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06.05.02
-sfc
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06.09.02 Hello again friends! I am so glad you decided to stop by my little old website today. Say, did you know that it is exactly 1 month until my birthday? That's right! In 30 days, I will turn 24 years old. To make shopping for my birthday this year much easier for you, I have compiled a brief list of all the things I expect-- er, hope to see wrapped up under the birthday tree this year. So, here goes:
So there you have five excellent options which should really cut down on your shopping time this year and will leave you with plenty of time to find me the appropriate graduation present. I love summer. -sfc
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06.13.02 Ha ha, I am so funny. Of course my last update was just a big joke. I don't actually even want any of those things listed in the last update. Nope, all I need is a rock and maybe some dirt to play with it in. So here's a question that popped into my head the other day: How do snorkels work? I mean, I understand how they work when you're just below the surface and the top of the snorkel tube is sticking out of the water. I saw some show on tv where these people were skin diving, and all they had were snorkels and those eye mask things. I don't know what you call those. Anyhoo, so these divers, they go diving deep in some ocean, and every few seconds, bubbles come from their snorkels. I see that and I'm thinking, where in the hell is that air coming from? If someone could explain that to me, I'd appreciate it. I don't think I'm cut out for scuba diving. I mean, it looks like fun and all, but all that crap that lives underwater there that can sting and bite and poke and whatnot, no thanks, I'll stay on solid ground. Sonja and I walked through Friley hall last night, after picking up a couple Mr. Misty's at Dairy Queen. I lived in Friley my sophomore year (my first sophomore year, that is). The whole building smelled like a damp towel covered in mildew. We walked past my old room, and it was kind of weird to think that I had lived there, and now some girl was living there taking summer classes or something. That's where I was living when Sonja and I met. The first day she came over to my dorm room, I was in a NyQuil-induced coma in my bed. (We had only met about a week prior to this.) I think I remember hearing her knock on the door, but I was much too weak and disoriented to know how to open it. So she slid a note under the door. When I woke up a couple days later, I realized I had a girlfriend. I hate it when the cable goes out while I am trying to update my website. Word of advice, folks: relying on your cable company for internet service is dumb. -sfc
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06.15.02 Going to the dentist has sort-of become a summer hobby of mine. Last summer, I had 10 or 20 dentist appointments, both scheduled and non-scheduled, and two trips to emergency rooms (one in Ames, one in Minnesota). I had another one on Thursday, but it should be the last of them for a while. When I was a kid, my bike was my only mode of transportation, and since I lived 10 miles from the nearest form of commercial entertainment, it was the only thing to do in the summer. I regularly called up my best friend David Lee to go ride bikes. We never really had a destination. We just rode around the neighborhood. Sometimes we chased Scott Bell, because he was the new kid. Other times we made the trek to Maffitt Reservoir for a change of scenery. Sometimes we'd dare to throw our bikes over the barbwire fence at the western edge of the neighborhood, and venture out past Erma's rundown farmstead, miles past the invisible boundaries our parents set to keep us safe. All we had were single-speed BMX bikes, with foam pads on the handlebars and coaster brakes, this was way before mountain bikes. I had a reputation in my neighborhood as the kid who would be the first to try anything. Was it safe to jump off of the second story of the unfinished house? Sean will try it. Can that old bridge support our weight? Let Sean find out. Is the ice safe enough to walk on? It must be, Sean's already on it. Can we get in trouble for smashing the windows out of abandoned cars in this old farm building? Who knows, but if Sean starts running, you'd better keep up. One day, I think I was eight or nine at the time, David and I were riding across the dam on the way to my house. The dam was high on both ends, and low in the middle, so the best way to get enough speed to make it up the hill on the other side was to pedal as fast as you could down the first hill and across the middle, and hope that you had enough speed to make it up the next side without having to get off your bike and walk. I was the kid with nonstop energy, so I was always way out in front, flying down the dam, dodging people, cars, ducks, snapping turtles, whatever happened to be crossing the road. Anyway, I'm pedaling across the dam as fast as my little legs can, not really paying too much attention to the road. I could see my mom walking down to the lake from our house. Won't she be impressed when she sees how fast I can go on my bike. I started pedaling harder and faster, and right about then is when I hit the rock. I probably wasn't a very big rock, but it didn't have to be. It didn't take much to throw off your balance when your dirt bike tire is only 2 1/2 inches wide, and you're tearing down the road at what felt like a hundred miles an hour. My front tire started to wobble back and forth violently. I had no time to react, and the next thing I know, the handlebars are completely perpendicular to the rest of the bike, and I'm headed for the street, facefirst. Back in the 80s, when this all happened, our neighborhood roads were paved with a variety of concrete that is mixed with little rocks. There was no rollerskating or skateboarding done in my neighborhood, as the vibrations from the street surface would surely rattle your brain and cause you to grind your jaw to a fine paste. I know from experience. When the handlebars when sideways, the bike basically stopped. My little body then perfectly demonstrated a number of laws of physics as I continued to move well beyond the bike. To this day, I still have the image of the road coming up at my face at incredible speed. My hands splayed out in front of me. My right hand hit the pavement first, then my left, and then, my face hit. Hard. I don't remember the actual impact. The next thing I knew, I was rolling around on my back, spitting gravel out of my mouth, which I was sure were my own teeth. I stood up and looked down. All major extremities seemed to still be attached and in their proper orientation. I touched my face, and felt blood coming from my nose. There were still little rocks in my mouth. It appeared that I hadn't injured myself at all. Then something, probably pain, made me look at my right hand. Instead of sticking out of its usual place at about a 70 degree from my palm, my right thumb was now about an inch farther back than it usually was, and was now jutting out at about a 100 degree angle from my hand. Hmm, that's not right. To make a long story not as long, my mom rushed me to the emergency clinic at Valley West Mall (which is now a hair salon), where we were told my the crack team of doctors on staff that my thumb was dislocated. One of them even tried to "pop" it back into place by pulling on it. I remember that it took three nurses to hold my arm down, while he pulled, and I let loose a string of obscenities that every little kid knows, but every parent thinks they don't. I was operated on the next morning, and a couple weeks later, I had a fully functioning thumb again, complete with an awesome scar. What was the point of this story? Well, I didn't know it then, but in addition to dislocating my thumb, I also "killed" the nerve in my front tooth, effectively killing the tooth itself. Eight years later, I was laying in my loft in Knapp Hall when my front tooth started to hurt. Bad. That was my freshman year. It is now my fifth year here at ISU, and I am a senior. For now, the tooth is temporarily repaired, but as my dentist told me on Thursday, "sometime down the road you'll need to get a cap for it." Great. I guess I know what I'm doing next summer. -sfc
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06.22.02 SNARBLES.COM went LIVE today at 4:30pm. Check it out.
-sfc
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06.20.02 If you ended up here while looking for snarbles.com, be patient. It should be moving to a new server soon, but should reappear shortly (hopefully). If you don't have any idea what snarbles.com is, you are in the majority. That mystery shall eventually be solved. Orientation is going on at ISU, and there are kids with little red bags all over campus. Most of them have just one parent with them, usually mom, but there are a few now and then with both mom and dad, and some even brought their little brothers and sisters. I like to watch as they try to walk ahead of their parents, trying to distance themselves from them. They walk awkwardly, avoiding eye contact with anyone. Then their parents ask me for directions to the Union or to Gillman hall, and their faces turn red and say "Moooommmmmm" in that embarrassed teenager voice. I love it. I usually give them directions to the cemetery, and hope that I don't run into them again. Now, a visual illustration of just how stupid my neighbor is:
-sfc
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06.27.02 I swear this is true: This is a transcript of the telephone conversation I just had with my mom, who is currently in New York City on a business trip. She was there to see a robot. No kidding. More on that in a second...
So, basically, my mom had a rare opportunity to ride a highly advanced, $3000 piece of equipment, and she rode it into a wall. This was during her current trip to see a robot for her company, Wells Fargo. Makes me glad I keep my money tied to the ceiling fan. -sfc
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