October 2005 Archives

Yes, I've been signing away chunkfuls of my hard-earned cash tonight, amidst laundry, cries of Halloween from the town, and Scary Movie 2 on Comedy Central. It's been relatively easy for me to put the inevitability of paying rent and so on out of my mind these past few weeks, because October's been a busy month. Nevertheless, tonight's the night for scaring the money out of my wallet.

So, to counteract this big event, here's a list of things I'm excited about:

... Halloween. I've got this weekend's pictures up now, and they're pretty darn hilarious. I've got to hand it to all you Wesley folks for being really creative in your costumes. My cheap, last-minute doctor's outfit (completed thanks to Gina's lab coat and stethoscope) was a comfortable-yet-stylish hit. I forgot to mention that I'm the latest cast member on ER; they're getting that desperate. At any rate, both Halloween parties were ultra-fun, and Gina & Katie's new apartment can now officially be considered warm.

... The Hour That Doesn't Count. This year, it was up to Gina, Katie, Katie's friend Nathan, and I to hold up the traditional hour. We tried harder to keep the craziness down to just an hour this time around. Our night began with a quick trip to Wal-Mart, continued with a walking video tour past the stadium, and ended at Burruss Hall. We returned to the apartment cold, but energized from all the goofiness, with a funny video to show for it all.

... Hokie Football. The orange and maroon train is coming to YOUR TOWN soon, and ain't nobody gonna stop it! Nobody left on our schedule, that is, and very possibly no one in the nation. Right before I left the 'burg on Sunday, I learned that Sarah wasn't going to use her ticket for this weekend's Miami game due to a job interview. She offered it to me. This was a no-brainer. Thanks Sarah; you rock a lot.

... Gina. 'Cause she's cool and we had a good time this weekend, as always.

I'm going to go ahead and blame the latest drought of writings on the cold weather of last week. Oftentimes, by the time I got home and put on a few extra layers of clothes while futzing around the apartment, I didn't feel like doing much else.

That being said, I just got back from another weekend in Blacksburg, where I was able to join in the Wesley Halloween festivities, as well as help host and attend Gina and Katie's apartment-warming shindig. On top of that, there was another installment of the Hour That Doesn't Count, which has been captured on both digital video and stills. I'll give a full writeup of all the festivities next time.

For those of you who watched the VT/Boston College game Thursday night, you might have noticed that Cedric Humes is playing again after breaking his arm only about three weeks ago. If you paid attention during the ESPN broadcast, you already heard about this, but the Materials Science & Engineering department at Tech helped design a mind-boggling bracing system made out of state-of-the-art composites. This brace is allowing Humes to play football while his bone heals, much as was the case following Xavier Adibi's accident last year. Only at a school like Tech can football and engineering form such a graceful synergy. I love it!

It already feels like Halloween is over, but of course, it's just beginning. Josh and I are wondering if we're going to get any trick-or-treaters, but so far, the biggest Halloween trick that's been played on us has been the Vienna Halloween Parade, which successfully blocked all the streets we needed to take to navigate through the town on our way back from dinner Wednesday night. That'll teach us! The parade was on public access TV tonight, too - taunting us with its old cars, fire trucks, and happy people getting where they need to be going, free of police blockades.

A massive, lack-of-sleep induced headache has waylaid my big plans of posting about this past weekend, spent with my parents. I'll let the pictures tell the story instead, since I uploaded them already. The bus tour (on the Tourmobile) was the best way for my parents to see a lot of the DC attractions in a short amount of time, so that next time they'll be able to remember where they want to go to spend more time. Even then, we still got to tour the Arlington National Cemetery (a feature unique to the Tourmobiles, I believe) and witness the Changing of the Guard, something I hadn't seen since 1999.



When I get my disposable camera developed, I'll post some pictures from the Maryland game. In the meantime, check out Jeanette's photos (which I learned I have permission to copy and post myself, so I'll do that soon, too).



Until then, keep warm in the midst of this huge Nor'easter and all the cold craziness. I always thought Nor'easters were mysteriously cool, but if they bring along this sudden shift of weather with their presence (not to mention the dangerous levels of snow and ice), then I say "forget 'em!"

Today is a day for visiting with Mom and Dad, who are up from West Virginia. Despite the potential of rain, we're going on a bus tour of part of DC and spending some time in the city. More stories of the adventures of the Salmons in the District to come!

Jason just sent me this link via IM. That's one smart rat, let me tell you.

I really need to comment on the new Metro ad campaign, which I fully intend on doing someday.

And finally, au revoir to everyone going on the Wesley Fall Retreat this weekend! The Retreat is always memorable.

Editor's Note: I'm backdating this to Thursday, because that's where it should really go, even though I definitely didn't have the time to finish writing this then.

Tonight, I had the pleasure of attending the Virginia Tech and University of Maryland game at College Park. Jeanette scored some tickets from a friend of hers who is still a student at UMD, so when she offered one to me, I accepted it without hesitation. After work, I met up with John-Michael and Jeanette's friend Stephen, and we headed on up the Metro to meet Jeanette in College Park. I had never been to an away game at Tech before tonight, so the opportunity to watch some Hokie football firsthand up here was very exciting.

And the game, as you probably know by now, was a bit of a nervewrecker for Hokie fans. By halftime, with the score only 7-3, a far cry from the blowout Virginia Tech had by that point in the game last year, we were certainly nervous. However, despite some sloppy shakeups on the Hokie offense, Marcus Vick was able to run like crazy, our defense performed superbly, and Maryland wasn't able to capitalize on several chances to score. So, we walked out with a respectable 28-9 win.

And I'm glad we did, because I don't know if I would have survived exiting the stadium if the outcome had been closer, or had resulted in a Maryland victory.

The somewhat "untold" story of the night, if you were watching the game on ESPN, was the behavior of the Maryland fans. I know it's cool to be fired up about your team, and I have to hand it to Maryland for selling out Byrd Stadium and having a go at being loud, but on numerous occasions tonight, the Maryland students made it clear what kind of fans they are. For one thing, with our tickets being student guest tickets, we had to sit in the student section. Our group arrived early and sat towards the back of the section, while we kept an eye on where some more Hokie fans were going to be sitting. We hadn't been there five minutes when some drunk guys got right behind us and started cursing us loudly, in many uncreative ways, begging us to turn around so they could scream in our faces. After a while, we realized that the game would not be any fun at all if we didn't find some Tech people to sit with, so we eventually made our way around to a section behind the Terps' band, where a few Tech fans with student guest tickets had started carving out their own student section.

Things were fine there for the most part, and we made a good showing of putting a little piece of Lane Stadium inside College Park, but the game was still marred by a few stupid actions on the part of Maryland students. A couple of minutes into the game, one Terrapin doused a Tech fan in front of him by throwing his drink down a few steps. The drink continued to sail down another couple of rows, splashing onto a Maryland mother and one of her kids sitting next to her. Sometime in the third quarter, a one-sided shoving matches erupted in the mass of black that was the student section, as tiny pinpoints of orange and maroon got shoved backwards and forwards, unable to do anything to retaliate because they would probably be mobbed. Those who couldn't reach the Tech fans threw whatever they could find at them, or got out their cameras to take pictures of the spectacle, as if it was something to cheer about. Security, for its part, sat and watched it happen for a good five minutes before police finally escorted three of the instigators out of the stadium, while a good part of the rest of the student section cheered for them as heroes.

This doesn't include Maryland's uncreative cheers against us, including things like the entire section pointing to whatever Tech fans they could find sitting near them, pointing, and in unison identifying them as a certain part of human anatomy. I haven't even yet mentioned secondhand horror stories about people ripping Tech shirts from their owners and urinating on them in the bathrooms. I haven't talked about the guy who drunkenly stumbled down to our row and asked to see our tickets, to see if we could prove that we were actually supposed to be sitting there, before wedging his way in to stand between our fans. And then there were the things I was expecting to see: countless signs making fun of Marcus Vick and his legal troubles of previous years, hidden alcohol, and lots of middle fingers.

I will say that we did manage to find a few polite Maryland fans: the family in front of us (even though they didn't seem to know much about football), a couple of students behind us who merely yelled for their team when the time was right and cracked jokes about the rest of their school's behavior with us (and gladly took our group picture), and the girl in our original spot in the student section who helped us find out where some more friendly general-admission seats might be. Stephen also managed to get on ESPN toward the end of the game when a sign near us saying "Hokies Crush Terps Again" was aired. I was only two people away from him, so I almost did. And, despite the hostility of the first half, by the time the third quarter was over, our team had placed the period on the score and the alcohol had started wearing off of the Terps, so things calmed down.

My final reflection: I don't know if I'll ever go back to College Park again for a game, but I do love away games, for the sheer fact of how nearly universally-respectable, fun, classy, and knowledgable Tech people are. We may have our share of nasty fans, too, but I don't think Virginia Tech or Lane Stadium has ever had the mob mentality that was displayed tonight.

As for the University of Maryland, shame on you.

EDIT: Josh over at BehindTheNet has also posted his thoughts about Maryland fan behavior, which was apparently equally bad all across the board.

Not too long ago, I purchased a David Gray CD single from Borders after seeing that it would give me a $5 off coupon for his new album when it came out. I paid a dollar for the single, so I still figured that $4 off the CD was still not a bad deal. Sunday, I attempted to redeem the coupon, only to find out that Borders only carries the DualDisc version of the album, and they're selling it for $3 more than a regular CD. So, basically, I would only have saved a measly dollar at the store, thereby cancelling out my fancy coupon. What's more, I would have had to buy a crappy DualDisc that I would've had to coax and bribe to get to play on any of my freaking CD players, thereby raising my stress levels way higher than they need to be. Thanks a lot, Borders, but no thanks. I'm on to your little CD-coupon-mind-game scheme. I stormed right out of the store!

Oh wait, no I didn't. I bought Death Cab For Cutie's new album instead, which was gloriously presented in regular CD format. I'll save David Gray for my next Target trip.

I think the change of seasons has knocked me off my game somewhat. Either that, or I'm borderline sick. At any rate, being under the weather doesn't make a guy want to write anything of substance, that's for sure. I'm still working in the background on new stylesheets and things for Ramble On, but it's slow going, because I don't want to have to pour through CSS all over again, and some of the MovableType plugins aren't working. The grand unleashing of the new blog design might have to wait until I have time and feel like doing it. I do know that I'm probably going to go with a pre-existing template, tweaked to my specifications - much like I did with the current design.

Things to mention:

• This past weekend, a boatload of people from Blacksburg came up for the Rennaissance Festival held in Crownsville, MD. It was a lot of fun to walk around and see all the shows and festive things going on. You definitely get to see all kinds of people - sometimes way more of them than you really want to - but I suppose it's all in the name of good fun. Thanks to Ben's mom for the tickets and costumes! With her generosity, I got to play pirate for a day, which was as awesome as you might think it would be. Pictures are posted on Flickr, naturally.
• Three cheers for working for the government! I received my letter in the mail today to get 15% off my monthly cell phone bill. It's the little perks...
• A shake of the magic 8-ball says that all signs are pointing towards me being able to go to the Maryland game this Thursday night with Jeanette and John-Michael of former ISE fame. This will be my first VT away game ever. Let's hope I survive!

It doesn't take too long before something weird happens on the Metro again. Yesterday morning, I was nonchalantly doing my crossword puzzle when a middle-aged Asian man stepped aboard the train at about the West Falls Church stop. He was holding a well-worn hymnal in his hand, and once he found his spot in front of the center door, he flipped it open and said in loud, stilted English, "Good morning, everybody!" He then began belting out "Blessed Assurance," and continued non-stop through three verses before shouting "Hallelujah, and have a blessed day" and hopping off the train at Ballston.

Don't get me wrong, I love the hymn, and I normally wouldn't have a problem with people singing it, but for some reason I was slightly embarrassed. Why? I guess it was just the bizarre element of something familiar like that song being sung out-of-place somewhere like the Metro? I'm not really sure.

In typical Metro fashion, however, nobody acknowledged the man or his message, or even gave him more than a couple of glances. I found myself going back to my crossword even as I was following along with the song in my head. Such is life commuting on the train.

Well, the weekend is certainly over, but thanks to government life, I only have a three-day work week this week. I can deal. Gina came up to visit for the holiday (since Virginia Tech had their first-ever Fall Break, a.k.a Columbus Day), and we had fun despite the ubiquitous rain. We finally got around to seeing The 40-Year Old Virgin and laughed appropriately at the funny parts. We also watched Before Sunrise, a nice little film from '95 starring Ethan Hawke. (I remember what you said about Mr. Hawke, Amy. I can still deal with that.)

After spending some time with Gina's family for her mother and stepfather's anniversary on Sunday, we headed out to D.C. with Gerritt and Mel for a night on the town. We checked out Ben's Chili Bowl, one of the District's famous little restaurants, and marveled at the photos of its celebrity clientele. They had some darn good chili dogs, that's for sure. We wound up the night at the 9:30 Club to watch Nickel Creek play a show. It was my first time at the Club. It's such an unassuming place from the outside for it to hold so much great music on the inside... but I plan on making my return there whenever possible.

In a surprising turn of events, I already posted this weekend's photos to Flickr! Check them out.

Guess who's two years old today?

No, not TomKat's baby, it's way too soon for that. (Still, make preparations now for permanently turning your TV off and running into the hills in about nine months.)

No, it's not the marriage of a famous Hollywood couple, either. Those usually don't last much past the amount of fame they can squeeze out of it.

Okay, so it's Ramble On's birthday. Please join me in congratulations, and don't forget to sign the card; it's going around the room now. And have a slice of cake, there's plenty for everybody.

Thanks to all of you for reading and keeping me inspired to do this for two years! I don't see any reason why I won't be doing this for a long time to come. It's fun, that's why. Be looking for a snazzy redesign befitting of a two-year-old blog in the coming days, and even snazzier stuff coming in the weeks ahead. I've proven to myself that I can still keep a website going while holding down a full-time job, and that is very encouraging.

Cheers, and enjoy the weekend. For those of you not getting a federal holiday on Monday, it's Columbus Day. Enjoy!

Just a quick news tidbit for you guys today. If you're in Blacksburg this Sunday, there's another Katrina/Rita benefit going on, but this one is pretty darn unique. Join Virginia Tech students, faculty, and staff - including Coach Beamer and Coach Greenberg - in staging the world's largest pillow fight in an effort to make the Guiness Book of World Records.

With the Drillfield being the most logical place for such a fight, I like our chances in breaking the record. We can hold a good bit of people on the field, as long as enough people hear about it. The story has made VT's main news page already. Here's a link to the PDF ad for the event, which hopefully is all over town by now. Like the ad says, the event is BYOP (of course).

What's even cooler is that the guy that's organizing this, Steve, was in a couple of my Creative Writing classes last year. Hey, I know that guy!

So, bring your pillow to the Drillfield at 2 PM on Sunday and bring at least a dollar to help out. Awesome.

For those of you who link straight into Ramble On, I just wanted to alert you to the fact that the rest of Project BS has been updated with a slightly better-looking outfit. Take a peek, and keep refreshing if it doesn't look any different to you. In fact, keep refreshing anyway (but not for artificial counter hits or anything). This is phase 1 of the grand update that's been cooking for a while. Keep your eyes peeled for more, youngins.

Gina arrives tomorrow!

I'm going to bed.

I'm gonna tell a story, morning glory... so sit tight.

Today, there are two bits of good news. First, I have (mostly) successfully upgraded to Movable Type 3.2, and it looks like just about everytihng is working. There are a few behind-the-scenes issues that aren't quite at 100% yet, but I don't think they'll present a huge problem. Even better, everything on your end looks perfect. Everything is going according to plan, mwuhahahaaaa....

The second bit of news isn't quite as good, but it's still neat. I successfully navigated my way through the dark, twisting corridors of 66, 395, and southeast D.C. today and drove to work. It's one of the first days I've actually been able to do this, since I only recently got a parking pass. However, I tried it out today knowing that I had a meeting in Crystal City that would allow me to leave for the day from there and be that much closer to home, thereby cutting down on the massive amounts of road rage I would be exposed to.

I'm not sure if driving is the ideal way to go at this point, either. What it boils down to is this: in order to avoid HOV restrictions on 66, I need to leave home no later than 6:15 (but we'll say 6:00 to be on the safe side). That means waking up roughly a half-hour earlier than I have been. Today, the commute took me about 45 minutes, or about 30 minutes shorter than taking the Metro and hoofing it to my office. The two cancel each other out, you see. When you take into account that 66 turns HOV westbound at 4:00, about the time I'd be leaving the office, you add a whole other level of convolutedness. I'll try driving again and leaving from work at my normal time to see just how long it would take me going an alternate route away from 66, but until then, I'm reserving driving for days when I know I'll be leaving work early.

And the search for the perfect commute continues...

Well, we've slid on into October, people, and that means it's almost been two full months since I officially moved up here. Certain things still seem weird and in transition, while others - like winning the battle with the DMV - have left me feeling more and more like a resident. This month is already jam-packed with fun stuff on the weekends, as you'll be hearing about, and it also holds the anniversary of Ramble On. These are exciting times, indeed!

This past weekend, I was back in Blacksburg once more. I didn't end up taking any pictures of any crazy stuff, but it was still a fun trip. Gina had some work to finish up, so Friday turned into a low-key evening, which suited both of us fine. Saturday, we enjoyed watching Tech beat the tar out of WVU (always a sweet, sweet feeling) and checked out Nellie's Cave Park in Blacksburg, before heading out to Shaker's and a run-in with a faulty glass of sweet tea, which desperately wanted to meet my pants. Later that evening, as Gina, Sarah, Brian, and I walked around the Duck Pond, we had a much more bizarre run-in with what could have been a cadet decked out in black facepaint and dark clothing. He ran at us full speed, out of the dark shadows, until he hesitated and called back "it's okay, they're clear."

I still have puncture wounds from Gina gripping my hand so hard. Both girls were a little shaken up; I just wondered why the guy felt the need to continue to run at us after seeing that we were obviously not playing his capture-the-flag game. Man oh man. We ended up walking a long circle through the other side of the Duck Pond, into the Litton-Reeves parking lot, and down through campus at the girls' request, to avoid backtracking through the Corps-occupied part of the pond. It was still a fun and memorable evening, however.

I'd also like to give a shout out to the new fish in the Wesley Pond. It's good to know that new guys are still moving in after I passed the care of the pond over to the current Residents. What's more, I'm glad no other fish have died!