space using the quest button. My cousin figured it out and she's only 1 month old!
Me: That doesn't make any sense. How can you even talk to a one month old child?
Person: Jesus Tom. You don't have to talk to them: when they find the red button they glow turquoise. How do you not know this? Oh my god! Look, saber-raiders! Quick Tom! Higentate the flew-maven! NOW!

This annoying world!

Jury Duty

I had jury duty yesterday. Though it was a little lame to fall behind on my office work, I looked forward to doing my civic duty. After arriving late I filed into the court room with everyone else and the judge started an altogether too long speech about how they hoped to not waste our time. I was called up as prospective juror #1. Having a last name nearer the end of the alphabet I was a little surprised to hear my name called first. (Did I change tenses too often in this paragraph?)

The defense attorney and the prosecutor gave their speeches and it soon became clear that the case involved felony burglary of an auto and it was strongly implied that the prosecution only had one eye-witness. We were eventually asked if we had ever been the victim of similar crimes and I offered the story of the time my bike was stolen (not quite the same, but close enough that I wanted to mention it). I think the prosecutor decided to nix me when I explained how I was unable to give a good description of the two losers who stole my bike half an hour after the event occurred.

Additionally, I finally realized how best to solve one of the fundamental problems with my bubble game: extend the ListIterator to return the vertices at the appropriate end-points! Will this make the game faster? I don't know. It will cut down on the code though.

Friends!

My friend Heidi - who is too modest even to tell her next door neighbor that she has a blog - has a blog. Check it out. It features Zack with a pancake on his head. 'Nuff said. Additionally, the musical she wrote is getting a reading Oct 1... in New York. La de da! If you're going to be there, be here.

My friend Eric Vogler - the one person I can count on to follow this blog - should get a blog. This means you (if you are Eric Vogler [who you most assuredly are]). I suggest LyricFlugeler.blogspot.com. As you may know he's a talented musician. I'd think that would require a website but apparently not; he does good business without one. He is available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.

In a flagrant abuse of editorial power I will use this space to invite Zack to cook with me Saturday. What should we make? I say the cuisine of the American South looks inviting. Collard greens anyone?

Lisa and I have been entertaining house guests for the past couple days (including Peter from Decadence fame). We just bought a Tempurpedic so we have a spare mattress for them. In fact, since the Tempurpedic is replacing two mattresses we were able to offer our house guests another mattress when the first one was too soft for their liking.

I recently received a book from Amazon. I didn't remember ordering it but I remember that Kevin recommended it and was supposed to loan me his copy last time I saw him (though he forgot to bring it because he was getting married that day). I figured I must have ordered it and forgotten about it. Either way I enjoyed The Golden Age. It featured an extended subplot about people editing out certain memories. Perhaps that's what happened to me because I in fact never ordered the book. It turns out Kevin did. Thanks, Kevin!

The other day when I was sitting around waiting for the radioactive eggs to digest I stopped by campus to see the ol' squelch office. It's still pretty much like I remember it. In fact, Derek Yu's first squelch drawing is still posted!

Radioactive scrambled eggs!

Though my heartburn is a lot better now my doctor's an I still want to get to the bottom of it so today I had some radioactive scrambled eggs so they could photograph my stomach in various states of digestion. Tasty!

Actually, no. Not tasty. Never were scrambled eggs served with such little care. I wasn't expecting an omelet station - still.

My birthday was last week and it was awesome. Thanks for coming, y'all. Also, my friend Brett threw a photo scavenger hunt. This one was for "I think I'm going to need a presidential pardon."