Winter Break 2008!

Finished my exams today at about 1 p.m. in the middle of a rainstorm. Drove home the long way (took 2 1/2 hours) to avoid having a horrendous wreck on the interstate.

It's been an interesting last few weeks. I went mountain biking with this guy totally randomly:

http://runutsadventures.com/bike/

It's not often that somebody mourns the lack of a southern accent, but apparently it's been "educated" out of me. Boo-hoo

Now, for the more exciting news: I have landed an internship at the Knoxville News-Sentinel for spring semester! I'll be working 20 hours a week, at $10 an hour. That kills about four birds with one stone. I have an internship, a paying job, I get good experience, and my mom will be out of my hair for a while.

More updates as I see fit to post them....

Rant

No particular reason, just things I have observed recently:

1. Halloween = girls dressed as slutty (insert noun here). It's ridiculous. Obscene. Embarrassing. And cool. I'll never be a part of it. One more year of college? I don't have time to catch up on 3 years of missed Halloween parties.

2. The election = plz end soon. Joe the Plumber, Joe Six-Pack, Tito the Builder.....who gives a damn about any of these individuals' opinions? I don't care what an uneducated plumber thinks. That doesn't make me an elitist; that makes me a person with a brain who thinks for himself. If Washington was attacked, I wouldn't ask Jessica Simpson her opinion. Get real. Who cares if the World Series was delayed a half hour for Obama's ad? Baseball isn't even cool - everybody likes NFL now.

3. I want to be an Ironman. 'Nuff said.

4. I just exploited a typo on a website that saved me $270 on a certain bike part...don't arrest me.

5. No-Shave November has started. Goodbye razor, hello disgusted women.

No way, Jose

That's it. The wait is over: Bigfoot was found this week. So was, apparently, a chupacabra. Here are links to both videos, to help you form opinions before I give you mine.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/15/bigfoot.body/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDrcOeAWeRs

Here's the long and short of it, the way I see things. The chupacabra was found in Texas; Bigfoot was found in North Georgia. Southern states, where "bigger is better" and people catch catfish that were (extends arms) "this big!!...but I had to throw it back before the line broke."

In other words, total BS. As much as I want it to be true, there's no way that two of our country's biggest myths/urban legends were found in the same week. And Bigfoot was found thousands of miles away from his supposed cold, snowy home. Who ever heard of a Sasquatch that likes humidity and red clay with all that fur?

I'm proud to be from the South: the place where rednecks put big monkey costumes in a freezer and take them to the Associated Press.

If it turns out to be real, I'll eat my words. Or revise the post, whichever is easier.

A Staggering Lack of Knowledge

And no, I'm not talking about my position as a halfway-to-graduation college student, although that is a reasonable assumption. I'm referring to this:

www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/08/05/congo.gorillas/index.html

Pardon my French, but how the hell do 125,000 gorillas go unnoticed?? In a world where man has claimed to go everywhere, that's a pretty big notch on zoologists' collective bedpost. I know we're still discovering microorganisms, and life in the oceans...but mainland Africa?

Or this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25350389/

An undiscovered tribe of people...mind-blowing. Both of these examples make me feel a lot better about my own shortcomings. People who are paid to research have missed huge segments of the world as they thought they knew it. I, on the other hand, am paying to realize that there are huge things I don't know about my profession. When put that way, it doesn't sound as comforting, but whatever.

From Tennessee

It's hot. Really hot. As in, I-should-be-cutting-grass-but-I-can't-even-go outside hot. It is good to be home, though.

I've already had some phone calls from people following up on my fact-checking work, and I don't want to have to explain that I'm back on the East Coast. It's weird to not have all my materials at my disposal every minute.

Depressing: I'm listening to my All-East TN Jazz Band CD from senior year....and my guitar playing might have been better three years ago. If you don't use it, you lose it.

First post, last day

This is it, the beginning of the end. I'll try not to use too many cliches about doors opening and closing, lights at the end of the tunnel, etc.

It is the last day of my internship at Bike Magazine in San Juan Capistrano, Cali., and I should have work to do, but instead, I'm creating a blog. That's lesson #1 about this place: work starts after lunch, no matter what time you show up. Apparently, Lou and Chris have stuff for me to do...but not yet. So my time from 10-noon is usually occupied by Internet surfing, while the guys on the other side of the building are outside, actually surfing.

I'm not exactly sure if I'm supposed to take some of this work with me when I go, because there's no way everything they told me to do will get done in the approximately four hours left of my workday, including a lunch break.

Now that I have a way to keep things current, I'll post an update later.