would you like a bag with that?

Whenever I move to a different country, I know that life will be different from what I experienced in the U.S. I expect and understand all of the big differences, like currency, language, and business hours.

But sometimes little things completely astound me.

A few weeks ago I went to Quick, the fast food place across the street from my apartment to grab a meal to go. I was surprised when the cashier put this giant bag with handles on the counter in front of me, and then patiently waited while the cashier got my fries, burger, and even my drink and put each of them in a smaller bag. Then he took the three bags and put them in the big bag for me to take home.




I really, really don't understand this. The fries and sandwich could easily fit in one bag together. I got stuff like that all the time in the US, the fries never beat up the sandwich. The lived in toasty harmony until I would bring them home and put them in my belly. And seriously, I can carry the drink. I plan to actually drink on my way out the door thanks!

I wondered if it was unique to Quick. Maybe that is their thing, excessive packaging.

But today I felt lazy and stopped by McDonald's for a McChicken meal. I had to try very hard from laughing when the cashier put this bag on the counter:



Yep, every thing has it's own bag (well, except the drink because I snatched it up before the guy could even try bagging it, ha!).



There was even a handy drink holder in the bottom of the bag, which is another handy wasteful piece of packaging.



So it isn't just Quick, it's BELGIUM. I just don't understand it. You have to pay a nickel to get a bag at the grocery store and many other retail places, and there is a strong push for environmentally-friendly living. Yet these fast food giants have to waste three bags for a take away meal? Strange.

Fat Tuesday

This past weekend I made my first trip out of Belgium, to Maastricht in the Netherlands to take part in the Carnaval celebrations. The first festivities began on November 11 (the 11th day of the 11th month) and culminated in the parades and balls taking place from Sunday until today.

It was a fabulous experience, the city was full of people of all ages dressed up in weird and wonderful costumes. I took tons of picture and they are in my flickr uploadr just waiting for me to add the proper captions, so I will share those later.

Today I just want to share my favorite float in the entire parade, I couldn't stop laughing at the ridiculous-ness of it. I have no idea who this is supposed to be, but now I really want to make something like this for Burning Man.



I could watch that every day and still laugh. Just thinking about those little feet shuffling along under a GIANT HEAD makes me LOL.

And now Lent begins. I am thinking about giving up speaking English (to people who speak French) for Lent. Either that or Nutella.

Or just not do anything since I don't really practice any specific religion.

But, I do need to work on my French and probably shouldn't be so free about eating Nutella by the spoonful, so Lent kinda comes in handy.

groceries and a nightmare

I was at the store today and saw one of the chefs dressed in his chef coat and chef hat, pushing a shopping cart containing a big cardboard box that had the words "CHEFS HATS" printed on it. It struck me as very absurd and made me laugh out loud at the grocery store.

Also, this morning I had the most revolting dream while I was hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock*.

I must warn you, it's vile.
If you have a thing like a phobia about bugs, don' t read this.
If you are eating right now, don't read this.
If you hate hearing about people's dreams in general, don't read this.

OK, you have been warned.

I dreamt that I was at the beach with some friends, we were laughing and enjoying the ocean, boogie boarding and surfing and such, and then it was time to get out. I started swimming for shore, and then got to the end of the ocean, which was surprisingly tiled like the edge of a swimming pool. I was trying to hoist myself out of the water next to a couple who were starting to make out. I was attempting to get out and not disturb them but I accidentally bumped the guy and disturbed their, ahem, activities. At first they were irritated (as expected) and then they noticed some small bumps on my arm.

"Oh, you swam through sea spiders" she said and pointed to my arm. I looked and there were three little bumps on my wrist, that kind of looked like fire ant bites after they pop.

The woman grabbed my wrist and then sucked on the bites. I was disconcerted that a complete stranger was sucking some bug bites on my arm, but that was only the beginning. After she sucked on the bites for a few seconds, she stopped and then spit out the TINY BUGS that were INSIDE the bite on my skin. (UGH!!).

She then told me that I would need to suck the rest of the bugs out of the other bites that were on my other arm because they could grow there and be dangerous.

I warned you that it would be gross. But anyway,

I thanked the lady for telling me about the sea spiders and then noticed that there were some stairs out of the ocean so I could get out of the water easier than hoisting myself up and out over the pool ledge. I went to the beach house with my friends and while they all took naps I attended to my bug bites.

By this time the bugs were bigger and I was squeezing little centipede like creatures out of the bites. I found one large bite that had about 10 creatures in it, and they flew out of the bite on one arm and onto my other arm, where they magically grew into inch long centipede-y creatures that started trying to BORE INTO MY ARM!!!! I had to keep these centipedes from rearing up and boring their heads into my skin, being careful to get their head out so it wouldn't go into my arm and get lost in circulation. Also, if I accidentally took the head off of a centipede before it bit me, the next segment would automatically become the new head. I kept peeling the bugs off of me and throwing them in the sink, trying to be very quiet because my friends were napping.

I woke up completely grossed out about the idea of BUGS UNDER MY SKIN! YUCK!

Sorry, but if anything deserves unabashed use of capslock BUGS UNDER SKIN sure does.

*shudders*

I went to sleep worrying about not doing enough work this weekend and enjoying myself too much. So I suppose my dream punishment for hanging out at the dream beach with dream freinds was bugs under my skin.

The internet tells me that insects and spiders in dreams symbolize worry, so perhaps my worried thoughts when going to sleep started it.

Also I had just read the story in the Onion about a caterpillar on a rampage. My bugs looked an awful lot like a hairless, flesh-eating caterpillars. I'm just sayin.

Well, I hope your days and nights have not been filled with flesh eating bugs.

Sweet dreams.

*for the, like, 10th time

travelling shoes

Before Basil's demise, I spent much of last week and last weekend trekking to major metropolitan areas for work and fun.

For fun I went to Philadelphia and saw Eric Hutchinson with Frogweiler. She and I first saw him at the Tin Angel as an opening act. It was just him and his guitar, and we liked what we heard. Now he has a band and we heard one of his songs in a promo before the Sex and the City movie. I talked to him after the show and told him that we had been going to his shows for a while and it has been a good time seeing him grow in his music and success. I am thinking that the next time I see him (in California *fingers crossed*), he'll be too big to hang out at the merch table after the show. Who knows.

I also ventured near the city of brotherly love for work. I was at the Villanova campus, which was quite lovely, even with the crucifixes in the classrooms. Then later I went to Arcadia University (formerly Beaver College, heh, heh, beaver). That university had a gorgeous campus, centered around this castle.
I decided that if I ever build a university, I will definitely have a castle put in. And, as far as castles are concerned, the one at Arcadia is very well designed because I could not get into that place! Every time I turned a corner expecting a door, there was none. I felt a bit like I was disappointing my viking ancestors by not instantly gaining access to that fortress. Perhaps my true talents lie in seafaring.

Frogweiler and I again joined forces to journey into Manhattan to see Sondre Lerche. The drive in was pretty smooth, with the usual hold up at the Holland tunnel because Frogweiler still does not have an EasyPass! The music at the show was great, Sondre Lerche give such a positive energy to the crowd that I always love. What I don't love, however, is lower Manhattan when it is warm and humid on a Sunday. Warm and humid in any place on any day does not make me happy, but this is a special case.

You see, the music Frogwieler and I love is usually played at places in Manhattan below, say 14th St. Oh yeah, we're downtown girls. Also, many of the shows we have seen also happen to fall on Sunday nights. Sunday night also happens to be garbage night in the east village and everywhere between there and the holland tunnel. So, the warm, humid weather kind of, shall we say, accentuates that special 'city smell'.
It makes the stickiness that everyone feels in the humid weather feel extra dirty, so it is not my favorite.

The garbage on the streets is not something that tourists flock to see, so we decided that this weekend we will venture into the city again to take a photographic tour of weird places to see while in New York (this time on Saturday). For example, I think we may start at Canal Rubber because if it's in rubber, they have it! Basically we are trying for off-off-off-the beaten track, but not so off the beaten track that we get mugged.

Plus, I am bringing the zombies, so if you have any suggestions for where we must go, let me know! Dingo, do you have any tips?

Walmart vs. Target

I don't like going to Wal-Mart. For some reason, that store makes me feel sad for humanity. Perhaps it is the bad lighting or the cool color schemes of the decor. Last night I had to get a plunger after 10pm, so Wal-Mart was my only option. The store seemed dirty and sad and the people inside it seemed like they had been beaten down by life. Even the employees just didn't have any spirit.

Target, on the other hand, is different. Whenever I am there I feel like a piece of my soul is missing, and I know that Target has the thing to fill that empty space. Today, for example, the hole was filled by clearance-priced post-it notes shaped like my initial. I think that the warm reds of the Target interior just makes me feel better. Also, the store is practically brand new so it is still clean and shiny.

It is almost like Wal-Mart is a depressed store, and Target is the same store on prozac.

The big job interview is at the end of this week, and today I am particularly anxious about it, so I fled to Target in order to find some peace by filling my life with stuff. It's not really the best way to deal with stress, I know, but it was a good escape.

Plus, those post-it notes are pretty awesome.

Yeah, I am ready to leave the northeast

Hi everyone.

I just noticed that my thermometer says that it is 46 degrees outside right now. Fahrenheit.

Dude.

It's May 13.

46 degrees is ridiculous.

At the end of the week I am going out to the west coast to give a job talk and hopefully get a post-doc position in a lab out there. If all goes well, I will be moving to California at the end of the summer.

46 degrees in May is definitely high on the list of things I won't miss about PA.

Hilarity ensued

On Sunday night, Frogweiler and I went to see the Kids in the Hall doing a live performance in a nearby town. It was so funny, it was good to see the gang together doing comedy. The majority of stuff was brand spankin' new and they mixed in some old classics as well. I was sad when the night came to an end.

I watched the Kids in the Hall way back in the day when they were on HBO, and promptly fell in love with it. It was my favorite show during my teenage years and I loved it so much that I taped every single episode.

Lately I have been thinking about this particular KITH skit because I feel like I have so much I am trying to keep track of in my life. Whenever I start getting overwhelmed I try to narrow down all the things I need to do to the 7 most urgent things, then I repeat to myself, "I have 7 things to do today. 7 things to do". Then, like the guy in the skit, I try to stay focused on those 7 things even when everything around me starts going to shit.



And this evening I had the pleasure of seeing Eddie Izzard's new standup act. I am still smiling from the experience and I am sure that tomorrow my stomach will be sore from the laughter. His stage presence and ability to act out so many different parts of an imaginary conversation at the same time is genius. Even in the cheap, nosebleed seats you could follow everything very well, it was priceless.

For any of you who are not fortunate enough to be familiar with the comedic greatness taht is Eddie Izzard, I offer this humble sample:



In zombie news, I am still a slack-ass when it comes to getting pictures off of my camera so I have no pictures from our Star Wars exhibit adventures. FTL.

But, the post office is raising the price of stamps next week, and as a consequence, all zombie postcards that I have made from some of these pictures must go!! So, if you would like to get a zombie postcard from me this week, simply drop me an email at laszy77 at hotmail dot com with a mailing address and I am happy to send one along! Zombie postcards FTW!!!

Ok, that is all for now, it is time for bed and I am reading Swiss Family Robinson at the moment (yes, I was inspired by the Emerald Nuts commercial). On the whole I am enjoying the book, mostly because of the immense irony of the family being very religious in their island home but every time they come upon a new animal or group of animals they kill as many as possible, more than they need to fulfill the requirements for their survival. A typical chapter begins with one of the family encountering a creature, the father explaining to the children what the creature is, and then the swift killing of the creature and a stew is made from the meat and clothes from the skins. I think their constant drive for building things is just a way to prevent becoming obese from eating everything on the island that isn't human*.

I understand that supporting a family of 5 on a tropical island must be rife with challenges, but seriously, it has become too predictable.

*so far there has been no cannibalism, but I haven't finished the book, so there's still an outside chance that it could happen

Tricky situations and random fun

Tomorrow I am going to go one of 7 Ph.D. defenses that are being held this semester, 7 people are graduating, and none of them are me. I came to terms with my delayed graduation already, and I am happy to be finishing this summer rather than right this second.

But still, I am not looking forward to the after-celebrations of these defenses, when faculty ask me "It's your turn next, right?" or "When are you graduating?" or "You aren't defending this month too?"

I have been slyly avoiding answering those questions for years, actually, but now I am just tired of it. So, I am trying to figure out the best crafted response. The contenders at the moment are:

"I'm graduating this summer"
"I ask myself that question every day"
"I am writing right now"
"This year has been complicated, but I look forward to defending this summer"
"Fuck off"
"I decided to get as much free food as possible and then I'm joining the circus, suckers!"
"I think you left your car lights on"

It probably won't be that bad, it's just awkward because I am so close to being done, but not quite there. There is a particular person who seems to make it a point to interrogate me about my progress randomly and remind me how much work I still have to do. I just smile and take it, but I really just want to go fart in their office and walk away.

In other news, I am completely addicted to Dancing with the Stars. I absolutely love watching these celebrities step completely out of their comfort zones to try dancing. My favorite at the moment is Adam Corolla, who is not a very good dancer, but he gives it his all and looks like he is having fun with it, even if it isn't perfect. I voted for him, twice. Yeah, I said it. I voted for couples on Dancing with the Stars, and I am only slightly ashamed to admit it!

So far still no summer job, I got all dressed up in my fancy hire-me clothes, and the offices were closed on Friday! D'oh! There is always this week.

Not the site you're looking for *waving hand*

I was checking my visitor stats a second ago, and discovered that in the last 6 hours, 5 people from all over the country have stumbled upon this humble blog by typing the following term into a search engine:

Monkey Bar Champion

The last time I thought about monkey bar champions was back in september. I input the same term into search engines and found nothing but disappointment.

Instead of helping find the answer to the immortal question "Is there a world monkey bar championship?" I have contributed no useful information whatsoever.

Twice.

calming the nerves

I am about half an hour away from giving a talk about my work.

It's basically a summary of the stuff I have been doing and what I am going to tell my committee about next week when we meet to make sure everyone is on board with me graduating in the spring.

But today is a practice talk. This practice talk where the people hearing it have specifically said to be prepared for them to basically rip it apart. And then, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I will have a Super Excellent Awesome talk for next week.

It's all for my benefit, I know, but I am still very, very nervous! Eek!

So, in order to keep my self from running to the hills to escape, I thought I'd share a funny song from the most recent episode of Lynchland. I couldn't find the video, so I have to share the lyrics. Enjoy

Dragon Herpes

I've never been the hero
Though I've stood right by their side
heard their stories told
of how they got the gold
while I just chose to hide
There's one thing that is certain
I'm glad that I'll never see

Dragon Herpes
I'll never have dragon herpes

You'll never catch me kissin'
on some old horny gryphon
no you'll never catch me shooting porn
with some wasted unicorn

maybe I won't be remembered
maybe time will forget my name
while heroes go down in history
I guess I'll remain a mystery

If theres' one thing you should remember
when thinking back to me

Think dragon herpes
I never had dragon herpes

Although I hear she's quite the seducer
I'd never get stoned with Medusa
I'll never catch crabs from a Kracken
Cause that's just not an ass I'd be tappin'

I'd never get sores from a minotaur

I'll never shoot porn with a unicorn

My favorite line is "cause that's just not an ass I'd be tappin'" I want to start incorporating it into my day to day life, but so far it has been difficult finding appropriate situations for the line.

OK, I'm off to sit in the room for the talk and attempt to remain calm.

Textual humor

While I was waiting at the airport for the new plane to arrive I had this text conversation with JayAre:

Me: The irony is that had the flight been on time, I would have missed it. I ran late and got here 10 minutes after the check-in cut off
JayAre: Dude
Me: I know

Then I had to laugh out loud because I realized that you can take the girl out of the west coast, but you can't take the west coast out of the girl.

-----------------------

Once I got to DFW, sanestperson and I went to Sonic, since I love Sonic and there aren't any near me (even though we get the commercials, which is just not fair at all).

I decided to try the cranberry iced tea, since the commercial for it just cracks me up. Since I was just telling Sparkle about that particular ad, I had to text her and tell her how my tea was crantastic.

I wrote out the message "I am at Sonic and I must say that my iced tea IS crantastic", but I use predictive text, and apparently crantastic is not in the phone's dictionary. So instead of the message I wanted, it read:

"I am at Sonic and I must say that my iced tea IS brantastic"

Brantastic? What?

Now I can understand that "crantastic" would not be in my phone's text repertoire, but why the hell would "brantastic" be? Does my phone have a secret love for high fiber cereals?

Who knows.

what did I do to the fortune cookie spirits?

From today's lunch, different food and different restaurant than the last time:



what does that even mean?

optimism

Today I accidentally left some spearmint-flavoured lip balm in my jeans pocket when I put it through the washer and dryer.

I lost one of my favourite lip balms and have balm spots all over my laundry.

On the bright side, my clean clothes smell minty fresh.

who is the champion?

I've recently started watching a show called Ninja Warrior, and it is one of my new favorites (along with Top Gear, but we'll get to that another time).

There is so much emotion in these athletes, I find myself cheering them on and feeling bad when they suffer the shame of failure.

Tonight, one of the contestants came 2nd place in the world monkey bar championships.

Immediately, two things came to my mind:

1) There's a monkey bar world championship?
2) Who came in first place? Who is the real world monkey bar champion?

Also, there is no Japanese word for monkey bars.

First Weekend Back

It's been a week since my triumphant return to the U.S., and the jet lag combined with trying to do too much all at once has been taking its toll on me. It also didn't help that I either caught the cold that was going around Melbourne before I left, or someone on one of the planes or in the airports gave me a fun head cold.

But I sucked it up and spent the weekend at a fabulous music festival, listening to some great music and escaping death.

On the whole, it was a great weekend, I saw great music, spent quality time with friends, and read the Harry Potter book (yay!). But I did not escape a run of bad luck. Many things went wrong this weekend. Most of them could have been much, much worse, so I was able to look back and laugh at it all, but still, it was slightly more than I needed to deal with:

Friday: I left my ATM card in the ATM. I completely blame the jet lag and also the fact that there was a horrible, high-pitched tone in the room where the ATM was, so I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. The tone was so bad it apparently overpowered the beeps that the ATM machine makes when you leave your card in the machine. I called and canceled my card and will get a new one.

Saturday: A drunken crackhead drove his SUV into the crowd I was in at the music festival. I'm not kidding. You can see the news coverage here. We were relaxing on our picnic blanket while waiting for the next band to start and all of a sudden we hear screaming and a SUV is barreling down the hill. Luckily people jumped on the sides of the car and made the driver divert AWAY from the crowd. It's even luckier that the stage was dark because if it had happened 15 minutes earlier or later, there would have been hundreds of people in the crowd, and people would be dead. Crazy!

Sunday: I was dog and cat sitting for friends that were out of town, and when I was bringing the dog in, one of the cats got outside. It was late at night and I was freaking out, since I love my friends very much and don't want to be the one responsible for the loss of a beloved pet. I kept going outside and calling the cat, using the whole shaking the food in the food dish trick. The cat came back the very next day, slightly damp (it was raining) but otherwise unscathed. Luckily it was the cat that likes me, and not the one who I feared was going to kill me in the night, so I was able to get her to come up onto the porch and pick her up to take her back inside.

Monday: After the immense relief of the relief of the prodigal kitten's return, I went into work to find that Pomegranate, my newest betta, had jumped out of his bowl. He was sitting dried up and dead right on my desk to welcome me to work for the week. Alas, poor Pommie, I hardly knew you.



Pomegranate
March 2007 - July 2007
R.I.P.

It's been quite an emotional rollercoaster of a weekend. Hopefully things can remain relatively calm for the rest of the week.

Can I get a beep-beep? Can I get a whoop-whoop?

This is my favorite part of the evacuation poster in our building.

b

Every time I see it, I think of bad hip-hop music.

Every booze bus is now a drugs bus

On my way home today, I had to stop for a booze bus.

Booze buses are actual buses (you can see one here) that are set up randomly on the roads, including the freeway, where every driver, EVERY driver must breathe into a breathalyser. The one that I drove through today was on a 8-lane road. They had the 4 lanes going in my direction funnel into one and then about 8 cops were lined up with breathalysers, testing 8 cars at a time.

It took me about 30 seconds, and of course I hadn't had anything to drink. The legal limit here is 0.05, which I think I would have after only one glass of wine, so I don't drink at all here when I am going to be driving anywhere.

I was a little disappointed, though, because now there is a new double bus campaign. So, every booze bus is a drugs bus, and they can make every driver take a portable drug test (tests for THC, ecstasy, and methamphetamine). I hadn't been doing any drugs either today, so I was hoping I could take the random drug test just for funsies. Turns out, though, that the drug test takes about 5 minutes to do, so they don't give them to every driver. Drat.

Now, while I gladly stop for the booze bus and completely understand the reasons behind the practice, it is something that really, really makes me aware of my American-ness. The whole thing rubs me the wrong way. I feel like it is a violation of my rights to be made to take a breathalyzer test and/or a random drug test without probable cause. Now, I don't think I have a right to drive under the influence, but I think that I shouldn't feel like I could be pulled over and tested at anytime when I am sober. I know that there are random sobriety tests in the U.S., but I have never seen one where every driver is made to blow into a breathalyzer. And random drug tests? forget about it!

It's a strange issue for me to think about and write about. I mean, I see how it is a great idea for improving public safety and reducing accidents on the road. I don't think taking the 30 seconds out of my drive home to breathe into a tube is a big deal either. The only people that would be affected are drunk drivers, who shouldn't be on the road anyway.

I just don't think that instituting this type of program in the United States would happen without a big fight.

Tuesday Tradition

In order to get some semblance of a real life back, I have started a Tuesday evening tradition.

In Melbourne, Tuesday nights are commonly called "tight arse Tuesdays". Many places have special discounted rates and tickets to encourage people to come out during the week. So, I decided that every Tuesday I am going to the cinema, since the tickets are a low price of $9 ($7.53 US). I also get a small popcorn and a large drink for $12.10 ($10.13 US). Each week, I am reminded that I could get a large popcorn and large drink for $12, but I think I can front the extra dime for having the size popcorn that I can actually eat.

Movies here are slightly different and a little wierd because many theatres have assigned seats. If the movie is not crowded (like today when I saw 28 Weeks Later with only one other person in the theatre, spooky!), then you don't have to keep your assigned seat. If the movie is very popular, then you have to sit in your proper place.

Also, they don't have the extra butter for the popcorn. The first time I asked for popcorn with extra butter, the woman told me that it came butter flavoured. When I said, "yeah, but can I get extra?" she looked at me like I had 3 heads and I realized why Americans are so fat.

But movies are not the only thing that are discounted on Tuesdays. Tuesday is also the day that petrol (gasoline) is the cheapest all week! So after I see my early evening movie, I go to the petrol station and queue up for the discounted rate!



Yes! It IS just as exciting as it looks!

This week's lineup was for petrol at the low price of $1.23/ litre, which is the lowest I have seen in the past several weeks. This works out to US$1.03/ liter, which in turn works out to about US$3.90/gallon.

And, just when I was at the front of the line, one of the pumps ran dry.


I was lucky that there was still another pump left and that I was still able to fill my tank because tomorrow it will probably be at least 5 cents more/litre, or US$0.15/gal more. I'll definitely remember this experience when I return to America and hear people complain about gas prices.