After yesterday’s adventure, I went home at noon. I went to bed at 1 PM or so. I woke up the next day at 6 AM ready to attack a pack of wolverines.  Normally, I’m a light sleeper, but slept through two doors in my room being replaced. Nice.
Team Interrobang in New York
The plan was to take NJ Transit into Penn Station, walk a block, take the E-line to Lexington and walk to the W. .. and that’s exactly what happened. I was stunned at the functionality of NJTransit compared to SEPTA as I walked through four cars to find a seat and didn’t stick to anything. The station was a spot confusion as the tracks weren’t labelled directly only indicating what the other side was much like travelling on the PA Turnpike and having the directions labelled “not New Jersey” and “not towards Pittsburg” or I-95 “not North” and “not South”. The tracks were also straight, which was weird as there were ligitimate moments where I didn’t know if the car was moving or not. To top it all off, the route had better graffiti. I thought this was the one place where SEPTA could triumph but the spray of colors, historical and social references, clarity of the tags and smoothness of the dodges was simply better than I’ve ever seen traveling in and about Philadelphia.
I did get more looks than normal as I took pictures of trains and stations, but such is the way of things in a post 9/11 world. I met Chayoss, Impulse (Steve McMackin) and his spouse Ratchet (Rachel Garman) at the W. Steve regaled me his efforts to do a time-lapse of the plane flight and I felt like I was punched in the face by hipster. This contrasted sharply with Chayoss’s urbane air that made one think that he’d never done anything for the first time.
In the rain, the pavement shines like silver
Dinner was at some trattoria hosting the reasonable New York prices of $18 for a 10″ personal pizza. Luckily, New York City has what’s rumored to be the best tap water of any major US city which keeps getting better as the Catskill snowpack melts. I had a delightful paillard and learned about Rachel’s work receiving a barbed wire giraffe.
Le Webmaster
We took the subway to the stunningly boring Time Square but on the way I got to get a picture of Steve such that he looks like an absolute tool.
Le Tool
I hate newsie hats or whatever they’re called. There are four people that don’t look like tools when they’re reversed and while I’ve never met any of them, although statistically they exist. People who wear their hats as such should be sealed in lucite and serve as a standard tool size for things like jackhammers and boom cranes. There were an infinitude of tourists split between slack-jawed jokels and pseudo-knowledged residents. I stuck by being a stranger in a strange land and we made our way to Central Park. Steve stopped several times to use buildings, lightposts, and postboxes as stabilizers but I decided for a stiff arm using the excuse of “the blur makes it look mysterious”.
I made my way back to Penn Station in time to miss my train so I had some waiting to do. Then, New York unfolded.
- Beggar drinking out of a San Pelegrino bottle
- 4 prostitutes with different dresses but identical accessories. Are johns becoming cost conscious and purchasing in bulk.
- A man using an overflowing garbage can lid as an umbrella stand.
- A bunch of hoodlum-y youths all wearing Blizzard software sweaters
The ride back went swimmingly until we stopped at my station… and none of the doors opened. Apparently some sort of ghost-conductor came around to tell as 8 people in my car missed the note that they’d only be unloading from one car of the 12 on the train. So, I had to go from Princeton into Trenton, wait for the 4:00 AM return train, get on that, argue with the conductor on why I and my non-English speaking hanger-on who also missed her stop and only English words appeared to be “NO PAY FOR FUCKING TICKET” should not be charged and then drive home without falling asleep and dying.  It was 5 AM by the time I got back to the station three hours after my initial target time and I did the only reasonable thing one can do when in New Jersey, hungry and tired. I purchased 3 Wawa hot dogs, drove to work and fell asleep at my desk. Good day in all.
Blood Drive Interrogation
I came into work late today not remembering I had a blood drive appointment at 1:30. I saw the reminder note to myself at 1:20 and gunned it to the appropriate building in our complex. I arrived sweating but on-time and was immediately hurried in to make it on time. I sat down, had my blood pressure taken (120/80 in your face obesity!) but was rejected because of my pulse being too high (100 BPM), probably because I’d ran to the building. I was then approached by the coordinator.
Coordinator: Sir, your pulse was too high to donate do you have any conditions that’d cause this?
Me: Not really, I did just run over.
Coordinator: Hm… Have you had a stressful day? There seems to be a lot of stressed people in.
Me: Nope, I just got in, but I did just run over here. If you give me a minute, I’ll be fine.
Coordinator: Do you have a history of a high pulse in your family?
Me: I don’t think so, although I imagine all our pulses go up after running.
Coordinator: Hm… You’ll be ok. I’m going to give you a note that you can’t donate for the day because of your pulse and you should really see a medical professional about that. 100 BPM is not healthy.
Well, I’m glad they’d already taken my pulse and BP as it doubled over the course of her ignoring the fact that I’d just ran to the building. I’d be curious to see if deafness is correlatable to proximity to the end of the work day.
David Hume: Customer Service Agent
I ordered a few pieces of glassware for a project I’m working on. Most of the 24/40 pieces arrived except for the West Condenser, so I sent the firm an email and received the following:
Sir, thank you for promptly notifying us of the problem with your order. Due to a recent string of faked shipping errors we require verification before sending out a replacement. Please take a picture of the piece you did not receive and we will gladly provide a replacement.
Wow… How do I respond to that? “Show us what you didn’t get”.  Maybe this is like a stupid criminal candid camera moment where people send in pictures and they reply with “gotcha, biotch!” So the best I was able to do was send them a picture of the blank spot in the distillation kit.  I hope that works, barring that, I’ll send them the works of Charles Sanders Pierce.
A Call For Support
I returned on Monday a bit harried after driving 14 hours and I ran into one of my baking fans.
Coworker: Terry, why you in so late? Where the cake?
Me: Well, I got in from a 14-hour drive from Chicago this morning. The turnpike was really rough and I just had to sleep.  Also, my oven’s still broke.
Coworker: That terrible.
Me: The drive wasn’t that bad.
Coworker: No, your oven. How we get cake? What’s wrong with the oven?
Me: It might be the coil or the whole oven, I haven’t checked yet.
Coworker: Your oven too important to us. I see if I can start a collection. If not, I get purchase order. This too important to wait on.
Me: Thank you, I guess.
Coworker: No worry, I manager. It what I do.
Hm… Vital piece of test apparatus breaks and I have to wait 20 days to send it out for repairs. My personal oven breaks cutting off the confectionary supply lines and the full force of my division is brought to bear. It’s good that we have priorities.
Chicago Trip Day 3
I drove 800 miles. With Tardbagel. We passed Hickesville, and got passed by a cop while doing 80. I ran out of podcasts. And started listening to a reading of De Rerum Natura by Lucretius after dropping off Tardbagel. I woke up and I was home.
Chicago Trip Day 2
We departed Banks splendid hospitality Saturday morning and again took Rt. 30 west. I started the day with a positive portent where I thought myself tricky by grabbing literally a handful of ice to recharge my car cup. Ice is cold. We arrived at the zoo at 9:30 and we were quickly met by TheChief/Jim German.
The Cast
Jim German/TheChief
His children already knew all of us by game name (which was creepy) and also accosted Tardbagel for not going to enough Steelers’ games. The rest of of the party arrived including the following:
Peter Jerde/Pants
My first meeting was odd as I was used to seeing him in pictures with more beard. He was also usually sitting so his 6’3″ness was more…vertical than I anticipated. He has a perpetual sparkle in his eye requiring “gee golly, mister” to be prepended to all statements of incredulity.
Clinton Haymen/Jazzysax
I made at least 2000 references during the weekend to Clinton being short. At a mighty 5’4″ he’s apparently tall in his family although I was perpetually afraid of backing up suddenly and crushing him. He has an asymmetrical face which makes him look like he’s been pulled from a Picasso painting or was hit with a 2×4 during his formative years.
Mike Weber/VirginBride
He has cuffed jeans. I also correctly guessed he had granite countertops. I don’t know why, I just saw him as having granite countertops. I was partly expecting him to meet us at his door in a velvet bathrobe and direct us to his leopard print couch. He took public transit home so I had no opportunity to verify this image. After meeting him, I’m glad I had no such occasion.
Will Gattis/FlamedDemon
I have better portraits of Will elsewhere in the Flickr feed but thought this summed up much his time at the zoo. He’s a chronic texter on his iPhone in the way I’m a chronic searcher on my iPhone. The faux-hawk with red highlights was excessive in my opinion but I’m told this is a method among his people to court someone during the Illinois mating season.
/OnaZ”]
Despite having the “Douchebag” appogiatora added to his forum account, the fact that he apologized for being in the way of a 5 year-old charging through a display dispelled that. He’s training to be a piano tuner which I think is getting to him as per his shock of gray hair. During the day after getting bored at one point he yelled for us to “change the map”. Oh, topical humor.
Lea Dekker/littlekitty
This isn’t the most representative picture of Lea I have but the others made her either look fat or like she was about to eat someone so I thought this was a nice compromise. Lea’s education has proven… lacking in some areas which I documented throughout the weekend.
List of Things to Which Lea Claimed Ignorance
- Beaver as synonym for vagina
- Cornbread
- John Stewart and Stephen Colbert
- Exit Only as a statement of opposition to anal sex
- What a “b-boy” is
- Mr. T
- Porn on DVD
- Understatement
- Chuck Norris (added 30 Jun 09)
- Religion of the Pope (added 30 Jun 09)
This is not mocking her ignorances merely that it was an interesting collection. Most people would fake knowledge, Lea refuses to, which I think is to be valued. The last note “understatement” requires a bit of explanation.
Peter: Bluthium thinks we harsh on hackers too much.
Me: I think that’s a spot of an understatement. We exterminate them with extreme prejudice.
Lea: Well, what’s wrong with “harsh”?
Me: I don’t think “harshing” is strong enough. That’s like saying the Nazi’s “harshed” on the Jews, Roma, and gays.
Lea: But they did.
The Meerkats
The best portion of the zoo trip was the meerkat pen where Peter and I proved extremely popular with the lil’ bastards.
Turns out they really liked my camera/monopod combination, to the point where spent about 30 minutes staring at them staring at us. We were eventually yelled at by a park docent for scaring them despite doing nothing besides standing and staring at them staring at us for about 30 minutes.
We took a constitutional on the false promise of coffee. The bathroom had a profoundly powerful (I say diesel powered) hand dryer which may have served as inspiration for the pyro’s compression blast.
Will approved.
The search for coffee involved an 8-block walk to get sufficient caffeine to have the energy to walk 8 blocks back. Caribou coffee appeared to be more descriminatory than Starbucks or my more familiar kitchen coffee pot as none of carried sufficient Apple products to sit inside. I could have walked back to my car to grab my iPod and iPhone thinking that’d be effectively a MacBook Air but decided against it.
We had dinner at a restaurant that found a way to hid an entire tossed salad into the hamburger. The ribs blew and I left a measly 28% tip. Tard and I returned to Pants’ appartment where Tard fell asleep. I learned a vital lesson: Pants can hold his liquor like a f*ing champ. Peter and Audrey make their own soda to avoid the 10% Chicago “pop tax” and over the evening he downed two 1-liter bottles of grapefruit soda. Except instead of using water as his base he used vodka. The only indication that there was a trace of blood in his alcohol level was when I challenged his sobriety and he said “my sleech doesn’t splur”.  I met Ivan, his 16 lb cat who sports a crappy Russian accent in which he largely says “I am sooo fat”. I really wish I had a recording.
Chicago Trip Day 1
This weekend was dedicated to the craziest thing doable these days short of drinking from a microwaved Nalgene bottle: Meeting people in a strange town that you met on the Internet. Team Interrobang is a little shy of 16 months old and we decided to have a meetup at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo with the plan that Friday evening would be spent staying over at Banks’ (Chad Bedwell). I picked up Tardbagel (Jeremy Churchill) on or about 2:30 at the 5 1/2 hour to Ft Wayne began.
Tard, stunned with joy.
I’ve never considered PA particularly exciting driving-wise except for some stretches over the Appalachians and around Pittsburg. I learned a new type of boring driving through Ohio. If you want to recreate the experience we had, I strongly recommend you stare at the following images in fullscreen while making snarky comments about people and feeding dollars into a papershredder to simulate the burning of gas.
Boring #1
Boring #2
Boring #3
I wanted to get a quality shot in Ohio of us at an intersection showing both roads going into infinity but I didn’t want to agitate the case of deep vein thrombosis that was building up after sitting on my duff for roughly 10 hours.
The roads weren’t just boring, but an epic, periodic kind of boredom. Even in the spartan areas of PA houses exist in clusters of 3-7 even in the boonies but Ohio went house with small backyard surrounded by hundreds of hectares of nothing followed by another house surrounded by hundreds of hectares of nothing.
There was a brief moment of farce when we asked the GPS for the nearest fuel and we were directed to a “Sunoco” that was actually an abandoned rail station surrounded by sorghum fields. On the way we passed a sign for “Jim’s Custom Meats” which depicted a pig giving the “a-okay” sign. This was preceded by a 30 mile stretch where the GPS was convinced Rt 30 was 50 yards to our right. The half hour of “off route! Take next right to route 30. Make left on route 30. Off route!” is slightly above “da da da” as things I hate to hear when driving.
The highlight of the drive in was by far Tard’s slurpee in Ft. Wayne.  This is quickly followed by a close second by the collection of anti-abortion billboards of which my favorite is always “abortion stops a beating heart”. One had a blank billboard below it on which I wanted to write “except in cases where the fetus has yet to develope to the point where it has cardiac cells or has some congenital developmental defect, but I doubt it would have lasted long.
We met Banks in Ft. Wayne after almost having to pull a General Lee to hit the McDonalds’ parking lot and he took us to “Flanagans” the stereotypical Scotch-Irish cultural island that every city of at least 100K people must have where I ordered the “Flan-jitas” which I pronounced as such with a hard j. The server attempted to correct me that it was “fÉ™-hÄ“’tÉ™”. I think a bit of her died inside when I showed her the butchering on the menu. The Flan-jitas were expensive and I should have gone with the Flan-burger with some Flan-diments.
Back at Banks’ I wind-mill slammed my 70-200 lens into the pavement but that was balanced out by the splendor of seeing the Jimmy Johnson room which contained a lifesized cutout wearing a straw hat and the bumper of his car after a victorious race of some sort. This abutted his fallout shelter/exercise room which contained enough soup for him and his family to walk to southern Ohio in case of zombie invasion.
Banks gazing lustfully at Jimmy Stewart
Just in case
Banks also has a dog, Tootsie Roll, which he rescued. At some point after doing so, she ate a bag of Tootsie rolls without dying although after 5 years she acted like she was still on a sugar rush from that incident. In addition to the “Oh, shit” stock Banks basement had a carpetted bathroom. The room in which I stayed had a shelf of books which I was told were signed, which is interesting as the shelf has a paperback copy of the Iliad. Even if Homer has been dead for two millenia and may not have existed, I have no doubt Banks could get his signature.
This was the end of day 1. All photos available below:[flickr album=72157619668029842 num=5 size=Thumbnail]
Three-Legged Monopod
I’m a sharpness whore. A hint of blur can destroy an otherwise fine picture and I refuse to shrink the photo to cover the movement so I sprung for a monopod to improve sharpness without having to use a tripod like a tool. I entered the camera store and asked to see their collection of monopods.
Sales Associate: Why are you specifically going for a monopod?
Me: I’m doing some shooting at a zoo next weekend and wanted something I could deploy quickly that was small.
Sales Associate: Ok, yeah you really need mobility in a zoo.
*10 minutes of hot monopod testing porn*
Sales Associate: And finally, we have the Manfrotto 682B.
Me: What’s so special about it?
Sales Associate: Â It’s a little heavier, and a little pricier, but I think you’ll like this feature *pulls out legs* it’s got three legs for added stability.
Wow… A three-legged monopod. How did no one think of that before! I wonder what they’ll think of next, maybe a three-wheeled bicycle.
Baking in a World Gone Mad
Coworker: Where cake?
Me: What do you mean? I bring in baked goods on Monday.
Coworker: No, you bring on Tuesday sometime, even Wednesday.
Me: I’ve never brought in a baked good on a day besides the first in a work week.
Coworker: You bring in cake on Friday last week.
Me: I wasn’t even in on Friday last week.
Coworker: You always bring in cake each day. I remember.
Me: Sam, have I ever brought in a cake on Wednesday?
Sam: No.
Me: Ed, have I ever brought in a cake on Wednesday?
Ed: No.
Me: John, have I ever brought in a cake on Wednesday?
John: No.
Me: Tinh, have I ever brought in a cake on Wednesday?
Tinh: Hell, no.
Me: Up until I’m taken on as a full time position where baking is in my job description, I receive a cost center to which I can charge for your Wednesday cake, or you provide for me vacation days such that Wednesday is the first day of the week, you shall never see a Wednesday cake.
Coworker: Ok. I come back tomorrow.