Things that might be decidedly odd…

Drunks

I stumbled across this list in a comment to a slog post.

Apparently King County (the county where Seattle and most of its surrounding suburbs like Redmond are located) is #12 on this list of counties with the highest percentage of residents who have drunk alcohol in the past month. It’s by far #1 on the west coast and #1 for counties with populations more than one million residents. Weird.

Most of the counties on the list are located in the northeast with a smattering through the rust belt and mountain west. No counties in California made the list, but another county I once lived in made the list. Orange County, NC which contains Chapel Hill and Carrboro is #57 or #1 in the south.

Internet Addiction and the Neighbors

Upon getting home last night from a long day on campus, I discovered that our high speed internet was out. Figuring that happens sometimes, I decided I’d instead waste time by watching television. Unfortunately, the cable was dead too, which meant something was seriously wrong being that our internet and television come through the same cable. After calling Time Warner, I was told they’d send somebody out tomorrow between 8am and 5pm. Now, usually I can work from home so it wouldn’t be a big deal, BUT I need internet connectivity to get certain things done. Arg.

I got some work that didn’t require the net (my Math 221 assignments) and went to bed around 10pm. I was tired and there was no relaxing activities to do besides sleep. I figured I might get up at 6am and hit the pool, come back and wait around until the cable got fixed. So, my alarm goes off at 6am, but I was already awake because the rain was very loud. I get kind of sick in that warm, tired, slightly naseous and dry mouth sort of a way. Maybe it was the oral typhoid vaccine I took yesterday (I finally got around to going to the travel clinic for my trip to Nicaragua) or maybe that weird GI bug I had the day before. Either way, I really didn’t feel like getting up and doing vigorous exercise. Hence, I went back to sleep for another approx. 3 hours.

I then got up, ate breakfast and got more work done (what else was there to do?). At 12:30, I decided I needed to get my fix as well as get in some face time with friends for lunch. I drove to campus, parked at a meter and had lunch with the gang over at Sakura Express. The food was ok, but at least it wasn’t too expensive ($5.10 for a dish including tax). Of course, I also had to hit up Sitterson to see if the letter from Jim for my software product requirement had arrived and to check my email. Nothing too interesting, except that the Math 221 professsor wanted me to meet with him today to show him the final results of my last assignment. Unfortunately, he didn’t mention that he wanted a follow up meeting when we met on Wednesday. Plus, I’m not even done with that assignment yet (still catching up gradually).

After all that, I drove back home, hoping that the cable guy hadn’t shown up and drove off because I wasn’t home. As I pull into my driveway, what do I see? The cable guy’s truck. He had apparently been looking around outside and already figured out what was wrong. I went inside and he went to work fixing the problem. Apparently, somebody had disconnected our cable! I suspect it was the neighbors in the other half of the duplex or somebody on their behalf. The thing is that they don’t even have cable since they satellite. So it pisses me off to think that somebody is just unplugging cables willy-nilly assuming nobody in the other half of the unit needs them. I think I might have to let the landlord know that we’re having problems with them again. My memory isn’t what it used to be, but I want to say something weird like this happened a few months ago too. The important thing is that we’re hooked back up again.

Room for Rent

Well, I posted ads all over the place for somebody to take over my lease since I’m moving to Seattle. Check out the version I posted on craigslist here for more info.

Voting

Today I went and voted in the local election. I had to choose 3 out of 6 candidates for Carrboro Alderman, 1 out of 2 candidates for Carrboro mayor and 3 out of 4 candidates for Carrboro-Chapel Hill school board. Unfortunately, most of the candidates for most of the offices seemed rather similar. In that regard, I don’t think I will be terribly crushed or excited by whoever wins. However, I did rummage through some voter guides beforehand to get an idea of what each candidate stands for.

Now, if I actually had the energy or time to get into politics, my experience at the poll today would lead me to some new local campaigning laws! As soon as I walked up to the place, a flock of people working on various local campaigns decended on me, trying to shove literature in my face and convince me who to vote for. It was disgusting! I had to forcefully yell at them to stay away from me while waving my hands! Looking back, I should have taken all of their literature and then voted AGAINST those candidates and informed them of such. It just seems very inappropriate, sleazy and annoying to me to be preying on people who are just about to vote.

Decisions, Decisions

I have two opportunities for going out tonight:

1. Go see Chatham County Line at the Cradle. To make this decision, I need to call the station before like 6 to secure the free DJ ticket or pay $10 to get in.

2. Go to the Queer Ball being put on by glbtsa. This will cost me $7.

I’m conflicted. Maybe I’ll see some eye candy or possibly dance with somebody at the ball. But it’s probably going to be full of cliquey undergrads. Meh, I don’t know. There’s also the issue of my ankle. It’s swollen up a bit more in the past couple days than usual for reasons I don’t entirely understand.

Memes are dumb but informative

After seeing Lisa list all the places she’s lived (very impressive), I decided I might as well too as a means of reflection:

• Anaheim, CA (11.5 years)
• San Clemente, CA (6.5 years)
• Berkeley, CA (9 months)
• San Clemente, CA (3 months)
• Berkeley, CA (2.5 years)
• Bayreuth, Germany (5 months)
• Berkeley, CA (1 year)
• San Clemente, CA (1 month)
• Saarbrücken, Germany (1.5 years)
• Berkeley, CA (3 months)
• Carrboro, NC (1 year and counting)

Evening Out

I spent most of the day struggling through this MATH 221 assignment. I’m making progress, but at a snail’s pace. At this rate, I may have to just give up on it for a while. I need to devote some time to writing the draft of my integrative paper, something I need to complete in order to graduate.

Chris and I met up and got some dinner at Elmo’s in the Carr Mill Mall. In the past I’ve always had good experiences there. However, tonight left something to be desired. After I had eaten a good chunk of my food (the meatloaf), I started feeling nauseous–very nauseos, like I was genuinely going to puke. I swore I had gotten food poisoning and it was going to ruin the whole night. Fortunately, after a while it subsided. In the end, I didn’t finish all my food even. Chris also didn’t eat very much either, although he said he just wasn’t very hungry.

We paid the bill and then went for a walk towards Chapel Hill on Main and Franklin since it was only like around 8pm. Eventually, we got down to the post office and turned around to go back to the Cat’s Cradle. The walk was nice as we got some more time to talk. Upon arrival at the Cradle, there was a big line. I went to the front and asked the bouncer if there was a separate line for people who already had tickets. He told me that having a ticket did not mean you could cut in line and that we would have to go to the back. So, we go to the back of this long-ass line that is moving quite slowly. After a while (maybe like 20 minutes?) the same bouncer starts walking down the line announcing that if you already have a ticket, you don’t need to wait in line and can just go to the front right now. I swear we were the only people who got out of line. WTF? Did he just give me and not other people bogus info or what? Either way, we got inside probably around 9:30.

We danced some and took breaks at various points. He wasn’t much of a dancer, but he said he had a good time still. They played two Michael Jackson songs: “Thriller” and “Billie Jean”. Chris really likes 80s Michael Jackson, so I think that made him happy (: We danced pretty good facing each other during Billie Jean, which was fun. A while after watching the costume contest that ended around midnight, we started on our way out. He has to go to work tomorrow morning and while my ankle was doing ok, I probably didn’t need to be dancing for 5 hours on it or anything. I bought 2 t-shirts on my way out, one for myself and one for Kendra. She’s gonna swap me for this year’s KALX t-shirt.

Overall, it was a good night. Tomorrow promises to be action packed as well, what with Drag Bingo and the party at my place (which I still need to clean for).

Yesterday

After the weekly ‘late lunch’ on Friday at Carrburritos, I hit the pool doing 1600m in about 45 minutes. It was raining all day, so I drove to and from campus. Fortunately, I found a parking meter close to the pool, although my money had run out by the time I got back (no ticket though). Around 9, I met a relatively new friend Steve (met through various GLBT venues) over at the Wine Bar. He wanted to see if any of the GLBT folks that meet occassionally there on Fridays might show up on an unofficial night. We did run into this one woman both of us had met before and she introduced us to her friends, but I didn’t recognize anybody else.

From there I headed out a bit after 10 to Goldie’s since it was Russ’s birthday. There was quite a turn out of people and the place was hopping in general, which made it fairly crowded and noisy. There was also these guys playing bad covers of pop songs. As the night wore on, Sarah, Jason and I along with their friends David and Laurel (who’s down visiting from Maine for the weekend) went over to Fuse for the rest of the night.

Today is the World Beer Festival in Durham. It’s held on the field of the local minor league baseball team. I didn’t manage to go last year, because I waited to long to try and buy a ticket (it sold out fairly early). This year, I got one several weeks ago, so I’m good to go. Mike has been kind enough to organize taxi transportation for the approx. 30 of us who are going from the department today, so it should be a safe and fun event.

Activated Carbon

The fire department (and now that I think about it, they must have been from Chapel Hill as opposed to Carrboro since they had a sky blue engine) just came by and pounded on my door. Apparently, OWASA had a leak of activated carbon and it blew all over town, including the surface of my car. The guy from the fire department told me I should rinse it off my car soon or it might end up stained. So, I went out and rinsed my car off with the garden hose while it was raining. I’m sure I must have looked insane. In fact, rinsing didn’t really seem to be getting the stuff off (it was a fine black powder that was still sticking somewhat), so I ended up having to get out a towel and scrubbing lightly as well.

Past Couple Days

Not a whole lot has been going on since I got back from rafting, so I’ve been light on the blogging. Yesterday, I went for a swim of 1200m in about 35 minutes. It was short because I was trying to get somewhere on time at 6pm, but couldn’t legally park on campus until 5pm. Anyway, it all worked out well since I was still a little beat from the previous day of rafting. Eventhough it was a bit shorter than I would have liked, I pushed myself quite a lot. I swam in a 25m lane and did lots of flip turns. I started out doing 100m continuous stretches, but by the end I was doing continuous 200s. That’s my current new goal–to swim more continuously with fewer breaks. After swimming, I went to my coming support group, which went well. I then caught dinner with a friend at the Armadillo Grill in Carrboro (which I had never been to before). A good deal, especially given the price.

Today, I went for a jog. The “own zone” feature on my heart rate monitor determined a very low value today. In fact, I think it was really too low. I couldn’t run slow enough to stay in range while running up slight hills. At the end of the run, I figured out how to select “heavy” as opposed to “moderate”, which should bump things up a bit. I think the reason it gives me such a low range is that I have a relatively high resting heart rate. If I sit doing absolutely nothing for a while, I’m usually around 65, but as soon as I stand up and even start walking extremely slowly, it will jump to almost 100. Strangely, after a bit of slow walking it actually goes back down to 90 and remains in that range even when I start walking a normal pace.

I spent the rest of today going grocery shopping and finishing up my MATH 221 homework (it’s all done and turned in now too).