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| I arrived in Seattle yesterday welcomed by Anna's open arms and Mr. Reeve's massive spread of delicious food. I have been here not even 24 hours and I feel like I am in a constant state of fullness. The forecast for the next five days is rain, but go figure. However, it is actually really nice here. There is a perpetual state of dampness, like a healthy dew that makes everything lush and green. (Editor's note: Is Seattle really green? I don't know, but it seems like it is to me, maybe it is, in reality, totally gray). Something is always growing in Seattle. Maybe not; maybe nothing is growing right now, but it seems like plants could be growing and animals could be drinking fresh rain water out of the many bodies of water. Yes, in the winter, I'm sure snow falls and melts, but it seems nothing dies or freezes, but emerges with a sense of gratitude for the beauty that the white blanket provided and the pure water that the runs down the mountains. Gray is so much prettier than brown. | | |
| Yes, it has been more than a mouth since my last entry. Sue me. My life is just not as exciting as the Texas General's, who is abroad in Poland right now. But I'm not going to whin about it...that much.
So now I'm going to talk about coffee again. This is probably distrubing to you and it should be because my last entry was about coffee. Because I often write these entrying in the morning, while under the influence of coffee, my mind seems to wander in that realm. I only drink it in the morning, yet I am obsessed with it. Caffeine is a powerful drug, yet our culture and most cultures don't really see it as a drug. I walked into my bedroom this morning and saw my desk, littered with crap, mostly papers, Norton Anthologies, flashcards from when I was thinking about taking the GRE, and many many things that need to be throw away. Also among this crap are two coffee mugs with dried coffee renance at the bottom. Only with coffee is that acceptable, having drugs strewn about all around your workplace. Imagine if there were a couple bongs or maybe a bag of coke, or some other drug lying beside my laptop and printer. That would be totally unacceptable. I would be labelled an out of control drug fiend, and rightfully so.
Now, I know what you are thinking: Rob, that is because those other drugs are illegal and coffee is legal. Not so, my friend. I can think of no legal drug, other than caffeine, that is okay to have multiple intake apparatuses, such as mugs, around the workplace. Alcohol is obviously out; you couldn't have one, much less multiple pints of beer around your desk and not be considered an alcoholic. What about Ibuprofen or Tylenol? Maybe one bottle of those pills is okay, but what if you had three? Or what if they were spilled on the desk? That's no good either. Cigerettes? No way.
Coffee has wonderful connotations associated with it: hard-working, determine, and willing to do what is necessary to get the job done.
But is caffeine really that safe? Well, I don't want to say "safe" because it's not going to kill anyone, but is it good or okay for kids to drink? I ponder this very question almost daily. When is it okay to give kids caffeine? Is it associated with ADD or ADHA or ADDHDDADHHHA? I'm not really that interested with the effect that one or two cups has on an adult because it probably fine and by the time you are an adult, who cares? I'm interested in children learning. In a classroom at any given time, how many of those kids are on c-rock? Do those kids do better or worse. Maybe some are focused and maybe some cannot focus. When I was younger, I clearly remember saying that the caffeine in cokes had little effect on me. I don't see how that could have been true because they certainly do now. Maybe younger people are not used to evaluating the effects of a drug, and most younger people probably don't consider soft drinks a drug.
The difference between soft drinks and coffee is probably that very distinction. A coke is just another drink you order in a resturant. It's sweet, it tastes good, that's about all you know. But when you drink coffee, at any age, you know you are doin' the sauce. It's the hard stuff people. Coffee is not sneaky like coke, quietly whispering sweet nothings to the serotonin synapses in your brain. Coffee, for the non-regular drinker, pounds the heart, upsets the stomach, and jitters the entire body.
It sure tastes good though. | | |
| I do not understand how people work in coffee shops. Let's look at the advantages first:
1. A freely flowing supply of delicious caffeine packed c-rock, by far the greatest advantage.
2. WiFi, maybe. Local coffee shops usually don't charge for WiFi if they have it, but that's if they have it, and places like Starbucks have some terrible deal with Verison where you pay monthly. That is just highway robbery.
3. There is always someone there who is stranger/more pathetic than you, aka confidence booster.
Disadvantages:
1. Way too many people, especially at the places with free WiFi.
2. Too much noise. Between then douche talking about his Blackberry and the coffee grinder buzzing every 10 seconds, I cannot think.
3. There is always someone there who is more interesting than you and for some reason you have to check up on him or her and see what he or she is up to. Another distraction.
4. Terrible music in the background.
The most surprising thing about my troubles is that I don't like something that has to do with coffee. I don't like coffee culture. Well, I like, I just don't understand how those people function. How do they work? Are they really getting things done or are they just sitting there pretending to get work done. I am going crazy. Obviously this does not merit a blog entry. | | |
| With Matt absolutely pummeling me in our blog-off, I find it timely to write another entry. Maybe if I was traveling around former commie land I would have something interesting to write about too, but no, I’m stuck here in America with indoor plumbing and electricity. Woe is me.
Anna had her 80’s birthday celebration, which was quite the time, and only tarnished by an Astros World Series loss. The Astros need to get it together man. First of all, Jermaine Dye was not hit by a pitch last night, which led to the grand slam by Konerko. Secondly, Lidge is pitching scared. We need him to be the leader and intimidator he has been all season. If the Astros don’t win three in Houston, this World Series is over.
Let’s see, what else is blog worthy. Oh, I clipped my fingernails today and also brushed my teeth. This is hopeless.
Jeff, Jingles, and I went to Lupe Tortilla yesterday, which was pretty good, perhaps a little more expensive that I would have liked for Mexican food. This conversation took place in the car before we went inside to Lupe:
Jeff:
Oh, we should go to Academy, you know why Stewart?
Jingles:
Penises?
Jeff:
Yeah, we got to look at penises, you know, see what they got.
Jingles:
I was already there a little while ago and looked at ‘em, but I could find the right kind of penis.
Jeff:
Really? I need to see what they have.
Jeff and Stewart were of course referring to, what we like to call, The Penis Thermos (the term coined by some combination of Matt, Ludwig, and myself in Margolis’ horrendous philosophy class freshmen year, where The Penis Thermos became legend. We were constantly chuckling to ourselves as Margolis went to town on The Penis and the hot tea inside it). Those long, slender, usually metallic thermoses that are truly phallic in nature. They are essential for keeping delicious, caffeinated beverages hot and penis looking. | | |
| I never thought I would be so happy to leave California. Just about every impression I had of what L.A. would be like was correct. Dave Worrel even asked me if L.A. was what I expected. I told him it was pretty much exactly what I expected. Steve asked me how it felt to be so right and we all laughed. What a horribly desperate city. Everyone wants to be famous and everyone is a hustler. Everyone wants something they don’t have, which I’m sure is true of many places in America, but in L.A., it is right in your face all the time. The weather was amazing and the scenery was beautiful, and I think that might have made it worse. They took something beautiful and completely mutilated and perverted it.
We had a fantastic trip. Steve and I left early on Friday morning from Will’s parents’ house in Cypress. We ate lunch at the Alamo Café in San Antonio and feasted on the finest tortilla and queso in the land. It rained hard in many places west of San Antonio, and now that I think about it, it was sort of raining in San Antonio. Steve and I were both shocked by how cold it was. A cold front had moved through Texas the night before and we just could not get used to it. It seemed like it had been 110 degrees for years. That night, we stopped in Carlsbad, New Mexico. It was still light when we stopped and we could have gone farther, but we wanted to go to the Caverns the next day, so we got a room at the Stagecoach Inn. It was a pisser. The India woman who ran the place assured us that there was a cool bar at the Best Western next door and a couple good places to eat. While in search of an electrical outlet, which was nowhere to be found, I came across an empty flask of cheap vodka behind the dresser. This was our kind of place. We drove around Carlsbad looking for a place to eat dinner. Driving through the deserted downtown only lasted a couple blocks before we ran out of options. I saw the sign that said no U-Turn, in fact, there was a sign just like it at every intersection, but I thought, fuck it, I’m not holding anyone up. As we turned around, the Sheriff two cars behind us immediately turned on his lights. Since we could not see out the rearview because of all of Steve’s belongings, I had not seen the officer only two cars behind us. He was nice though and recognized that we were from out of town, Georgia and Texas, and talked about the Braves with Steve. I apologized right away and assured him that I did not need an $85 reminder not to make U-Turns in the “business district” as he referred to it. We decided on an Italian restaurant, which seemed to be basically the only place in this town. It was Friday night and the place was packed. We got a seat at the bar and ordered drinks and food. Our bartender was the man. We was busy every second, but gave us plenty of attention, probably more than he could afford to give, and gave us control of the TV behind the bar. He was the only one mixing drinks for the whole town. Steve and I liked him very much. He was young, probably 5 years older than us, and told us that he just moved to Carlsbad and got the job last Monday or something like that. His wife was a traveling nurse and they had been in Vail before. He ran an excellent bar, and Steve and I were reluctant to leave, but we did after we finished our meal.
We drove back to the Stagecoach and walked over to the Cocktail Lounge at the Best Western. Steve and I were going to drink some cocktails. But this was unexpected. This was not a bar. It was a lounge. It was very distinctly a lounge. I did not know the difference between lounges and bars until that moment. Everyone in the place was over 40, even the waitstaff. Everyone stared at us, especially when we walked in. I ordered a vodka tonic and Steve ordered a gin and tonic. They were awful, Steve’s in particular. We didn’t even want to drink it, which was significant because Steve is not picky about his booze. Well, he is picky, but it was really bad nonetheless. We sat at a table and watched the Yankees-Angels playoff game, while watching the other patrons watch the game. There was a woman near the TV who would not shut up about the Yankees. She was screaming loudly as the pulled for a team that she surely knew almost nothing about while watching a sport that she surely knew nothing about. We were ready to kill her, especially me. We left. We decided to try the other lounge. Why, I don’t know. This lounge was clearly labeled “LOUNGE AND DRIVE-UP WINDOW.” But we went in anyway. The bar was square with one side up against the wall. Lounge-goers were on all three sides. We got a massive silent stare as we walked in, even worse than the last lounge. We had to choke down our chuckles as we ordered a drink; we were both so aware of how cliché and awkward our situation was. There were no young people in this town. Lounges are where old people go to die, slowly.
We decided to leave and watch the game at home, buying OE High Gravities on the way. I knew it was a bad idea, but the nostalgia of DC and forties got the best of me. We got wasted, Steve more than I, but we were both drunk. We watched the game and talked about life. There is no better way to become good friends.
We both woke up the next morning feeling crappy. It took us a while to get going. On the way out of town, we stopped at Happy’s Restaurant. It was an old diner place that had been there a while and there were a lot of locals. Steve and I both had memorable conversations with the women behind the counter.
Characters:
Rob – awesome, but hungover
Steve – awesome, but hungover
Woman 1 – Hispanic or Native American, energetic, but useless
Woman 2 – White, used to be attractive, wears too much blue eye makeup and everyone complains to her because they know Woman 1 is useless.
Steve orders first and references two enormous breakfasts that are sitting directly behind Woman 1. On the plates are two eggs, three pieces of bacon, bisquits and gravy, hashbrowns. Steve and Rob suspect that this is the famous Jumbo Breakfast.
Steve:
Is that the Jumbo 2 egger?
Woman 1:
It comes with…I think that…
Steve:
But what is that back there?
Woman 1:
The Jumbo comes with eggs…and hash browns, and uh,…bacon, is it bacon or
Steve:
Well I just want one of those back there.
Woman 1:
Well, so how many eggs do you want?
Steve:
I want, I’ll just take the Jumbo Two Egger.
Woman 1:
And what do you want. Uhm, uh, bacon or ham, does it come with ham
Steve:
Bacon’s fine.
Woman 1:
How do you want your eggs?
Steve:
Fried.
Woman1:
But over easy or sunny side up, or scrambled or…
Steve:
Just surprise me.
Woman 1:
And what’s your name?
Steve:
Steve, oh, but the guy in front of me is Steve too, why don’t you call me…pepper.
Woman 1 writes “Haper” on the order and Steve sees it.
Steve:
Wait, what is that you wrote, Happy?
Woman 1:
Haper, I thought you said…Haper.
Steve:
No, I said Pepper, I thought you wrote Happy, I mean this is Happy’s, so...
Woman 1:
I’m going to call you Happy Steve!
Laughter ensues out of awkwardness, Rob and Steve also laugh because Woman 1 is laughing so uncontrolably, they feel obliged to join her.
Steve:
Great, that sounds good.
Woman 1
What about you?
Rob:
Does the Jumbo breakfast come with bisquits and gravy?
Woman 1:
Let’s see, it comes with (looks at the menu)…uh, eggs…and….do you want bacon or ham?
Rob:
Yeah, but is that back there the…I’ll have the Jumbo two eggers with bacon and white toast and coffee.
So, I’m tired of doing the play format. I know, Woman 2 never says anything, but she was going to, but that would take way too long. You get the idea.
Happy’s was not happy. Everyone who worked there was completely miserable on that Saturday morning. It was depressing waiting there for our food which was almost impossible to order. But it was good and we left full of jumbo two eggers and coffee.
 The drive to the caverns was beautiful, though it is a little removed from the town. We walked through the big room without a tour and talk about how cool it would be to do srooms down here or how dark it would be if the lights went out. There was also a rock formation that looked just like a wet nipple. I named it the Buttery Nipple and we have a good picture of it.
We took pictures in the hill outside of the caverns and got on the road to White Sands.
We were on going north of I-10 on a beautiful mountain road when we came across a sign that read “Weed Café.” I slam on the breaks, hope no one is behind me, and makes a sharp left turn across the other lane of traffic. We think this is the café, but it is only a sign that tells us how to get to the Weed Café in Weed, New Mexico. It is barely off course, so we feel required to go. It is a beautiful drive up in the mountains. When we get there, we can’t stop laughing. There is a Weed Baptist Church and a Weed School. The population of the town is 20.
The café is nice and it also doubles as the Post Office. Weed was quant, and hilarious. We get haphazard directions to Cloud Croft and proceed to get lost. We end up on dirt roads no matter which was we got and none of the streets are on the maps we have. We believe that dirt roads are not the way we need to be going. Shortly after entering Lincoln National Park or Forest, we come across some hunters. They are friendly and have better maps than we have and point us in the right directions. I was very worried because until we ran into the hunters, we had no assurance that we were actually going to get to Cloud Croft anytime soon, which was important because we had below a quarter tank of gas. But Steve assured me that we were now going the right way and that we would have plenty of gas to make it to Cloud Croft. I trusted him and was confident that he was right. We were not breathtaking, winding rock roads in the mountains and had beautiful views. We finally got back to the highway and made it to Cloud Croft and stopped at the busiest gas station I have ever been in. Steve took the wheel and the short drive to White Sands was beautiful as well.
White Sands was my favorite thing on the drive. We were there right at sunset and had the place almost totally to ourselves. With its fine, white grains and unmatched views of the horizon, White Sands engulfed Steve and me. I think it engulfed Steve a little more, hindering his frisbie skills. Well, not really skills, but hindering his ability to throw a frisbie at all. We found it the Frisbee three and after one of many errand throws by Steve, we left it there. We went on, stopping only to pee and feed our caffeine addiction. When we stopped in Wilcox that night at a Day’s Inn, we asked the woman how far it was to Los Angeles: 600 miles. No. We were exhausted from the long day and boozing the night before, and we went to sleep.
We woke up pretty early the next morning and knocked out the remaining miles. Arizona was awful, though we did stop in the In-and Out Burger in Phoenix. Probably 100 miles out from L.A., traffic got terrible. The drivers are so aggressive, I couldn’t believe it. Bastards, all of them. In one area of the freeway, there were like 20 people pulling boats and waverunners. One guy, I shit you not, was pulling a boat and two waverunners on one trailer. And because they had trailers and boats and waverunners, they seemed to think they were special and they entire world had to cater to them. We were forced to get on to Highway 60, or “The 60” as it is called in California (editors note: all highways in California or at least the LA area are referred to with a “the” in front of the number, for example: The 101, The 1, The 10, The 405, etc. For Houstonians, that would translate to us saying, “Take The 59 South to The 8 North and get on The 10 West.” Ridiculous). We were forced by these bands of boat pullers to get on a road we did not want to get on, but it was possible to go to LA on The 60 anyway. Shortly after getting on The 60, I was in the right lane of a two lane highway. Seeing I had plenty of room to switch lanes into the left lane, I put my blinker on. After my blinker blinks once, I see the car in my driver side mirror see my blinker. I know he see it because immediately after I put it on, he accelerates, causing me to not be able to switch lanes without hitting them. Worst driver and traffic ever, and by traffic, I don’t mean bottlenecks, I mean everyone is going 25 over and cars are spaced approximately 1 foot from each other on all side. Lots of fun.
I’m going to end the very abruptly, but most of you probably didn’t make it this far anyway, I don't blame you with the whole play thing, yeah that was bad, sorry about that. But you made it, supposedly. The apartment was in a really nice area and it was a good size too. I loved the mountains and weather and hated the traffic. | | |
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