Please don't let there be Light...

I really do love late night walking, but that really has nothing to do with the title of this post.

Last night I went walking with the Shoebox and J 'round about 2:00 in the morning. This was all after the awesome night with the other Board writers at the work of the Smurfs, and then a game of poker and "Scene it" at the home of the Dynamites, followed by intermittent bits of
Oceans 11 with Phoenix and Offish intermittent because I happened to fall asleep several times).

I went home fully intent on going to sleep...after all; it was nearly 2:00 in the morning. 'Twas not meant to be however, and I headed off to walk in the fog. We decided to try and get some food, and so we headed to a particular cafe' (ooh, how hip sounding) nigh unto the Hospital. I knew exactly where we were going...which really means that I didn't have too much of a clue, but I got real lucky and we ended up in the right vicinity. We were walking around the back of the hospital and somehow ended up inside this hallway with a door on the other side with an exit sign and everything, and all the doors in the hallway had "biohazard" signs on them. I'm not quite sure how we ended up inside when we never actually went through a door to get there..but that's life I suppose. Needless to say, we decided to get out of that area, and get to where we actually trying to go.

Now this place is open 23 hours a day...and they're only closed from 3:00am-4:00am...we showed up at 3:03...sad day. Denny's was clearly the only other choice, and so we walked there, hoping for some good food, and some warmth, (at least for me, as my thighs had actually started to feel like they were freezing.

So we're in Denny's, and, oddly enough, so are a bunch of other people. The time is approximately 3:3o am. We're seated, and about 10 minutes later our waiter shows up. Turns out his name is Light. No really, I'm totally not kidding there...apparently his parents were hippies. Anyway, Light shows up to take our drink orders, and eventually comes back about 10 minutes later with Shoebox's grapefruit juice (Mmmmmm, that's good stuff), and waters for J and I.

Well, after we got our drinks, and placed our orders (which Light refused to write down-seasoned fries for J and I, some chicken thing hold the tomatoes and lettuce for Shoebox) we didn't see the Light of Denny's for about half an hour. When we did see him, it was talking to another table-hamming it up with the guys and impressing them with his less-than-BYUSA approved vocabulary...oh well.

Suddenly we hear a large crashing and clattering in the kitchen...and it certainly wasn't Santa. The cook starts screaming and yelling, and then quits. Light comes to talk to us to tell us that our food actually hasn't been cooked yet, and that it'll be another 20-30 minutes until it is. He offers us the chance to cancel the order, and then just leave, but we decided to stay...we'd walked awfully far after all. By this time it's 4:30. We finally get our nearly-warm fries and sandwich, and then we ate. Finally, around 5:00 we get our check, and we leave the money on the table and leave. Light ended up with about a $5.00 tip only because we didn't feel like waiting around in the restaurant any longer than we had to.

Overview of Costs:
Walk time: about 5 hours of sleep
Dinner: $5.00
Having something to Blog about, time spent with friends, and having a waiter whose name was Light: Priceless

Yeah, that's overdone...but it fits here...

Bathroom Pet Peeves

I'm sure none of you care, but perhaps some of you can at least relate. Here we are: Pet Peeves about the Bathroom (not necessarily in any particular order):

1. Having the water from the shower hit me directly after I turn it on. Maybe you don't quite understand what I mean. Most showers have that little switch, or pull thing that turns the shower from the main faucet to the showerhead. When that lever/switch is pulled, I can't stand to be anywhere within the range of the shower's spray when it first comes down. It literally makes me cringe. Sure, I could start the water first, and then get into the shower that way, but that doesn't happen. I usually end up pulling the lever, and then hurrying out of the way of the spray...or turning the head towards the shower wall, and then I get to walk into it at my own pace.

2. Urine anywhere besides in the toilet. I have an unusually high tolerance for gross stuff in general. If there's hair in the drain, it doesn't bother me-I just pick it up, and then throw it away. Odd gunk in the sink is fine, I take care of it, and then I wash my hands. It's simple really. The thing that I hate, not becuase it grosses me out, but because it's just rude, is urine on the toilet seat. I hate going into the Bathroom and seeing the seat spotted-granted, I don't have to deal with this at the moment, but still, yuck. I honestly don't care if the toilet seat is left up as long as no urine ends up on it when I go to sit down.

3. Speaking of sitting on the toilet seat, I can't stand when they move. You know how the bolts in the back get messed up sometimes, and the seat is no longer stationary? Drives me insane.

4. Toilet paper rolls put on the "wrong" way. I know that this one is odd...but oh well. It really irks me to have the toilet paper on the roll be there as "backwards." For me, this means that the free flap comes out the bottom of the roll, instead of gently falling over the top of it. I've gotten better about it recently-used to be that I'd change it wherever I could if it happened.

Alright, I'm done venting my frustration...

Travelogue

Benvolio's blog about moving reminded me of my travelogue that I wrote for the move across country that my family did. This was in 2001, so 4 whole years ago...almost. It's been edited for interest’s sake, hope you enjoy it.

September 8, 2001

The trip from California to Nevada was pretty uneventful, except for the slight rainstorm in the front seat...hmmm... Once we got into the Sierra's there was a lot of smoke. Even with all the roads it was steep driving-imagine being in the Mormon Battalion and having to break a path through it. Yuck! Once we hit Nevada there was a sign that said, "free dirt." We figured they were talking about the whole state. Apparently we took the scenic route. As of yet I have seen 3 animals (not running, somebody get the spatula), 6 million bushes, 5 houses, and a whole lot of highway. This way's got to be the scenic route, the other way only has 5 million bushes and 3 houses, although I've heard it's got telephone poles, which our route seems to be short of. About 100 miles into Nevada there was a town called "Perishing." By the time we saw it, we were all perishing for lack of greenery, or scenery. When we passed the "town" it had one house, and a trailer. That brings the house count up to 6, and one trailer. A little ways down the road we passed by a small river-rock house, that was covered in splotches of red paint. There were a couple of alter-like things, and an odd kind of dead-looking tree. The scary thing about the whole place was that there were stuffed things lying about in dead manners everywhere: a cow stuffed thing on the alter, a body shaped stuffed thing hanging from the tree. All these things are also splotched with red paint, as if it were some sort of "sacrificial hut." I really don't think I ever want to meet the residents of such a place. Pretty soon we passed the state prison, or "correctional facility." For some reason, there were signs all over that said, "Don’t pick up hitchhikers." I wonder why. The funny thing about the prison is that it's located off of Freedom Blvd., in Independence Valley...more like, "you can't have your independence" valley... Most of us were dreading having to go camping after 2 nights of sleeping on the floor at our house, but it all worked out when my mom found a cheap room at Motel 6. No camping tonight-YAY! We even got hot food: chicken and potatoes-in the form of McDonald's French fries. Doesn't that count as a veggie? After watching X-Men, our family went to bed, and slept (or tried to) with the dog and our Dad snoring some sort of lullaby. At about 3:30 am we all woke up, with no alarm clock...and talked a bit, then slept again, thus ending the first 331 miles of travel...only 2500 to go...oh my...

There are many, many more entries...maybe I'll keep adding if I run out of regular things to write about...

Compulsion...

I've recently come to the realization that I have compulsive habits. The one I've most recently discovered is pen chewing.

I am a compulsive pen chewer. Whenever I find that I am stressed, or feel like I can't fix some sort of situation, I chew on a pen. Usually the lid. I've got an entire collection of pens that I've chewed on through various tests and such over the years. I even chew other people's pens when they let me use them. I do it entirely without thinking...sorry guys.

Tonight I actually bit through an entire pen lid...that's the first time that's ever happened. I've bitten through pens before, the hard plastic kind that crack, but never pen lids. I then continued to bite it until it was completely mangled. Why? I'm not naturally distructive. At least I don't think I am. I guess I'm just feeling a little stressed with life right now...

...er something.

The Bias of Hindsite

A good friend of mine referred to this in a conversation a little while ago, and it made me think. My initial reaction was, "yeah, I guess it's there," until further reflection made me realize how obviously it fits into everyday life.

I would be willing to be that this is one of the most used biases. Let's look at some situations:

First, you've got movies. You sit there watching the movie, and trying to figure out what's going to happen in the end. You make a few guesses, and then, when the end comes, there's almost always at least one of your guesses that fit the ending, and so you get to proclaim yourself the most intelligent being ever, and then tell about your ability to predict movies. Sure, you may have been leaning towards a different ending first, and you may notice all the clues AFTER you see the movie, and know what they're leading to...but what do we do? We attribute it all to the predictability of Hollywood, and the intelligence of ourselves.

Secondly, you've got situations. I can't count the number of times that I've been reading the scriptures, or studying about the pioneers, and then thought, "that was really dumb, if they'd have just tried to do things like this, then that wouldn't have happened." What happens to me later? I end up in a situation where I do something stupid, and people turn around and ask me why I did what I did. Usually, I don't have a good answer for it, but I can think of a million things that I could have done instead, and even should have done instead, as can almost anyone else that I talk to. In the end we get about 4 million different solutions to a problem that's already gone. Yeah, hindsite is 20/20.

There are times when this Bias isn't a bad thing though. It's what you've got to use to learn and progress in life. Though it, you start to see patterns and such, and then you end up (in theory) learning from those patterns what went wrong, so that you can improve your foresite...not a bad concept. I sure do wish I was better at it though...