Underneath one of the bridges on my way to school, there are sensors for the traffic light. I always like this particular spot because the road crew that last sealed the cracks screwed around a bit and turned all the sensors in one lane into faces. It always makes me smile. I think I am going to put my camera in my bag this week so I can make sure to get a picture of them next time I make the trip to campus. Speaking of which, week one is over. I have no more classes until next Monday. I have plenty of homework to do between now and then, but I don’t have any class… until Saturday. Oh yeah. I signed up to get my CPR and First aid certification in order to aid my new job venture. I will be taking my class this Saturday from 8a to 4p. Booooorrrriiinng. I understand that it is necessary, and it’s not like I am being forced to go, but all the same, I have had these certifications before, and they weren’t that exciting. I hope that I never have to use them. I think next time I start to die in a public place, and somebody tries to help, I will ask for ID and credentials. No... Maybe not, that would be counter productive.
Last night my wife and watched a couple episodes of BONES. That is like our current favorite tv show. We have the first 3 seasons on dvd. I think that is hilarious. I don’t think that death and crime are funny, but I do appreciate the way they have managed to portray what they do in a matter less dramatically than CSI. I also like it because even though there is a little bit of grossness, gore is not a focal point of the series. I appreciate the humor in the show, because it is similar to much of the humor I have used/seen used in both my forensic classroom as well as numerous lectures I have attended involving criminal investigation.
I keep forgetting to bring my camera with me to school. I am a little frustrated about it because I have been thinking about how I should not just take pictures of everything that interests me on vacations. It will also help supplement my journal more adequately. I will be like a tourist of my life.
I am super pumped about my Spanish class. I have always thought about learning Spanish, but never really did. Most of what I learned I have learned from talking to people that I work with. After doing my homework last night I felt like I was beginning to get a real understanding of the language. One of my goals is to use Spanish as much as possible. That means ordering my food, dealing with some of my customers, and calling my sister in Spanish. I cannot wait to try it out for real.
I am very excited about what life has to bring over the next couple months. I cannot remember a time in my life when I have been so completely pumped about the future. Seriously. I cannot remember being in such a consistent good mood as I have over the past couple days since ever.
What is my message today? Life is good. Seriously. Check it out.
This post was originally written on Monday Aug. 24th.
Today my teacher asked me to act like a chicken while a nuclear bomb was falling from the sky. I am taking beginning acting. It is kind of an interesting class. I haven’t taken an art class since I got kicked out of ceramics in high school. It was a kind of funny for me to hear my teacher talking about how you feel and express and how acting is an art and putting on a play requires many skilled artists, costume designers, set builders, actors, musicians, etc. It was just a little weird juxtaposed to all of the classes I have taken over the last couple years just by nature. I have been having a very technical education to this point and to have something explained by how it expresses through “feelings and emotions” sounds almost alien in the classroom. As part of this class I am expected to keep a journal, so I think that the idiot book is going to get a little more artsy fartsy over the next 16 weeks… Funny thing I just realized, I have kind of been keeping a home work journal any way, with all of the lab postings I have done… Anyway… I am gong to do my best to keep a genuine introduction to acting journal as well as keep my entries just genuine in general. I have a feeling that everybody is going to get to know a bit more about me than they knew before, assuming that any body beside Jake actually reads this.
Today a couple of the exercises we did were to form lines based on different criteria, age, height, blue, etc, and organizing ourselves from stage right to stage left. Some of the exercises we did today were some of my favorite games to watch at the National Comedy Theatre. These were “what are you doing?” as well as “Freeze Tag.” I am not going to explain them, but they are fun stuff. By the way, in case you were wondering, no, my teacher is not an idiot.
Shifting gears, I just came back from… dah dah dah dahhhhhhhhh! New York. It was awesome. I went on a Revolutionary war tour with my brother Jake and my dad. It was awesome. I managed to spend time with them as well as jakes wife Reagan and their beautiful daughter, Piper. Here is a link to a chunk of pictures that were taken during the trip. *link* It was really a wonderful experience for me, and I cannot wait to get back there and do it all over again with my beautiful wife. Just a couple of highlights:
We…
Rode our bikes from uptown to downtown…
Walked across the GeorgeWashingtonBridge…
Ran out of time during the day to see the sights that we wanted too…
Kept touring and looking at monuments even in the dark…
Ate Barbecue until we got sick…
Ate a slice of pizza that was bigger than my head…
Rode the Subway…
Broke down on the subway…
Had the driver come over the speaker and explain that we maybe hit something with the subway…
Had a total blast the whole time no matter what!
Our mission was so intense that we had to continue a couple of our tours into the night. This is a picture of Jake and dad at one of the many parks we visited with the George Washington bridge in the background. I think that it was close to 10 pm around this time.
Some of the stories Unsolved Mysteries would show included Bigfoot, Champ the monster from Lake Champlain, many various ghost stories, abductions, and whatnot. I wish they would have done an episode on the microwave handle. Since they didn’t however, I have been forced to investigate this one on my own. I was pretty close, but alas my most concrete theory may have a problem, and I may have to abandon it. Let me give you a rundown of my most recent finding: Contrary to popular belief, as reported earlier this year, it wasn’t a botched attempt by Sosj to frame Mach 5 and get her kicked out o the house. I saw through that one in no time flat. Let me ask you, how could Mach 5 have quietly held still long enough to break something firstly, and secondly does she really have the body mass required to apply the proper leverage? Let me answer that for you: No. Resounding no. With that theory blown out of the water, there has been some speculation that grandpa, not all our grandpa, but Pete’s grandpa, being manipulated by Pete in a very clumsy fashion broke the microwave handle melting butter for popcorn. After extensive interviews, I have concluded that grandpa is innocent beyond a doubt. That pretty much leaves the Jake and Sam theory. They were busy microwaving grass hoppers when mom came home, in their haste to get the grasshoppers out of the microwave and run, they broke the handle. Jake being such a quick thinker on his feet put the handle back in place so that the next person to use it would be blown away by their hidden super strength after “accidentally” ripping off the microwave handle. This has been a pretty tough theory to crack, however I feel like we must know what really happened, and have chosen to test as opposed to accept this theory. Using the scientific method as applied to investigations (this has been the basis of my college education thus far), I have been doing my best to disprove this theory, however my failure in doing so has only made it that much stronger… until today. They are off the hook for now, as this new evidence produces sufficient or “reasonable” doubt that there may have been a different scenario. This new different scenario involves a known associate of Ted Swenson, who was in fact living in our basement at the time. I am theorizing that Ted invited him over to use our microwave after his friend explained that his microwave was a “freakin’ piece of crap that doesn’t cook… he wanted his turkey breast and freaking gravy… he was freaking starving” I have not been able to catch up with Ted to verify this theory since there hasn’t been a wedding in my family since the theory has come to light. As a result, the validity of this theory, for now, falls primarily on the suspect’s track record with microwaves, which has been thoroughly documented by his little brother on this video. Maybe he broke the microwave handle... we may never know… Until next time… -p
Four more days until beach day. Last year Kristin burnt, even thought she sent her whole birthday party in the shade. It was pretty funny to hear her complain about burning in the shade, and it is still kind of funny because it is fun to tease her about burning even while standing out of the suns deadly reach. I am a little excited about getting this day off. It will be the second Saturday in a row that I spent all day with my bride. Awesome. Why did we get last Saturday off? Mostly because we both attended the 10th annual Academy of Behavioral Profiling Conference. Sah-weet. We both had a blast. The theme this year was something along the lines of Victimology and how it related to profiling a case. We also had the pleasure of hearing lectures on things such as ethics for a forensic expert, or any expert witness in a courtroom, as well as critical thinking outside of the classroom. Fun stuff. Today was the last day and as we got in or car to go home, we were both a little bummed it was over.
Aside form that nothing to report… except that there are only 7 more days until NY. Awesome. I am a little bummed that Kristin can’t go, and I am a little bummed that Sam won’t be there as well, however I am super pumped about going and that totally outweighs the bummed, and with a such a huge difference on the bummed/pumped scale, it is quite easy to convert to awesomicity, which averages out to about 17.39 after the conversion by the way. Seriously, how could anybody not be stoked about it. 17.39? Seriously, how? Maybe if you didn’t understand awesomicity, I mean lets face it, I don’t fully understand awesomicity, but I do know that I like it. I would encourage everybody to start doing experiments and research for themselves and not just take my word for it. However, I feel like I must say that a good starting point is realizing that awesomicity has some very innate properties, and as such, the research and experiments are best when done close to home until you feel like you've got a handle on it.
Kelton is pretty good at illustrating his grasp on innate awesomicity and how while using this to ones advantage, it can bequite easy fro one to expound on the properties of shared awesomicity.
this graffiti was above a trash can at my school. It made me think of this picture.
I upgraded my Costco membership status from “gold star” to “executive” today. (sidenote: does this mean that I am going to be sent board meeting information regularly?) It was a little strange to have the guy asking me about shopping for my family. I am going to have family. It is a little weird for me. I understand the roles I play in the families that I am a part of already, being a brother and a cousin, and I kind of feel like I am getting the hang of the uncle thing as well, although not as well as Sam, from what I understand. I have never been the head of my very own family though. Not until now. I hope that it comes as easily and naturally as being a brother has. As I am growing up I have figured out that there is not a plan for everything, in fact few things are planned, and what gets planned hardly follows the intended course of actions. I always figured adults have it figured out, and that’s what made them adults. I always thought that the tools and tips I was receiving would be for very specific purposes. I am finding out that the tools are bring applied to my life in much the same fashion that my high school math teacher explained that math would be applied: not so much in a literal sense such as 1+1=2 (counting change maybe?), but more like if I understand the laws of addition, I can make it fit any situation where addition would be handy (balancing my check book?). I can also take my understanding of mathematical laws and apply the understanding in the sense that both the more principles and the better I understand these principles, will make it easier to solve the wide variety of problems I may face. I believe “critical thinking” is the name of the concept I am trying to describe. I should ask Professor Jendian about it when I start his class this fall. He knows all about thinking critically. I learned much about it from him last semester. As much as I have complained about school over the last year(s), I really enjoy it. I am excited about going back in the fall. I love learning. I love teaching. I think the thing I appreciate most about those two activities is the idea understanding. I love being in an environment of understanding. There are few things I enjoy more than having the light go on and being like: “a-ha, I get it.” I like it so much that I get excited about it for other people when they have a-ha moments. Today I held a little coffee tasting at my store because it was slow and I had time. We tasted one of my favorite coffees. It was fun for me because I have not had the opportunity to do many tastings since coming to this store in February. When I was in charge I would have one of my baristas do a tasting and rotate myself through the positions on the floor so that everybody would have a chance to experience the tasting. I made sure to do at least one for every one of my shifts. Anyway, it was fun today to walk through some of the components that make a complex coffee complex… as opposed to not complex? Let me explain, some coffees are complex, and some are not. Some taste wonderfully with an assortment of things (complex) and some taste wonderfully with only one or two closely related things (not complex… simple I guess (a-ha)). It always bums me out when people do a simple tasting with a complex coffee, because it is like watching a football game from a talented team running one or two different plays for the whole game, they still might win, but it is not very exciting to watch, and not everybody on the team gets to play their strengths and show how good they can be. So… my favorite part about having a tasting is the conversations. It is fun, some of the conversations that come up, as well as the understanding that comes from the majority of the conversations. That is something that I think I will miss about this job when I move on, many people have conversations over coffee, whereas few people that I know have conversations over caseloads or patients.
Alright. It has been an intense summer to say the least. As a result I have decided to never take an overload of units over a summer ever again, in fact I don’t ever want to take summer classes if I can help it. I have spent as much time over the last two months sleeping in my car on my breaks or on a desk at school as I have in my own bed. I have not had time to do anything except homework, which has been insightful, but somewhat dull and very stressful. I though I was going to die. But I didn’t. However to kind of let my self decompress after such an intense summer, I have not touched my computer at all since my final. As a result, my book has been suffering. Hmmm… Let’s fix that shall we.
My baby is gonna be a little chickee-doo. Her name will be Clover Anna Marie, this is by far the most exciting development that has happened over the last couple weeks while I have been off the radar. Kristin and I went in for a level 2 ultrasound and were able to see what the precious little creature is growing in my wifey’s tummy looks like. I am still working on getting the pictures in a digital format, but I will, and you will all see them, and then you will say: “she looks kind of lumpy, not precious, you lied to me Pete.” Then I will say, “Yeah, I guess I can’t argue with the lumpy part, but she I going to be precious even if you don’t know it yet and it made me cry when I saw her cute little wiggliness on the screen and then her little face and toes and she was cute and it was strange like I’ve never had and I’m going to be a dad and I still have not quite been able to feel like I am the man for the job but it’s going to happen anyway and holy crap. Clover Anna Marie.” *phew* I think I forgot to breathe for a minute.
Thanks mom, for not naming your dog clover, even though Sarah tried to make you do it. I’m glad that none of the pet name changing kids live at home to change the name clover instead of autumn or peanut brittle or what ever its real name is. I am also glad that I don’t have scoop the poop anymore. Strange enough I was thinking about that the other day on the way to work, because I see so many people carrying their dog poo around in bags here and it makes me laugh and I’m glad I don’t have to clean up dog poo. Then I think about how I am going to have to clean up after a complete pooping machine here in a couple of months and get kind of not excited about that part of having a precious little baby.
So, there it is that is what has been on my mind aside from Harry Potter over the last couple weeks.
As kind of a tradition after a semester like the one I just had this summer, I read books that make it so I don’t have to think for the first bit of my break before I start my “summer reading list.” This break I chose Harry Potter. I finished the series. I liked it. Again.
The other day at work I explained to somebody how I am a compulsive mess maker. There are times when I just can’t help pushing the syrup pumps, especially the one that says “push gently” on the handle. I wonder if Clover will do stuff like that. Sometimes I hope she is more like her mom.
Okay. It has been a pleasure. I forgot how fun it is to write, and am excited to write more later.
