Ants

My apartment has an ant problem. Well, it's not so much a problem as an annoyance. They get into my dirty laundry and stuff, but I've only gotten bitten a few times. If I were going to stay here longer, I'd complain, but since I'm moving at the end of the month, I figure it's not worth the trouble.

Anyway, I've noticed that everytime I go into my bathroom, there are, more often than not, 2 ants patroling the floor. Sometimes there's only one, but most of the time, there's two. Kinda makes you wander whose wife they hit on to get stuck on bathroom duty. How do they keep their sense of direction to make it back to the nest? They turn so often and seemingly randomly, that it seems they'd get lost pretty easily.

These are the things I wonder about.

heartburn

I've had heartburn for the past few days.... some observations:

• Alcohol - Makes it worse. Of course if you have enough, it lessens your awareness of it.


• Red Meat - Makes it worse.


• Milk - Not exactly sure... It feels better immediately after drinking, but not for long term


• Sugar/Chocolate - Makes it worse. I think Fats are pretty bad for heartburn


• I do not like heartburn

drinking

If you cannot drink heavily without your significant other present, or trust your significant other to drink heavily without your presence, you don't need to be dating.

Knee Shorts

Wow.... That's crazy. We are a nation founded by prudes.

Elf

Sometimes I surprise myself. I'm watching Elf right now. Overall it's a pretty stupid movie, but I found myself laughing pretty hard at some of the jokes. While dating Erin, I never watched many Will Ferrell movies because she thought he was stupid and I usually watched movies with her.

Thinking about it, Erin's taste in movies and mine were about as diametrically opposed as possible. Her idea of a funny movie was Hollywood Homicide. I have seen few stupider movies. She hated Dancer Texas Pop. 81. Screw her.

Screwing with Chris

If you hear Mahaffey talking about some wierd mormons who tried to give him a book of Mormon and convert him, insisting that he requested it, I have no idea what you're talking about, nor did I have anything to do with it.

Shipping to Africa is freakin' expensive! A 7.5 lb package will cost me $35 to ship in 4-10 days. It'll be worth it, because it's all going to orphans that Crystal is working with. I'm sending pencils, pencil sharpeners, paper, raisins, cool glow-in-the-dark things, and a Howdy T-shirt.

Still need to find an apartment in Austin. I may come down to the wire on this one... I hope not. If nothing else, I can live with Mike for a while until I find my own place. He would wet himself if he knew I was thinking about this.

My telescope still hasn't gotten here yet. I hope it'll come tomorrow because the skies have been excellent the past few days.

new checks!

I finally gave up looking for my other box of checks, so I went to the bank and ordered some temporary checks. They printed them there, and they actually don't look half bad. $2 for 12. Not a great deal, but it's a lot better than ordering a box of 100 more with my college station address. Seriously, these 12 should get me through the rest of the summer with checks to spare.

On a completely unrelated note, I hate banking hours. I really don't understand the point of being open from 9 to 4. People who are making money and hence, need to deal with banks are WORKING!! During NORMAL BUSINESS HOURS!! There's only so much you can do online or through the drive through. I think a great idea for a bank would be to be closed during regular business hours (except for lunch) and then also be open from 6am to 9am, and then from 5:00 to 8:00 pm. I hate dealing with machines.

I now own a telescope! Here's the ebay page. It's going to ship priority, so hopefully it will get here by this weekend. Probably not though.

I'm going to go finish paying my bills and then possibly go eat dinner with Vince and Kit and possibly Daniel.

I'm out...

screw ebay

You know what, screw it, I'm going to bed. If some bastard outbids me in the last few milliseconds before the auction closes, fine. I only bid $50 on it, and $50 is the most I'm willing to spend, so if I don't get it, I really shouldn't waste sleep over it. I'm going to go to bed under the assumption that all the other astrogeeks out there are in bed too, so I should wake up tomorrow owning a telescope. I just hope they can ship it here before the weekend. I'm trying to convince Vince (... Hmmm... conVince? Oooh... that has too many fun meanings...) to go to Austin this weekend. Maybe we can go camping, although Vince doesn't really seem like the camping type. I'd like to go try my new scope out, weather permitting.

No bites so far on my tutoring flyers de fisica. Maybe I'll have more luck when I move to Austin.

Yay for cheap optics!

Well, if all goes well for me in the next two hours, I will be the proud owner of a 4.5" CStar Telescope. It's got 375x of zoom, and aparently it comes with a tripod, two eyepieces, and some other stuff. It's not very large, but I figure it will be perfect for my back yard and maybe some astrophotgraphy. I'm rather out-of-town here in my sublease, so I should get a chance to use it out here. I'm tired of waiting for good weather, my wanting to go, and Don's presence at the observatory to all coincide. Hopefully it will be easily transportable so I can haul it around in my car. I'll let you know in about 2 1/2 hours when the auction ends. Then, maybe I'll post the link. Don't want any of you fuckers outbidding me.

saturday goings-on

Today, I did quite a bit. Not exactly everything that I was planning on getting done, but I did get some things done that I didn't expect that I would.

I printed off a few astronomy papers on my roommate's computer. His printer is slow as hell.

Went to McAlister's with Vince and Kit. Had a soup and salad. I told her to suprise me on the salad, but she gave me a garden salad with ranch dressing. Weak. If I ask you to surprise me, and you give me something I don't like, it's my own damn fault. The Tortilla soup was pretty good though.

Went with Vince to his lab. I took a picture of him at work. He's pretty focused on his research. Good for him.

Went to Hobby Town and bought a launcher and rocket for $30. Then went to Best Buy to redeem my gift certificate from Chelsea. I got two CDs, Bad Company and Audioslave. So far, I've only made it through Bad Company. I enjoy it. They actually remind me of Audioslave a little bit. I guess Audioslave reminds me a little of Bad Company, but you know what I mean.

Went on a 30 mile bike ride to Riverside Campus to water the trees. Everytime I go out there, I swear someone else has been out there. Last time, I only remember 2 lengths of hose. This time, there were 3. Not a bad thing though. Jumping over the gate was interesting. Good thing I have an aluminum bike frame. After about 20 miles my legs started to give out. I made it home just as it was starting to get dark. I left around 6:15, and got back around 8:45. Wind is a mutherfucker on a bike.

If the weather is going to cooperate, I think I will go out to the observatory with Justin and Jillian. On the bike ride, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but they were starting to appear when I was getting closer to home.

I need to call mom tomorrow and see if I left my checks at home.

So long to Mahaffey

Vince and I went to visit Chris on thursday night after work. He's probably nearing Virginia right now. Sucks to drive that far. Oh well, at least he's not driving back.

He's an interesting guy. I'll miss him. He's very good at making people laugh. I thought it was funny how he was making pot-smoking references about his brother infront of his mother. He's taking a giant texas flag to hang in his living room. I think I'll do the same with an A&M flag once I get to Austin.

Back to trying to wade through the numerous astronomy papers which I have to read before August. Sigh... reading is not fun. Especially when you have no idea what they're talking about.

We are stardust

Did you know that everything around you, including the very bones in your body, was once in the firey belly of giant star that went supernova way before our sun was even a twinkle in the galaxy. Kinda cool to think about. We are the product of one of the most violent, destructive processes known to the universe. Supernovae obliterate stars in a titanic explosion, belching heavy elements deep into the depths of interstellar space.

In 5 billion years, the earth will get swallowed up by the outer regions of our sun in its death throwes (sp?). Humans will be long gone by then. Personally, I only give us another 1000 years before we screw ourselves over completely. We're doing a pretty good job of it so far.