started at roughly 10pm est
stop 1 356.2 miles 13.12 gallons 27.14 mpg 3AM CST
410.7 miles to go.
stop 2 432 miles
788.2 miles 13.37 2.65 16.02 gal 26.9 mpg
6:43 cst
stop 3 337.8 miles 12.5 gallons 27.02 mpg
1126.0 miles
1:22 cst
total miles traveled: 1529.6
average speed: 61.5 mph
max speed: 92.0 mph
total time gone 34 hours 03 minutes
total time spent moving 24 hours 52 minutes
basically we drove to mississippi picked up jenny, took a nap, then drove home.
I'm voting Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.
I'm voting Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.
I'm voting Democrat because when we pull out of Iraq I trust that the bad guys will stop what they're doing because they now think we're good people.
I'm voting Democrat because I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday CAN tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.
I'm voting Democrat because I'm not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.
I'm voting Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as THEY see fit.
I'm voting Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would NEVER get their agendas past the voters.
I'm voting Democrat because I believe that open borders and government give-aways to foreigners is a great way to grow a nation.
I'm voting Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves.
I'm voting Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I've decided to marry my horse.
I'm voting Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't.
I'm voting Democrat because my head is so firmly planted up my butt it's unlikely that I'll ever have another point of view.
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littering and
littering and
littering and
littering and
littering and
littering and
littering and
littering and
littering and
littering and.......
I filled out my app for degree yesterday and Pichot turned it in to the office today. I'm graduating in May. This is the weirdest, scariest feeling I've felt since those four months in France. And I feel bad eating Tums like candy here.
Classes are going okay. Ceramics class sucks because on a scale from one to a lot, I have negative five art skills. And there are art students in class even though the title specifically says FOR NON-MAJORS. GET OUT OF MY CLASS, ART KIDS, YOU'RE MAKING MY BAD ART LOOK WORSE.
French is god-awful. I shouldn't expect a 400 level French class to be not hard but it is terrible. We watched four versions of Madame Bovary and for our test on Monday he expects us to tell all the movies apart by director's name. I cannot tell them apart. There's the French color one, the American black and white one, the French black and white one and the British miniseries. But if you ask me, vrai ou faux, dans la film de Renoir, Léon a cassé la vitre avec son main, I couldn't tell you.
Everything else is okay. Tai Chi is making my legs hurt. 1776 is playing at Civic theatre and I'm planning on seeing it this weekend.
OH! Will.i.am is coming to my school on Sunday. Crazy, right? I am pumped.
So, I finally went and saw a specialist (gastrointerologist). I couldn't play last week in band because I was so nauseated and I finally got fed up with everything, so I went and saw a regular doctor at university health services and they referred me to a specialist in town.
I went on Monday and saw her: I'm having an GI ultra sound today at three thirty to rule out any possibilities of enlarged things (like my gull bladder) and I'm having a scope a week from Friday. The scope is where they shove a camera down my throat to look at my stomach and esophagus; I will be asleep when they do it.
For now I'm on Protonix in the morning to help to try to heal any errosion I've had, and Zantac at night to reduce the acid in my stomach.
The specialist said it's probably not an ulcer, but that the medication I was on (over the past year) probably relaxed the sphincter between my esophagus and my stomach allowing acid to come up in my throat. She said there's a strong likelihood that I will have acid reflux disease for the rest of my life if the sphincter doesn't heal.
I can't eat:
gum
tomato based foods
spicy foods
large meals
food high in fat
fried food
alcohol
coffee
caffeine
carbonated beverages
So, there it is. I'll get poked and prodded a bit more in the next few weeks: my follow up appointment is on October third.
11:07:17 * Danno sobs
11:07:23 [ Danno] so fine, I go to clear this girl's temp files
11:07:29 [ Danno] well %temp% is in thumbnail view too
11:07:37 [ Danno] and for some reason it's in a weird arrangement, folders are on
the bottom
11:07:40 [ Danno] and the first thing I see
11:07:41 [ Danno] THE FIRST THING
11:07:50 [ Danno] is porn where this girl is getting dogged... by a dog
So my nephew has roughly 19 days before he enters this world.
And I am so flippin' excited, I couldn't even begin to explain.
And I have a cat now. And she is so flippin' adorable..
I love her to death.
She cuddles with mike and I when we are sleepin'..
i sent my resume to some people that posted an add on craigslist, they wanted "kitchen help" for 9 months or so in Antarctica. I probably won't even get a reply, but yeah, I'd be one hell of an adventure.
I'm throwing myself into a busy week again; classes, work, the fraternity.
I made first chair in University Band for the first time in a year and I get many solos, one of which is a montage of Raisins and Almonds-a song which I played many a time in my youth practicing.
My health is improving. My aciphex trial is almost done, and I'm better, but not totally healed. Going to Wheatland screwed me up a bit: it's always two steps forward, one step back. I think once I'm done I'm going to go on Prilosec for a while to help it heal all the way.
Wheatland pictures to be on facebook soon (whenever Jessie gets them up).
What gives the Supreme Court to hear cases from the individual states?
Today we take for granted the appeal process in our legal system. Although the Supreme Court hears only 3% of its cases appealed from state courts it is still understood in our legal fabric that the Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. Unlike today, at the founding of our federal system the Supreme Court did not automatically have the authority to hear appeals from state courts.
! الحمد لله
I started my last year of college last week. I do not want to talk about how much this is freaking me out.
I am so sorry that I haven't updated lately but things have been crazy. On Mondays and Thursdays, I have class from 9am - 7pm with 5 minutes between classes and work crammed in there too. Otherwise, I have one or two classes.
Here's the rundown:
Mondays/Thursdays
I have Cartography at 9. This class is awesome because I've always wanted to be a useless cartographer and it's taught by Bieneman. Did I ever tell you I had his wife in elementary school? She was my fourth grade teacher. Her mother passed away this week.
At 10:50, I go to work until 1:25.
Don't even get me started on these new kids. They deserve their own post.
At 1:40, I have French Film and Lit. It's only the second week of school and I already am just reading the SparkNotes. The class would be so much less painful with you girls but I'm surviving okay with...the one girl whose name I still don't know after four years and some other girl.
Five minutes after the end of French class, I have Ceramics. It's really just a class to help me calm down but I've already broken two pots and found two very not artistic buddies. I am so not artsy.
Five minutes after the end of feeling dumb, I have Arabic. Which is, quite frankly, awesome. It is difficult but a ton of fun. I feel like such a genius when I get a word right or when I understand what's going on. Also: heritage! I hope I get to talk to my mom's relatives before the kick the bucket because now I know my blood languages (as my mom calls it).
Tuesdays/Fridays
I have a confession to make. Because I couldn't afford the textbook and he stressed homework so much, I dropped my history class. So now I have to take it next semester.
In other news, at 10:50, I have Tai Chi. Which is reaching Folk and Square Dance in awesomeness. The prof learned Tai Chi directly from some famous family who created a form of Tai Chi. He is a hoot. I have a thousand stories from him. He fell off a curb and landed on cement about a year ago and had trouble walking again. His hip hurt when he walked so he couldn't walk across the room until he tried doing Tai Chi. When he walked by doing his Tai Chi moves, his hip didn't hurt any more. Since he is injured, his wife does most of the demonstrations. She also helps him remember how old he is when he adds thirteen years to his age. Both of them are pretty old, 60s and 70s, but they are hilarious. He calls himself Monk and his wife Natalie Teager. Most of the class is taken up by his stories.
On Tuesdays, I have Arabic at 6 (work before that (10:50 to 5) but I have Arabic only Mondays through Thursdays so I just have Tai Chi and work on Fridays.
On Wednesdays, I am not working for the first time in my life. So all I have is Arabic at 6. I sleep, I read, I do homework, I relax.
Overall, this semester is awesome but very stressful. I have a lot of work ahead of me.
So I think I can live wiht my aunt being a biker chick. It was nice to see her and her new guy Ray seems to be very nice. A more down to earth type guy. A real man's man if you know what I mean. She looks happier than I had seen her in a long time and that was good.
Another troubling incident. Apparently someone at the park and my cousin Megan are dating. Now, they are only in their early teens so I'm sure it's nothing serious. The troubling thing is something that my mom said. She told me and then she said "I hope it doesn't last." Well, I can understand her not wanting Megan to hang around the park because it would be awkward. The whole, "hi, I'm your aunt but I have never been a part of your life" bit. But it troubles me that my mom would wish for someone not to be happy. Her problem is with my uncle, not his kids. Maybe this is me feeling a slight bit of remorse for having this multitude of cousins that I have no idea who they are.
So, I just got done reading "The Audacity of Hope." After Obama's selection of Biden I was kind of down. My biggest knock against Obama is that I am afraid of the people who he will put in office to run this country. I agree with his vision. I like his ability to stir someting deep inside of people. But can he be an effective leader and be fair in all respects of government. Probably not. I wish he could be and have people that he could appoint that believe in the same things he does. But there are not that many people in Washington qualified that don't view a cabinet post as anything more than a way to reward their friends, make themselves rich, and campaign for their next job. Not that things would be any different with McCain, but you don't expect that out of him.
I truly believe that this is shaping up to be a big victory for the Democrats. It is kind of a Kennedy v. Reagan type case if there ever had been one, but with a 21st century twist.
The woman from Alaska scares me.
So, it was a long crappy summer spent primarily working for Meijer 40+ hours a week, and now my summary of everything that happened since my last update is mostly complete. Oh except for all the crap that happened recently.
So, there was some drama with the guy I was going to room with in the dorms ( I won't get into it but it's kind of rough) so through on odd series of convenient coincidences I wound up rooming with my friend Adam...
...in an apartment!
So yeah I'm out of the dorms officially and now living on my own. I have my own room, two closets(one's a walk in! And it smells like cat pee >_> ), a parking space I don't have to walk 10 minutes to get to, oh and two cats. In short it's pretty friggin' awesome. Of course it turns out MSU isn't wild on students trying to get out of their housing contracts so that was a massive mess that took about 2 weeks to get out of (in fact the paperwork JUST cleared this morning)
My classes look pretty damn awesome so far. One is on performance art (you know, art where you go somewhere and do something weird to make people think and whatnot, like the free hugs campaign, or those annoying 'the truth' ads where they tell people smoking is bad (you know, in case people can't find the surgeon general's warning taking up half the box)).
Then there's my american studies class that I signed up for randomly to fill my College of Arts and Letters requirement. So I arrived there expecting some boring about how america is awesome/is the worst country in the world when I picked up the syllabus. Apparently, as it turns out, it's all about storytelling in pop culture. In other words, it's about pulp novels, comic books, vaudville, movies, tv shows, radio shows and other such things. Superman, Batman, The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and the X-men all appear on the syllabus. Tomorrow we'll be watching the show Supernatural in class, and later on we'll be watching an episode of Buffy. Basically the entire time my prof was explaining his class I was trying my hardest not to giggle like a little girl. I also had to strongly resist the urge to dance and sing on my way home.
Today I have logic and statistics for psychology students. Logic was alright. I expect stats to be lame, but meh. And now I'm basically stuck in the library looking for ways to kill time, hence my sudden appearance here after an absence of 4 months.
By the way, I've officially quit Meijer. It only took 4 years or so >_>. I also don't plan on coming back to Rockford next summer, not that I saw any of you this summer really (and that's really not meant to be as bitter as it probably sounds. I honestly really didn't hardly have the time to meet up with anyone anyway).
So yeah. just 2 hours and 10 minutes to kill before my next class. Weeeee...
...maybe I'll ambush a librarian somewhere or find a way to squish them in the motorized shelves....
