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Finally knocked out two lingering projects around the house. I replaced the sprayer on the kitchen sink, and replaced the faucet in the 2nd bedroom. We’ve now replaced all the faucets we had when we bought the place, and each install has gone a little smoother.

Tomorrow I’m (probably) installing new baseboards. I’m pretty nervous since it requires a level of precision I’ve proven consistently incompetent at.

Since my grandparents moved to another town, my Grandma hasn’t had a working WebTV. It works fine but hasn’t been hooked up quite right. It worked for the week I was there, then she got a new TV and it’s wonky again. Nearly every time we talk she laments her lack of email and that she can’t read Atomic Thoughts. Every time she mentions it I feel a little guilty for not giving her anything to read when she finally can.

So here I am, creating content. Let’s start with matters of heavy philisophical import.

When you use a water fountain that has bars on the front and the side, which one do you usually push?

We have had a remarkable summer so far. Just last week I was remarking that I couldn’t believe it was June already, it was so nice. But this week has brought summer proper, and today was a charming 105. I had 5 meetings today, 3 half a mile across campus, and all three at different times. To top it off they were for a search committee so I opted for long pants today. It was a scorcher.

So by the end of the day I was waiting for the bus and I looked up to see a sign:

“Custard!” I parse. Awesome, we don’t have any frozen custard stores in town that I know of. No wait, that didn’t say custard. “What the hell is a cac tussard?” is my next stop. Cac Tussard? What a stupid sign. Then I looked up, saw it was a mockup of a card, and pulled it all together.

I had no idea how much of a baseball fan my brother was. Next week I’m going up to see the Dbacks play the Twins, his team. As we were talking last night I mentioned it and he started go through the rotation to figure out who I would see. Impressive.

A buddy of mine works for a fairly large national corporation. He’s been trying to replace his SIX year old computer for a while now. It’s finally on the path, and he’s (eventually) getting a new laptop, a whopping $1800 purchase. So far, 12 people have authorized the purchase and it’s still not ordered.

14 years ago I moved away from my home town, where I was born and raised for 18 years. Ostensibly I left to pursue a degree in nuclear engineering, which drove my choice of place. On some level my motivation was also to get far from home and experience something new. I had a theory that everyone should live their lives somewhere completely different for at least a year to experience life. Over time I can’t remember if I thought that before I left home or realized it while away from home, but for me it absolutely felt right.

Coming from rural Minnesota to Tucson may as well have been like going to a new country. Different people, different climate, different culture, different … scale. My first football game I sat in the stadium and realized every person in my home town would fill a fifth of the place. I felt tiny and lost.

The ties to the place I’m from have weakened over the years. My brother’s moved away from the town but stayed in the area. My mom passed away three and a half years ago. And now, two months ago, my grandparents have moved to the nearest big town. Now when I “go home” it’s no longer the town I grew up in, but to the people I grew up with. It’s the way it should be, but it still feels a little bit strange.

On this trip I spent a day in my hometown, just driving around to all the places I had spent some time at. I recorded stubs of memories as they came back to me; mostly happy, some sad. Something felt like I had to capture every last drop of memory right now, as if it we slipping away in an hourglass. So many wonderful things came rushing back to me, but I found myself feeling homesick in an odd way. I wanted the town I knew, the place I had existed in, to come back. That hill wasn’t supposed to be there, that building over there is new, hey wasn’t there a park there?

Some people feel they are who they are despite where they came from, but I am who I am because of it.

- Billboard on the way up:

wedocows!

It was an ad for a veterenary outlet store. Your reaction to the billboard might be a good question on some kind of a pervert meme.

– I’ve crossed it dozens of times times, and I’m almost 33 years old, but I still giggle every time we cross “Middle Spunk Creek”.

– Travelling without my own music really sucks.

– The rental car has lots of shortcomings but the steering wheel is just about the perfect height for typing.

– I’ve heard at least 5 people here say “We better hurry up and get back for Wheel of Fortune”.

– I swear I am not making this up, and the woman in question said this with all seriousness. “And where are you from?”, she said. “Arizona”, I replied. “Oh that explains why you’re so wonderfully tan.”

– My grandmother has started calling my twin brothers “wombmates”. She claims she’s done it forever and a day. None of us had heard it before 5 days ago.

– This place inspires me to the go to the gym. Everything is sugar and grease, and lots of people show it. The hashbrowns even have bacon and ham in them.

Boy did I luck out on getting here. I was able to book a flight using frequent flyer miles on less than 12 hours notice. I don’t remotely fly enough (this is my second flight in 6 years) to rack them up, I’m still burning travel credit I made while in college. The only other time I tried to use mileage I had to book 4 months in advance and fly at 3 in the morning. It was a nice change.

Random travel thoughts -

- I like the new me a whole lot when it’s time to scrunch into airline seating.

- For some very strange reason V8 is my drink of choice on an airplane. 90% of my entire tomato juice consumption has been while 30,000 feet in the air.

- Traffic in the twin cities is all it’s cracked up to be. 15mph on the interstate at 6pm. *sigh*

- Rain! Weather! Ah!

- I hate cruise controls without a cancel button

- Ask, and you shall receive! The rental’s ignition switch is in the dashboard. The car itself is so bland and generic they should have just named it “Car”, although “Chevrolet Classic” is pretty close. They have gone out of their way to buy the loudest possible tires for the thing too.

- I love the smell of wet grass.

I’m sitting in Glencoe, MN, a suburb of Minneapolis, about to head north to see my family. On Sunday my grandfather had a stroke. He apparently doesn’t have control of his right side. He can speak although it’s a little slurred. On Monday they took all the pictures, today they’ll interpret them. Grandpa hadn’t been a doctor in 10 or 15 years, so there might be lots of other stuff to find.

Please everyone, wish me all the luck you can.

I wonder what kind of hotdish the circle served at the Pope’s funeral.