Things that might be decidedly odd…

Another Friday

After getting up this morning and checking my email, I ended up giving Sarah a ride over to the place where she was getting her car inspected. I managed to make it back home in time to catch the bus to campus for late lunch. We went to Aladdin’s, which had a Mediterrainean buffet for $7.50. For a buffet, it was pretty good actually and I walked away impressed. Then came the GAMMA meeting, which like usual stretched out to an obscene length. Maybe I just have a short attention span, but we need to work on keeping the talks short and to the point. Endless questions about minutiae drive me nuts! Plus, my neck was hurting from having to turn my head to watch the presentation. There are only a couple of seats in that room that face straight forward at the screen and they were taken by the 3 faculty members. At one point, I stood up to watch so that I could look straight ahead.

From there I went to Kaffeestunde and got my weekly German speaking fix. Then I went to Bowman-Gray and got in 1550m (mostly crawl, but a couple laps of breast stroke were in there too). While there, I did a lot of flip turns and I can feel myself getting better at them. I started out in a 25m lane, but moved to a 50m lane after 750m (hence the extra 50m). At the very end, I swam 300m without stopping at all (flip turns at each point), which was awesome as well.

Tonight I’m planning to go out to the Wine Bar at 9 for an event put on by CAMP, which is basically a mailing list for GLBT grad and professional students at UNC. We’ll see how it goes, but there are at least 2 people going who I’ve met before so there should be somebody for me to talk to.

Tomorrow, is the big day of driving to West Virginia for river rafting. The plan is to leave around noon so that we can get to the campsite well before sundown. We raft on Sunday morning. It might be cold and wet, but I’m gonna have a good time regardless.

Intelligent Design

I was gonna leave a comment on Kendra’s blog, but there are mysql errors or some such nonsense.

Kendra writes,

the whole intelligent design debate is really starting to worry me. is america really becoming jesusland?

i understand that some people who have religious beliefs may feel threatened by secular society telling them that they are bad/stupid/wrong. i don’t think people should be harrassed for their beliefs, whether or not they have some or not. i guess it’s just the rational side of the small-l-libertarian beliefs. (since when do i have to preface libertarian beliefs with the stupid “small-l”? it’s stupid how quick some people want to jump on the libertarian must always mean thos libertarians.)

in an article, this quote by eugenie scott, the executive director for the national center for science education, really made me see what the real tension is:

“People don’t show up here (at the courtroom) because they believe evolution is bad science,” Scott said. “They show up because they believe that if they accept evolution, then they are abandoning their religious beliefs. They see it as an either/or proposition: Either evolution happened, or God loves you.”
until secular people understand this and respect is (more than they do now), then i think we will become jesus land. the more the liberals and other “enlightened” people ignore and refuse to give this problem its full weight, the less control they’ll have elsewhere.

We’re not becoming Jesusland. We already *are* Jesusland, at least with regard to whose voice is listened to in our federal government, who organizes and who actually votes.

Personally, I understand the believe evolution / God loves you dichotomy, although a lot of people prefer to just throw up their hands and say “those people are just stupid” rather than reason through why such beliefs are held. That said, I don’t respect this viewpoint at all for one simple reason: intelligent design has absolutely no place in a science classroom because it is simply not science. We can debate whether a class in comparative religion or philosophy or theology, which are appropriate topics for discussion creationism aka intelligent design should be offered in public schools. However, science is certainly not about claiming a theory for the origins of life based on something written in a book thousands of years ago. It’s not even about discounting the results of a huge body of experimental work on evolution through claims of life just being too complicated to have evolved. The question is not about who’s right on the origin of life. It’s about what is the proper curriculum for high school biology courses, more specifically is high school biology a science course or a theology course.

An Odd Day

Last night, I got really into finishing my homework for Math 221. I got most of it done, although there’s still a little remaining. It’s been a while since I’ve buckled down and gotten some actual work done (probably not since the VR deadline). More importantly though, it’s been a really long time since I had that innate interest and spark in what I was doing–the learning, the figuring out of things, that good feeling of accomplishment when something works. For lack of better words, I was “in the zone”. The problem was challenging yet I felt compelled to keep working on it, while enjoying the whole process. All in all, I need more moments like that so that I can get back on track with a new research topic. I realize now that it’s not so much the actual work that I’ve found frustrating and demotivating. It’s the process of finding a topic and feeling directionless that saps my motivation and enjoyment of doing research. Of course this all just demonstrates the paramount importance of having a good dissertation topic…

After class this morning, I went over to the pool and did a cool 1000m but this time in a 25m lane instead of the usual 50m ones which were both crowded. Although I do swim slower in the 25m lanes (I take more breaks because there’s more opportunity to stop), I made an effort to do flip turns whenever possible. Even better is that those lanes are in the shallow end of the pool (3 feet on one side, 4 on the other), which helped me deal with my problem of not going too deep in the water when doing a turn. I got in a lot of practice and feel much more confident about them in general.

This evening, I went and had dinner with some of the gay men and lesbians I’ve met recently through various campus outlets. We ate at Jim’s Famous BBQ and the food was pretty good. The whole experience just impresses on me how important it is that I meet more GLBT people and more importantly make friends with some of them. Don’t worry though straight friends who read my blog, you’re not going anywhere in my life, at least not those of you who are cool (:

Unfortunately, meeting new people is easier said than done. The main student group on campus (glbtsa) seems from what I’ve experienced to be lead by a cliquey group of undergrads. At the first meeting of the semester there were something like 70 attendees, but that dropped to about 30 by the second meeting. Perhaps people are being scared off. There are some nice people there, but the whole organization seems to be too incestuous and sealed off from the potential larger community. Recently, I found out that glbtsa is only a few years old, which surprised me since UNC is a fairly liberal campus and what not. Well, it turns out there have been several preceding student groups dating back to the early 70s. Apparently, at least some of the forerunners self-destructed over the years from cliqueness and related internal drama.

While I can enjoy the company of undergrads, in general it’s harder for me to identify with many of them which limits friendship and relationship prospects somewhat. There’s a group called CAMP (Carolina Alternative Meetings of Professional and Graduate Students) for grad students, but it’s all but defunct. They do have get togethers at the Wine Bar on Fridays sometimes, which is nice but it can hardly be called a student organization. So I continue to get out there, but the options feel so very limited. Still, I feel like I’d be totally screwed for such social interaction if I was no longer in school and living in the Triangle (as opposed to the Bay Area). I have been successfully keeping a positive attitude about it all, although it is a hard and slow process.

The Rest of the Day

After I got back from campus, I had some soup for lunch. Then I called the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. See, last year I got an absentee ballot from them via mail forwarding on my old address in Germany. Their documentation claimed that if I didn’t return the ballot that I would be taken off that list. Well, a couple days ago I got another forwarded letter which contained the form I needed to request an absentee ballot. That made me think perhaps everything was taking care of itself until I received the actual ballot (forwarded) today. So, I called them up and they told me I need to send them a letter to get off their list. Now, normally I wouldn’t care so much but I feel bad that the MPI (my old work) is paying all this money to forward this mail to me every once in a while. Not to mention all the money it’s costing Alameda County to send me this stuff overseas too.

Then I called Sarah to make sure they got back ok. I fed their cats while her and Jason were out of town in DC this weekend. I just wanted to make sure they were back and were taking care of the cats since Jason wasn’t in class this morning. We talked about DC, drunken debauchery at TOTH on Friday as well as NC Pride this weekend. Then I felt kinda bad because she was actually at work with her intern and everything. Meh, I guess that happens sometimes.

As for my cold, I think I’m turning the corner on it. My nose is not nearly as runny as it was even yesterday. I’m starting to cough and have more throat congestion, which seems to be the typical progression of a cold for me. First, I get a sore throat and the sniffles, followed by a serious runny nose, horseness and sinus congestion, then finally lighter sinus congestion combined with coughing.

More Swimming

After class this morning, I decided to go over to Bowman-Gray for a reduced swim. My cold is still with me, although it seems like I might have passed the worst of it now. I ended up doing 1000m in about 35 minutes, which is a fairly easy work out for me these days. I also finally got the chance to try out my new goggles, which worked surprisingly well. They don’t fog at all like the Water Gear ones do and are much clearer since they’re new and shiny.

Now, to head home for lunch and a nap…

Swimming

In fact, I did go swimming today. I figured since I have a relatively mild cold and since the cold meds seemed to be helping limit the amount of mucus I was producing to only a small amount, I was going to go anyways. Also, I knew I wouldn’t be able to go next week since I’m going river rafting that day. In the end, I’m glad I went because I actually feel better than before I went. I am a bit tired, but while swimming my congestion cleared up substantially and in general just felt a lot better.

Sick

I have a cold. I am annoyed. Moreover, Sudafed seems to do nothing for it. Unless things miraculously improve in the next couple hours, I’ll have to put off swimming lessons at the Y tonight. Back to convalscence I suppose.

My Nose is Dying

Arg. My nose and throat have been acting crazy since yesterday at Aladdin’s. Once again, I forgot what exposure to excessive second hard smoke does to me now. Ever since living in Germany, I think I’ve developed an allergy to tobacco smoke. My throat is all scratchy along with my eyes, while my nose is running excessively. Even the Sudafed isn’t helping that much. I hope it’s not a cold, but who knows.

I was going to go back to Aladdin’s tonight, but I don’t think I would have been able to withstand the smokiness for a second night. It’s really too bad since Lisa was supposed to be belly dancing there tonight too. Perhaps another time when I’m not convalescing.

Pride and Parties

I got up at 9am, threw my clothes in the dryer and went back to bed. Around 9:30, I got back up, took a shower and headed out to pick some undergrads up to take them to Pride. It turned out my car wasn’t needed after all (3 people didn’t show up). On my way to Durham, it dawned on me that I had forgotten to eat breakfast. I made a detour to Guglhupf to grab a cheese Brezelstange and a Doppelbrötchen. After parking my car, I walked over to Duke’s east campus for the festivities. Shortly thereafter, I ran into James and Steve, these guys from UNC I’ve gotten to know recently. They introduced me to a couple of their other friends who were joining them (I forget their names now since I’m so bad at remembering such things). We wandered around the various booths before ending up listening to the local gay men’s chorus (so many cheezy, cheezy songs! but it was entertaining) and a couple of speakers including Mark Kleinschmidt.

Then the parade began. My pictures of that can be found here. The whole thing was neat, but rather low key at least in comparison to the Gay Pride Parade I saw in San Francisco back in 1998. Still, it captured the overall spirit of the Triangle area. Interestingly, there were actually a lot of gay-affirmative church groups marching (it is the bible belt I suppose). After the parade was over, we ended up at the Blue Corn Cafe in Durham for a rather long, but good lunch.

Then I headed back to Chapel Hill, where I almost immediately went over to Lime and Basil for my roommate Michael’s belated birthday. I was still stuffed from lunch, so I just got an appetizer. From there, I went to Brian and Brad’s place for their BBQ. Good food, good time for sure. Brian, Rick and I waited around until 10 before going over to Genette’s for her cheap wine party. I didn’t drink too much wine (like 1 glass) since today was pretty tiring (wine just makes me more tired). Anyhow, a couple of pictures from there can be found here. Highlights include Genette and Jeff T slapping each other in a disturbingly playful manner:

New Stuff

When I came home from my long day (see previous entry), I found I had a huge stack of mail. This is unusual because normally I don’t have any mail at all, except the occassional credit card bill or junk mail. At the bottom was a package from SwimOutlet. I guess it turns out they sent all my stuff, although their website says my goggles are still “pending”. Mainly I just needed new goggles:

However, since I was already paying for shipping, I decided to pick up a new suit as well:

I’ve been thinking about buying a new lycra suit for freshwater swimming. Basically, lycra is more comfortable and has less drag, but chlorine destroys it way faster than other materials like nylon or PBT (I have other suits made from PBT for use in the pool). I have a German Adidas suit that is ok, but the color is kinda weird (blue with dark grey stripes is uglyish). Mostly, the fit isn’t all that great (it’s cut for somebody with more of an ass than myself, although this makes no sense since the suit is sold in Germany where nobody has an ass). I’ve been very happy with the cut of Tyr suits so far. Plus, Tyr is based in Huntington Beach, CA, which gives me that buying local (even if it is back home) warm fuzzy feeling. I think I’ll probably end up wearing the suit under a pair of boardies on a rafting trip I’ll be taking next weekend, so I wanted to get them in time for that too.