Here's a quick list of things I don't like (otherwise known as "Reasons # 38, 94, and 205 why Phil is currently disgruntled):

1. People telling me "I don't know" when I present them with a problem
2. Not realizing until after the fact that there are I things I should be doing to advocate for myself better.
3. Shots.

Last night, I decided to venture to Urgent Care because I spent the day walking on a foot that decided it would torture me mercilessly. All day long. Due to the fact that it was bleeding a bit, and that I'd had this same exact issue a month or so ago (in the same exact spot), I thought seeking treatment might be wise. That thought still stands.

Urgent Care closed at 9pm (which totally surprised me), so they sent me off to the emergency room, about a mile or so away. I waded through the usual icky paperwork, then waited in the usual icky and less-than comfortable chairs in the waiting room, to be called.

When the doctor saw me, I explained: "I think I may have stepped on glass at some point, perhaps even a month ago, and I can't put much pressure on my foot without suddenly crumpling to the floor, writhing in pain." (I'm paraphrasing here; the use of quotations is for dramatic purposes only.)

A quick test from Le Doctor ensued. It consisted of him probing my left foot by putting pressure all over the place. When I winced and my leg jerked away, he remained nonplussed. "I can't feel anything. Let's take some x-rays and then we'll see."

We take some x-rays. He sees nothing of consequence. "You'll need to stay off it for a while. Oh, and since you're cut, you'll need a tetanus shot, since you haven't had one in the last five years." My queries regarding perhaps cleaning the cut were dismissed, and my further inquiries as to why exactly this cut remains, even more than a month to two months later, an issue, were answered with an "I don't know." Followed by a "What do you think?" Because, you know, I'm the one the doctor approached for help. Nice.

So where has that left me? Let's see here: 1.) A sore left arm from the damn tetanus shot. 2.) an ace bandage to cover my mystery of an ailment on my foot. 3.) Crutches to get around on for the next 'short while', a prop added to the agenda after I insisted that, no, I couldn't take time off work and school; yes, I am extremely mobile so we still have a problem; what do you mean don't put any weight on my foot, but at the same time you're not offering me any solutions for my mobility issues.

Long story short: my foot still hurts. Even with the ace bandage (though ace really, really helps). And here's me, a six-foot tall big guy who is notoriously awkward and klutzy under the best of circumstances, trying to get around on crutches with at least some semblance of efficiency.

I'm supposed to have a follow-up appointment soon. I think I'll be using that time to find a doctor who comes recommended from someone.

Oh, I almost forgot to add: on my way out to the car to drive myself for said notorious treatment, I walked into a spider web. It was dark out, and some spider was obviously trying to use the low-hanging limbs of the tree to his advantage, to catch any flying insects. He just wasn't counting on a six-foot tall unsuspecting primate being the one he happened to catch. I bet he also wasn't expecting me to start flailing my arms wildly around trying to get the shit out of my face, either. I DID manage to snag my glasses just so and cause them to go flying from my face to the ground, however. So since one lens of my glasses is now graced with two generous concrete scratches, I think the spider still wins.

1.) In this world of buzz words and graduate school, there are so many ways one can feel a sense of accomplishment. For instance, tonight in my epic-length voice disorders class, I managed to not only keep an attentive ear to the lecture¹; in addition, I totally kicked ass and completely organized my laptop. That's right, I'm THAT nerdy. Desktop? Clean. Downloads folder? Clean? Unwanted items? Deleted. Disorganized chaos of notes and random files for classes? Ordered and organized in all their appropriate folders. 2.) I even managed to hold a google chat conversation with my friend Elaine, during which time I realized the following. (Please note that, for the purpose of not putting you to sleep, dear reader, the following conversation is highly abridged.)

Elaine: goof. chatting in class. tsk. tsk. Phil: I've been productive! Cleaning and organizing my desktop and folders and such on my laptop. Elaine: hey, as long as the class time is well spent! .... Elaine: [are classes] going well though? Phil: for the most part. I'm less lazy this semester, so I figure that's almost equivalent to motivation?

I think that about sums up that point, whatever it was, that I was trying to make.

3.) As a certified graduate student, I hold only the most deep, academic, and meaningful conversations. Like this gem from last week's neuroanatomy class: I smelled cereal and decided it was worth a whispered conversation with my friend Letizia.

Phil: It smells like Froot Loops. Letizia: That smell would be you. Phil: Zing! Touché.

¹ Okay, so maybe I wasn't all THAT attentive. But only because it was B to the O to the R to the I to the N to the G.

There's one thing about my new place I've neglected to mention as of yet: my bathroom. While the rest of the place has taken time to get used to, the bathroom takes far less time to gain such familiarity. Upon my official move-in, I noticed that my toilet seemed to be fairly unstable. I learned this on day one, when I leaned forward, like you do, and discovered that the toilet was leaning along with me. To say the least, this was not exactly a welcome feeling, because I was kind of in the middle of something. And really, if there's anything you want in your home to be solidly grounded, I'd say that your toilet your Ace of Spades. Take my word for it. I realize I should have seen to it that I have it fixed immediately. Unfortunately, I was finishing a hectic move and working tirelessly to get set up so I could head back to Albuquerque again. Then the rest of summer passed, and school craziness arose.

Last week, I talked to my landlord about some of the issues I've been having with my humble abode: a refrigerator sans pan, a horrible shower head I wanted replaced, and, most pressing, a toilet that threatened impending doom whenever I used the thing.

Craziness remained for both me and my landlord, so it wasn't until yesterda that he was able to take a look at it. "It just needs to be screwed back in," he said of my toilet. Only that wasn't it, as we soon discovered. The screw didn't even reach the foundation, so he eventually had to do this:

That is one exquisite pile of rust. Or something, I don't know what that is. But it detached itself from the toilet, and evidently, this is bad. Which is why it had to be removed:

When finally my landlord finished working, he proclaimed that all was well, and then proceeded to try flushing the toilet. We watched as black chunks of worn plastic appeared in the water, and as the tank filled, the flow of water never actually stopped when it was meant to. We turned off the water, and he said he'd have to go back to the store for another new part, this time the one that lifts up and stops the incoming flow of water once the tank is full.

At this point, I should point out that in order to work on the toilet, my landlord had had to turn off the water. When he was finished, he went around the back of the house to turn it back on. At some point afterward, I decided to walk into the kitchen for a drink of water. As soon as I stepped foot on the tile, my bare foot slipped, I yelled ("aaarrggh!"), and I performed an acrobatic move that could very well have landed me a spot on the Olympic gymnastics team had it actually been intentional.

That shiny floor is not because I just mopped it. Rather, that is what a quarter of an inch of water across your entire kitchen floor looks like. Turns out that, as it was getting dark, my landlord mistakenly turned on the wrong water source. Instead of turning on the toilet/bathroom source, he accidentally turned on the hose for the refrigerator's ice maker (which doesn't work and therefore wasn't hooked up to the fridge). It took a wet vac and a good twenty minutes to get all the water off the floor.

It'd been several hours since we'd started, and as I hadn't thought to drain the main vein beforehand (not my fault; who could have known that a simple tightening of screws could lead to a four-hour fight to the death with your toilet), I was starting to reach a point where I was standing with one leg in front of the other a lot more than usual. My landlord noticed. "If you want to use the toilet while I'm gone, that shouldn't be a problem. Just turn off the water when you're done."

Every instinct told me not to, but finally, physiology won out, and I relented. I made sure to turn the water on, and then tried flushing. It worked! Sort of. The water left the tank and flowed into the bowl. Unfortunately, the rest of the process failed, and the water in the bowl suddenly doubled in quantity. It was worse than a clog, because I could tell that the water wasn't even TRYING to exit the bowl. It all just sat there taunting me, with its yellowish hue, about how embarrassing it would be to point out to my landlord that the toilet wasn't flushing.

In conclusion, everything is better now. Well, he toilet, the water, the kitchen floor, at least. I remain as inept as ever, and am just grateful to have a landlord who doesn't mind my incompetence when it comes to most things home maintenance.

Today marked the second occasion, within the last two weeks, that a relative stranger informed me they thought I was straight. It's not on account of anything even remotely masculine, either. I'd venture to guess that it's more out of learning of my good Jewish upbringing than anything else. Or missing the guy in the pink shirt for the elephant that isn't even in the room. Strike Two. Today, a guy I'd met a couple of times before was chatting with me about finding that elusive creature, the "Nice Jewish Girl". This same guy had asked, a few months back, if I was my pregnant friend's baby daddy. Apparently, our explosive laughter at the idea did nothing to tarnish his image of me as a good Jewish manly man. "Have you found a Nice Jewish Girl?" To wit, I replied, "I don't think my partner would be very thrilled if I did. So I suppose not."

Strike One. On my first day of classes, my clinic supervisor was going over standard dress code. Due to the fact that speech is largely made up of women, she mentioned that it wouldn't be wise to wear anything with a bare midriff, for example. The girls were like, "Yeah, we know." And when I replied with a catty "Well, darn," she completely missed the intended gay humor and was like, "Yeah, Phil, too bad for you, not getting to see the girls wearing that." I had no further comment.

I like to make it a point to constantly question everything I do. On the one hand, it's because I have an innate curiosity about myself and the world around me. On another hand, I like to do it to force myself to think outside the box, assuming the 'box' is either something with which I'd prefer to disagree, or else something I don't like, or else something that just needs to be thought outside of. And on a final hand, I can be extremely lazy; sometimes it's easier to constantly question than it is to actually do something. If my life was a ship out at sea, graduate school would be the large monster that lurks beneath, ready to wrap its tentacles around my ship, break the masts, and then swallow the captain whole. I'm exaggerating. He might just tear off a few of the captain's limbs, you know, because he's on a diet.

Two weeks have gone by in this, my second semester of graduate school. Having spent, oh 90% of my life in some form of school or other, you might say I'm weary of the system. And this weekend, as I do from time to time, I found myself wondering if getting my master's degree in speech is really what I want to be doing. I mentioned this to Robert, and he was like DUH, and pointed out that school isn't forever, and the life and opportunities once I've completed said monstrous education is where I want to be. And then I realize that this semester is already flying by, and before I know it, I'll have completed a whole year of graduate school.

The process of classes and such is not exactly my cup of tea. I've developed a strong distaste for sitting and memorizing facts--which I've never gotten to verify as factual for myself, other than being told so by the professor and the textbook(s) I haven't even bought--that I'll forget as soon as exams are over. I suppose this is mostly just a means to an end, and hopefully along the way, I wind up smarter and/or more knowledgeable than I was when I began.

And then, tonight, I'm studying up on some notes for my voice disorders class, and it occurs to me that a lot of that angry punk rock music I listen to has singers who scream a lot. I pulled out a DVD I recently got from punk-hardcore rockers A Day To Remember and started watching the documentary about their recording their show live. I skip through until I reach the part where they interview the singer about his singing style, as he both sings and screams for the band. I watch the five-minute clip of the singer's interview and the respective parts where he demonstrates his singing compared to his screaming, and how he takes care of his voice and prepares himself to perform. I'm fixated on the screen, fascinated by how this guy uses his voice.

It's then that I realize just how incredibly nerdy this behavior is, and I know that, yeah, I'm on the right track.

Red is the color of many things. Roses. A number of my shirts. Blood. Watermelon. Fruit Punch. And, the whites of my eyes after spending an hour in the pool. Or, more specifically, an hour swimming laps in the pool in the backyard, sans goggles, chasing the dog through the water. I've long believed that a healthy amount of chlorine does the body good. After all, nothing dries your pores better. And since we're going for a theme here, nothing irritates your eyes better, either.

While outside studying by the pool in the evening (in other words, after the 103-degree heat had subsided a bit), Dylan wandered outside and joined me. He watched me reading my charts and notes, and immediately got bored after all of three seconds. He grabbed his tennis ball and plopped himself five feet away. While he waited, he started dropping the ball and watching it roll away before tearing after it. Then he got bored with that and dropped the ball in the pool. And, after pacing around trying to snatch from the side, he realized (after five minutes of this) that he would have to jump in to get it. Jump he did. I noticed it not only thanks to the loud "kersplash" I heard, but also the spraying of water droplets in the general direction of me and my papers.

It was after the third jump or so that I finally looked over, and the water beckoned. Pleaded with me to jump in. So I relented, and in a few minutes' time, I climbed onto the diving board and dove into the pool. What followed was an hour-long game of fetch, which consisted of me throwing the ball into the pool, watching Dylan leap in and grab it, and then both of us would swim to the shallow end. I ended up trying to race Dylan back to the other side of the pool by sprinting the length of the pool back to the other side.

It's amazing how motivating a dog can be. Dylan's ceaseless energy is contagious, and I was happy to sprint back and forth for the better part of that hour. If I had to peg it, I'd say it was the best workout I've had in ages. At this rate, I figure if I keep this up for a few weeks non-stop, I'll be ready to take on Michael Phelps.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would have to become so butch in order to live in this new place. I suppose that's just part of the package deal that comes with moving into a place that was built over 50 years ago. Basically, if this was 2003 instead of 2008, they would have added me as the sixth guy on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I would have been the guy telling the straight guys how little they actually knew about all their favorite macho hobbies. For instance, I could help them out with simple maintenance things around the house. Like, say, any problems they have with a refrigerator. A refrigerator that's leaking, in fact. And I'd be like, "Uh, Girlfriend, it's simple, honey. There's this tray, see, and it sits underneath the refrigerator and catches all the water. And normally, it catches the water, and eventually the water evaporates, so it's really no big deal, nothing to worry about. Unless it leaks, honey, and then you've got some problems." And when the guy would be totally flabbergasted by my wealth of straight knowledge (not to mention enthralled by how savvy and hip I am), I would brush it off. "Eh, it's something I learned from a couple of my girlfriends."

And I'd be able to identify different scents in the air that are natural to a home. "Oooh, you have an older gas stove. Well, that means that there will always be a flow of gas to it, especially since there's no electric spark to light the burner. Your stove doesn't use any electricity." And then I'd go to town telling him about how much that saves electricity, especially considering the place is so old that there's only four circuits throughout, two of which are in the kitchen. And you don't want to share an outlet with that refrigerator of yours, unless of course you'd rather constantly blow out your circuits.

And, scene.

Last week, I noticed that the tile in my kitchen was wet. This is nothing unusual, as I'm frequently prone to spilling water from time to time, especially as I'm doing dishes or some kind of cooking. (This doesn't have anything to do with this post, but I want to point out here just how nice it is to be able to splash the counter whilst in the throes of cooking or cleaning and not have to worry about some psycho bitch from hell confronting me and telling me "There's water droplets in the kitchen sink, you need to wipe it clean every time you run the water in it.") It was the location of this wetness that confused me, though. It was concentrated around the front of the refrigerator, which initially lead me to believe that maybe I unknowingly purchased a container of juice that leaked, or maybe some ice slipped out and melted. Except there was no sign of leakage inside the refrigerator, and thus by a method of deductive reasoning that would impress Sherlock Holmes, I was able to determine that that was not, in fact, the source of the wetness.

I wiped down the floor and didn't give it much thought afterward. That is, until I noticed another puddle of similar size the next day. Which I then cleaned up, only to find it replaced by still more liquid the following day. I wondered if perhaps I do have a leak, but it was of another variety. I noticed it had a light yellowish tinge to it, but thought that might have been due to the dirt or dust covering the floor.

This week, I've been keeping an eye on one of my favorite house-warming gifts I got from a new friend here the day I officially moved in. It's a lucky bamboo plant. You know, one of those plants that's pretty much lives through anything, no matter even if you forget to water it for a month, or something. I love it, and I like to put it in the kitchen windowsill so it can get sunlight and fresh air during the day.

Only it's been struggling this week. A lot. An entire stalk of bamboo has been rapidly turning yellow. At first I thought it might not e getting enough water or sunlight, so I altered its location a bit to make things more optimal. Only it's getting continually worse, and it suddenly occurred to me tonight that the air in my kitchen is probably what's hurting it so much.

Which means, if I'm reasoning things correctly, precisely this: if the air is hurting my plant this much, it's probably not being too friendly towards me, either. The same probably goes for my food, as well. I'm thinking it'll be wise of me to talk to my landlord first thing in the morning, lest I breathe the gas-filled air too much and suddenly become one of those radioactive-induced superheroes. Though if it came to that, I'd definitely want to be The Tick.

I changed my mind. Whatever I thought was the single most annoying thing in the world is not, in fact, so terrible. I opted to wear a pair of nice shorts today, one that I hadn't worn since May. And in the three months since I'd worn the fuckers, I'd completely forgotten why I wasn't wearing them. That would be because the seam around the left leg suddenly and unexpectedly came unraveled. Which in turn caused the seam, a fancy invisible seam on the inside, to no longer hold the centimeter or so of fabric. Which in turn caused the shorts not only to look uneven, but to be rather awkward to wear. Because I couldn't sew the thing back together myself, I had simply opted to not wear the shorts until I figured out what to do about them. But oh no, I didn't remember any of that this morning when, in my morning stupor, I decided brown shorts would be a nice change of pace from the usual lighter fabric I seem to end up wearing all the time.

All was well until, suddenly, I felt something light blow across my leg and flit away. I brushed it away. And it returned. And I brushed. Lather, rinse, repeat, for the rest of the day. I guess I never thought about how annoying it would be to constantly feel that light brushing sensation against my skin, and not for eleven hours, at that. And since you, dear reader, are probably dying to know what it feels like, I'll tell you: it feels like something between a tickle and a windy sensation blowing across your skin, and instead of getting used to the feeling, it gets steadily more intense, until the point at which you suddenly snap and the next person who says "How's your day?" to you will suddenly and unexpectedly be knocked backwards by your sucker punch, and you'll be shouting "How does it feel, now, motherfucker!!!", only instead of shouting this at said unwitting antagonist, you'll be yelling at your nerve-shot left leg. And then when you find out that none of your actions actually alleviated the sensation on your leg, you seriously contemplate just ditching the shorts right there in public, feeling that walking around in your underwear beats walking around feeling like you want to saw your own leg off, public decency be damned.

I think I truly did justice to Labor Day this year. Less out of actual spirit for the holiday and more out of laziness. I didn’t once leave the house the whole day, and aside from the whole homework thing, my day was glorious. List time! This time, a list of things I accomplished today. Or didn’t, as it were. (Please be aware that the list is not funny in any way, shape or form. Labor Day is no time to have a sense of humor.)

• Stared at my homework for a little while, willing it to suddenly do itself.
• Actually did some of my homework. Typed a bit. Read some notes. Typed some more.
• Played with the resident canine. He came barking to my door so I happily stopped what I was doing to go play fetch. I even pulled out my camera and got some video footage, replete with a narrative track to make Anderson Cooper jealous.
• Failed when attempting to make a salad for lunch. Not entirely my fault: that bitch of a refrigerator froze my lettuce.
• Finished a report for grad school clinic. Still feeling like a lost sheep, but at least a slightly more productive one. This didn’t stop me from being Wendy Whiner, though.
• Finished reading my book, finally. One of the most satisfying reads I’ve read in a while. And for all the talk of cannibalism and coups and getting stoned, when it ended, I was actually quite sad.

Did you know that a microwave oven and a toaster oven each use about fifteen amps of power? And that when you run them both at the same time, on the same circuit¹, you can overload said circuit and cause it to blow? Neither did I. I nearly ruined my delicious dinner of microwave lasagna and garlic bread thanks to my naivete. Of course, while they were busy cooking away remaining frozen, I was at my desk, checking my email and working on some homework. "It suddenly got really hot in here," I thought to myself. Thinking I had forgotten to turn on the switch for the fan, I ran to the front door to see. On. I flipped it off, then on again. Nothing.

I ran to the kitchen. The microwave, itself an already silent machine², has no power. Neither does the toaster oven. Neither does the light in the living room. Neither does the light in the bedroom. My computer was fine, luckily. It's such a relief, really, to know that the ENTIRE house isn't on a single circuit. While I was trying to look for the cause of the outage³, I half-expected to find an old and faded paper stating that the series circuit for the place had been hand-signed for approval by Thomas Edison himself.

My landlord very graciously came to my rescue and flipped the switch on the breaker behind the house, since I had no idea where the thing was anyway. He even explained to me how to fix it myself. We'll see how I do next time I forget the rule of thumb of running only one small appliance at a time. I'm clearly far more gifted at breaking things than I am repairing them, so don't be surprised if I suddenly disappear without a trace. It probably just means I completely destroyed all electricity in the vicinity.

¹I had no idea they shared the same circuit. Hello, learning by trial and error!

²Even when I'm right next to the thing, I can barely hear it cooking away. I have the most bitchin' microwave ever.

³Because, you know, I know SO MUCH about electricity and all.

It's looking to be a beautiful day in the Reneeborhood. I can tell pretty easily because the stylish handwriting says so. If I had lip smacking wit, I might write a letter to the world. Or maybe I'd have Jana write me a song. Ever one for being delinquent for special blog events, so too am I late for Blog Day '08. Rest assured that amazing things lie beyond the links you see above. Click them. Read them. Love them.

While sitting in the clinic office Friday afternoon, frantically typing on my iBook in order to get some serious work done, I chatted on and off with a few of the girls around me. "You know, I haven't even bought my books this semester," I said. "I need to, but with so much else in life to spend money on, I just can't afford my books right now."

(Truth be told, I'm not entirely keen to purchase my textbooks. Every semester, I fall for the bluff from the teachers that you MUST have all your books in order to make it in the class. I bite the bullet and shell out the hundreds of dollars in textbooks for each class. I then lug them to campus with me every single day because I know how important they are. Only I never use them. And I still learn. And my grades remain pretty good. In addition to this inconvenient factor, textbooks for grad school have gotten out of hand. I'm taking only two classes this semester, and between the two classes, I'm supposed to have SEVEN textbooks. Which, in the modern university market, translates to something like $600. And that's a conservative estimate. Fuck.)

"I just moved, too, so not only am I super broke, I don't have any furniture in my living room," I continued. "But you know, I think I'm going to go to IKEA this weekend. Obviously, I can't buy anything, but I can dream. YOU CAN'T KEEP ME FROM DREAMING."

By "can't buy anything," I really meant I couldn't buy anything unless I encountered a deal so good that there was no way to leave the place WITHOUT buying it. Up to now, the only place for me to sit down at home has been my desk chair, which is only comfortable for so long, i.e. until I reach the point at which my butt needs a full-body massage. I've been itching to get a couch, but Craigslist has proven fruitless thus far, and I can't quite afford a new one just yet. So when the IKEA voice directed me to the middle section of the self-serve warehouse floor to a plain yet comfy-looking armchair on sale, I only barely managed not to squeal in delight and football tackle the nearest sample chair.

Enter the delightful POÄNG chair (I'm not sure how to pronounce the brand name; I guess at it and it comes out sounding like "pwang", which while amusing, I'm fairly certain is wrong), part of IKEA's "Seize the Days" Sale. A chair for $59 instead of $89 automatically deserved my attention, and when I sat in the thing, one of the IKEA employees had to talk me down and convince me to stand up in order let another customer try it out, because I was not budging.

Thrilled is only the tip of the iceberg. I could barely make the purchase because I kept staring at the box in the shopping cart, and I suffered some pretty serious separation anxiety when I had to leave my new chair at the front of the building so I could get my car and bring it to the loading area. Now that we're home and I've put my fabulous chair together, I've been hard-pressed even to get up for a drink of water because it's just so damn comfortable.

You know that someone knows you well when you suddenly get a message that parrots something you write from time to time. Something that you don't realize is a habit, even, until it's brought to your attention thusly. For reasons that escape even me, I'm a big fan of using the equals sign when I write text messages or Twitter posts. They're always so useful, they come in handy in so many ways, and they just mean so much.

I didn't realize how often I use them, however, until I got the following in a text message today from Robert:

"Fish, garlic bread, mac & cheese = heaven!"

Just as my conclusion that Finch's bassist is gay does, Robert even nailed my little equation structure. Now I can't decide whether this little habit of mine is charming, or else boring and predictable. I'm hoping it's the former.

*Not to mention nerdy.

When you work in the field I do (interpreting; not speech), there's almost no such thing as too much information. Tonight, I was reminded once again just how much I love my job. I love it because random words like 'phallic' pop up from time to time, and invariably, I wind up getting into a huge discussion of what, exactly, the word means.

Phil: Phallic relates to the penis. Coworker: Not exclusively. It can be related to the vagina. Phil: Since when? A phallus is a penis. Coworker: But it can be feminine. Phil: It's a penis! Coworker: ... Phil: It's a penis.

As it turns out, we were both right. According to Merriam-Websiter online, 'phallic' can be relating to or being the stage of psychosexual development in psychoanalytic theory that follows the anal stage and during which a child becomes interested in his or her own sexual organs. But a 'phallus' is still a dick.

As my friend Melissa and I approached a crosswalk on campus yesterday, I watched a car drive right through the stop sign without even bothering to slow down. I made my displeasure known. "There's a stop sign there, jerk!"

A girl within earshot looked over at me with what I thought was a grin on her face, only to realize that it was probably something more akin to malice, as the car stopped mere feet past the crosswalk and she opened the door and got in.

Three-hour classes are quite possibly the worst invention of all time. Tonight I had my first lecture class of the semester. I managed to stick with it for the first hour and forty-five minutes or so, but it was all downhill from there. Suddenly, I went from writing decent notes to writing thought-provoking notes like this: Fun question of the night: How do you pluralize 'epiglottis'?

And when I started writing down how many minutes I had left in class, I knew I was really in trouble.

30 minutes left in class. YAY.

25 minutes left--I've already mentally checked out.

And then it got more off topic.

These desk chairs are decidedly not good for me. Ugh.

I'm rather proud of myself--I managed to bring up Bulimia into the lecture. Go me!

Now that's what I call graduate level work. Oh, and before I forget, I also managed to announce to the girl next to me that that one part of the larynx we were looking at resembled a butt. Because it did, seriously.

Saturday, I made my reluctant, yet still triumphant, return to Los Angeles. I kept note of everything that happened along the way, just for fun. Here's how it plays out, in real time. Prologue

Perhaps the reluctance to fully pack comes from the fact that I am not yet ready to say goodbye. Packing everything completely signals that it's time to go, and for all there is to look forward to, I know how much I'll miss those small everyday things I'd gotten spoiled with on a daily basis over the summer. Time bests me, and with a heavy heart, I accept that the memories remain, and more will be made, all in good time.

Chapter 11:35am, Mountain Standard TIme

The metal detector beeps as I walk through security at the airport. A high-strung TSA employee orders me to move back and then try again. I oblige, and this time I get through without the glaring beep beep beep. I move forward to await my bag, computer, and lunch. A man stares intently at his computer screen, scrunching his face up in what could be constipation, except it occurs to me that he is concentrating deeply on the orange, blue, white, and yellow images before him. After a solid minute, he lifts up my Whole Foods bag, gives me a suspicious look, and asks if this is mine. I reply in the affirmative, and he proceeds to open it up and remove the children's meal I had purchased for half an hour before. Apple juice, 6.7 ounces. Apple sauce, unknown amount, but certainly more than 3 ounces. Both are contraband, and because I opt not to have to wait another twenty minutes to repeat the process, they are confiscated.

Chapter 1:30pm, Mountain Standard Time

I board the plane to Phoenix. Despite being in the second herd of passengers, the plane is quite full. I head toward the back in the hopes of finding an empty row with an available aisle or window seats. I spy an empty row, but upon my arrival I discover a child seat in place next to the window. I wait, and a mother approaches with her infant daughter. She smiles and says I'm welcome to sit next to them. The next hour or so is spent chatting amicably and playing with her thirteen-month-old. This surprises me, but very pleasantly so.

Chapter 2:45pm, Pacific Standard Time

After running into a friend I made last semester, I board the plane to Burbank. This time, I secure a window seat in the second to last row of the plane. A haggard old man approaches and decides to take the seat between me and the 6'5" hulk on the end. This old man is probably pushing 90, and his slightly curved frame makes him appear shorter than he probably is. His hair is white and cut extremely short. He sits down and promptly places his elbows on the arm rests, never to move them for the entire hour and a half flight. He removes from his shirt pocket a book. Judging by its size, I peg it as one of those travel books that shows the highlights of different places. Judging by its red and busy cover, I wonder if it is erotica. I look over his shoulder and see words that talk about Mass and Jesus. So much for first impressions.

Chapter 4:23pm, Pacific Standard Time

My landlord picks me up and drives me back to my new home. My heart races for the next forty minutes as we tear through the streets at 50 and 60 miles per hour, despite the heavy traffic. Relief washes over me as we finally arrive. I reflect on how I've never had motion sickness, but that ride certainly could have induced it.

Chapter 5:30pm, Pacific Standard Time

I begin to unpack, happy at least that the traveling is over. I see light glint from the floor. I do not expect this, and then I see the light scurry underneath my bed. I spy more as I look around the carpet. Crickets, it seems. Unbeknownst to me, crickets are pretty common in Los Angeles. Robert informs me that they're a sign of good luck. This helps, but I still prefer to see them outside.

Epilogue

Fish tacos were the one thing I missed about LA. I have no food in the house, so I go out and get fish tacos. I call my friend and we decide to go hang out, eat, and then go to a pub for beer and live music. We meet odd new people, including one self-proclaimed Casanova who, for every sentence you spoke, would want to bump fists. Then he asked my friend on a date and was devastated when she said "NO, BITCH!"*

The End.

*She was quite a bit more subtle than I just made her out to be.

Today, Thursday, marks six weeks that I've been in Albuquerque this second time around. It's been a pretty awesome time, sort of to the point that I've started to take roots here. Doubtless, Robert considers this an understatement. This could be because I've taken over the dining table and converted it into my laptop desk, replete with pens, coins, receipts, and the like. And maybe the way I've unceremoniously tossed everything I have with me on the living room floor, in front of the television. Of course, since it has been six weeks that I've been here, I've ended up accumulating a rather shocking amount of things. There was the initial purchase of more clothes in order to not offend my gay sensibilities, of course. But in addition to that, I've managed to acquire some six CDs, nine books, ten DVDs, and a pair of flip flops. All of which I could no longer live without, and therefore had to purchase.

The challenge, I suppose, will be packing everything into my single suitcase and shoulder bag. Because, as I just noted, I can't live without any of this stuff, and so must bring it all back to California with me. Friday will be an interesting exercise of suitcase-packing mania. Probably I'll start packing and then get completely distracted by all the cool stuff I got, since despite my 24 years on this planet, I'm still not quite ten. And yet, if I really was ten, I'd love getting up super early. Take my word for it, but my 5:30 am zombie face is anything but youthful. It's more like 5,000-year-old rotted mummy.

Under the glossy veneer that is my big, gay exterior, I'm pure thug. Never mind that I'm so white, either. The mailman didn't.

Mailman: Hey man, how's it going? Phil: Pretty good, thanks. Mailman: That's good, bro. Phil: Um, so... did I miss the outgoing mail? Mailman: No, man it's still right here. Phil: Sweet. Thanks. Mailman: Have a good day, man.

I suppose now would be a good time to point out our respective attire. The mailman was bedecked in standard mailman drag, replete with the blue pants with the dark blue line down the seam. He was sporting a poorly trimmed beard and the usual mailman cap. Oh, and he was whiter than I am. Cut to me, styling it up in white shorts and a bright red polo shirt, going for the win with the high-tech sunglass covers for my glasses.

Because Mr. Mailman made sure to emphasize every single "man" by drawling it out a good three seconds, I'm left forming one of two conclusions. 1.) He thought I was gangsta. 2.) He wanted me to be gangsta. Either way, he was hoping to prove that he could keep up with the best of us, even if the "best" turned out to be white, gay, and the only gang he could make it in would be the Big Gay Mafia.

In the spirit of stream of consciousness, I offer a list of things that fall into no category in particular.

• I watched the final swimming events this evening, including the historic eighth gold medal event by swimming guru Michael Phelps. I’ve gotten so into the swimming events that I’ve made sure we’re home by 8 o’clock every night just so I could watch my swimming. I feel like I should state that, for my own record, I watched history happen. I watched a guy win the most gold medals in one week, ever. And I watched a 41-year-old woman race against teenagers and kick some serious ass. I was jumping up and down maniacally during several of the races tonight, though trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake my slumbering honey.

• I finally got to see The Dark Knight today. I enjoyed the heck out of it, but it did make me really sad because it reminded me how much it sucks that Heath Ledger is no longer with us. His performance was even better than I had imagined it would be.

• As my poor partner found out tonight, I have lousy vision in low light, and even when moving slowly, I can be a deadly weapon. Trying to be helpful, I was fixing the alarm clock as Robert arranged the pillows on the bed, and as I turned around, he was in the process of leaning over the bed to climb in when my moving elbow met his chest. While Chuck Norris or Steven Segal might have been proud, I didn’t have such sentiment. It was unfortunate timing, to be sure. But if I ever DO have to defend myself in a fight, I guess I have a good new karate move at my disposal.

The mountains stand out in the distance, a brilliant shade of deep blue. The sun tries to peek above the tip of the mountainous skyline. The air is cool, a dewy humidity competing with the dryness. Clouds that only hours ago lazily floated high in the air have lost altitude. The sky is a sheet of glass, glinting playfully with the rising sun. The mountain range towers less than usual. Clouds have descended upon the peaks, covering the range from north to south. Having blocked the rising sun, they appear puffy, a light shade of blue. A light breeze passes through continuously, smoothing the surface of clouds. A wave crashing over rocks, moving in slow motion.

The sun persists. Shimmering rays appear, taunting the clouds and daring them to relent. A tiny crescent of the great star emerges. Though small, it reaches far and wide. In both directions, clouds are immediately lined a brilliant color palette, alternating gold and silver as the rays of the sun play off the clouds and misty air at the high altitude.

The air is crisp and still. Time slows down and falls away. Calm. Peaceful. Beautiful.

If you ever come across one of these delicious buildings, I highly recommend you bite, and go inside. Upon seeing the Toll House store whilst wandering Albuquerque Uptown with my friend Dr. Vina, it was all I could do to not lick the bricks of the building right then and there.

The overpowering smell of cookies was enough to make us decide to spoil our impending lunch a little bit by ordering what looked like harmless little snacks of mini chocolate chip cookies with white stuff and mini M&Ms surrounding them. And at a mere 99 cents each, said truffles seemed easily as harmless as a stick of celery. Maybe I'm exaggerating.

We probably really should have ordered celery, or at least that weird grass drink stuff some of those smoothie places sell. Despite my fairly sweet tooth, I bit into my little cookie sandwich and was met with a whipped cream that was so sugary it nearly killed all my taste buds upon contact. So while a ten-year-old might relish the intense feeling that is whipped cream instantly turning to butter in your mouth, it was way too much for me to handle. I think that spike in my glucose level should be my last such spike, preferably for the rest of my life.

The lesson to learn here: when you do go, don't do what I did. Stick to a regular cookie or maybe some ice cream. You can thank me later.

I've always been something of a night owl. This generally isn't too much of a problem, though, as I've somehow managed to finagle my schedule so that the earliest I ever have to be at work or school is 9am. Of course, I've been bitten by the Olympic bug this year, and while it hasn't had me training like mad, I have been flopped down on the couch in front of the television every single night, unable to move from the screen. This week, Robert has returned to work. My philosophy for work is that even if I'm tardy, at least I'm there. Read: mornings are my mortal enemy. Conversely, Robert likes to arrive to work nice and early. And, he likes to have plenty of time each morning to get ready. This is what my schedule has been like so far this week:

8pm: Watch Olympics 11:30pm: Finish watching Olympics and think about going to bed. 12-12:30am: Go to bed.

Sleep

5:30am: Feel a hand reach out and shake me around, and voice say "Phil, it's time to get up."

And then it takes me half an hour to drag my near-lifeless ass out of bed, staggering around and moving with Lego-man precision as I stumble through my morning routine.

After I dropped Robert off at work just before 7am, I headed home with an urgency that only the sheer desire to crawl back under the covers and sleep can muster. Naturally, it took me an hour to fall asleep again. I had to set my alarm, as I wanted to get up by 8:45 so I could get some things done at home and then meet some old work supervisors for lunch.

This is where cell phones come in handy: they have alarm clocks. I set my cell phone alarm, and opted for a random ringtone to wake me up. One I hadn't yet listened to. One that started off with an odd little bass riff, followed by a few guitar notes and some drums. A tune that, even to my sleepy ears, struck me as more than a little suitable for a porno film. I didn't realize this at first; it wasn't until after I'd hit the snooze, five minutes had lapsed, and then it thumped again, that it hit me. Talk about a weird thought to wake up to. Oy vay.

During this election year, I'm finding that I'm learning a great deal about the rest of the world. Aside from traveling, I think one of the best ways in which to accomplish this is through stories. In my case, I've been hankering after memoirs. A while back, I picked up a travel memoir by the inimitable J. Maarten Troost. His time spent in the South Pacific resulted in two books, The Sex Lives of Cannibals and Getting Stoned With Savages. I picked up the latter after randomly finding it in a bookstore and reading a few sentences.

Sometimes when I find odd books in stores, or books of which I've not yet heard, I forgo reading the back cover in favor of reading a few paragraphs or pages from the first chapter, in order to get a feel for it and see if it draws me in. Getting Stoned With Savages succeeded, big time, and as I'm now in the middle of it, I'm getting more cultured by the second.

Aside from the joys of reading how the residents of Vanuatu handle government coups and general political upheaval by getting stoned, there's also the joy of the "savages" part of Vanuatu. In order to encourage you, dear reader, to drop everything immediately and go read this book, I offer a few favorite parts that had me in fits of laughter.

First, there's the part where Troost tries to figure out exactly how cannibalism in the area was not out of spite or necessity, but out of custom, or enjoyment:

Typically, the men of a particular village ambushed the men of another village. The goal was to capture one man, who would then be triumphantly carried back to the attackers' village, clubbed, and chopped into pieces. Good manners dictated that an arm or a leg be sent off to a friendly village. Again, here I sputter in disbelief. Imagine receiving such a package. "Oh, look, honey. Bob and Erma over in Brooklyn have sent us a thigh. So thoughtful." Of course, now you are obliged to reciprocate, and so you gather your friends and off you go, hunting for a man, and when you capture one, you will thoughtfully hack an arm off and send it along to Bob and Erma, together with a note--Thinking of you.

As if that wasn't enough, Troost expounds on some of the history of the islands:

When Westerners began to arrive in some numbers in the nineteenth century, they too found themselves participating in Vanuatu's exciting culinary world. John Williams, the very first missionary to arrive in Vanuatu, landed on the island of Erromango on November 18, 1839. Sponsored by the London Missionary Society, which had considerable success in converting much of Polynesia to Christianity, Williams stepped ashore, no doubt confident that very soon he would be breaking bread with the islanders. Within minutes, he was dead, killed by a fusillade of arrows. And then he became lunch.

Perhaps it's morbid fascination on my part, but with every page I turn, I become increasingly more fascinated. It's certainly nice to read a book in which the author draws you in to the point that you may as well be living next door. So what are you waiting for? Get started on your vicarious trip out to the South Pacific. I'm going to keep enjoying mine.