confusion

Scheisse! My truck broke! Well the clutch actually. But it’s going to cost me a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars that I was going to use to go down to DMV and, finally, register my car in DC (it’s a long story.)

Luckily (if anything in this situation is lucky) it decided to die as I was leaving work and there is a transmission place just down the road. So I left the truck there and through the grace of S██████ and J███████ I made it to the metro to go home last night and from the metro to work this morning.

Now I am waiting for the mechanic to call me and give me the final price. (Ouch, my wallet is hurting!)

It’s a quiet, peaceful night
The moon is shining bright
Giving not a hint of what’s in store
A few hours before morning
Without a single warning
Something strange begins to move the floor

A quake, a quake
The house begins to shake
You’re bouncing ‘cross the floor
And watching all your dishes break

You’re sleeping; there’s a quake
You’re instantly awake
You’re leaping out of bed
And shouting “Oh for heaven’s sake!”

I ran outside with neighbors
Their faces full of shocks
That’s because I’m standing there
In nothing but my socks

A Quake! A Quake!, from the album Yakko’s World

(Full lyrics here [members.cruzio.com])

What the hell is that all about? It’s from the Animaniacs CD Yakko’s World. Why am I quoting it? Because there was a earthquake near my parents house outside of C’ville. Now strange as it may sound this is not too rare. It’s happened a few times in my life. The first time I remember I was four or five. I was at the babysitters in her basement with about five other kids. I was on one of those big red balls with the handle on it that your bounce up and down on and then the ground shook while I was in the air and I don’t know what happened. Next thing I knew my head met the metal pole that is part of the house support. Yes there was a earthquake, a 2.8 on the Richter scale and what did I do? Head banged with a steel pole and got a concussion. Oh… man just thinking about it makes my head hurt.

Then there was the ‘not-an-earthquake’ that registered 2.5 on the Richter scale. When I was 19 I was driving down the Interstate near my house and the whole ground shook for a few seconds. I thought it was an earthquake—everyone did. The radio said that people where reporting the ground shaking in several counties. The USGS said the shaking registered 2.5. Later the story changed that it was a sonic boom from some Air Force plane.

The story I hear, which I can find no verification of on the internet, so tinfoil hats on was that apparently the shaking had nothing to do with tectonics but everything to do with aeronautics. See an SR-71 goes about Mach 3 or so. So fast in fact that the pilot has only nominal control over the plane and the landing procedure is controlled by a man on the ground. When the thing slows down it usually does so very high up in the atmosphere where there is little air—thus not carrying the shock wave very far. Story goes that at the time supersonic military plane was coming in for a landing —in California! They were training a new controller and it seems that the newbie slowed the plane down a little too fast a little too low in the atmosphere and the shock wave caused a 2.5 earthquake in seven counties! I don’t know if the whole plane thing is true but that’s what they said! ‘Believe it or not…’

My transformation into a peanut is coming along nicely. J███████ told me I had the social maturity of a peanut a while back. And after today at work I have the mental capacity of peanut too… Ugh!

Last night I met my friend R█████ from Lockheed Martin for dinner in the District. He is staying, for a few days, with a relative who lives near Woodly Park. So after struggling to find a parking space near my apartment (there is some kind of convention at the hotel a few blocks away and so parking is… shall we say a bitch!) I headed up to Woodly Park.

First off; Why does the weather suck in DC? First it’s too damn cold, then it’s like oppressively hot and humid? There are about three days a year of a comfortable compromise. Yesterday was not one of them. When I walked up to Woodly Park I was sweating like… well for lack of a better phrase—a stuck pig. I hate the summer, no matter what I do I am too hot. And I hate being too hot. I prefer being too cold—I can always warm up by adding layers, but in the summer, when I am
too hot I can only cool down so much by taking layers off and not breaking some law.

Anyway, we had a good dinner talked for a while and had a few drinks at an Irish Pub. Then we walked to Adams Morgan for a few more drinks. At one point we were no more than three blocks from my apartment but we headed back to Woodly Park. I did not want to let R█████ walk around the District by himself—I doubt he would have gotten lost but I live there he does not. By the time we got back to Woodly it was after nine and time for me to head home.

The moral to all this came this morning: I woke up with a horrible headache, not a true hangover, it mostly the effects of dehydration from the drinking and sweating while I walked. I should have had some water to drink before I went to bed. Anyway, a few glasses of water and the headache was gone, what is not gone is the stiffness in my legs. I must have walked about six miles last night and I have not done that since walking from Islington to Trafalgar in England. I go running at least a couple times a week and my legs are a little tired the next day but not sore so I did not figure I would actually be in pain from all the walking but man, was I wrong! So the moral we where looking for is: need more walking…

[nb: continuation of previous post] Well, Jim’s dongle didn’t work. (Oh god that sounds dirty! Bad, Bad! Head out of the gutter!) His dongle was incomparable with my hardware. (Maybe I should just stop now! —No.) So in flusteration I started playing with my stuff. (This is getting worse and worse!) So after a few minutes and a little help from a very large Hinkle Chef’s Knife (Visions of Lorana!) My dongle works again—well kinda. You have to pull down on it (Mind in gutter again!) to get it to work so it will have to be replaced at some point since it keeps dropping the connection. (Hark! Is that King Missiles Detachable Penis I hear playing?) Bottom line: After much thrusting with my knife and pulling on my dongle the data is flowing in spurts for now…