Overheard in a Wal-Mart Men's Room

As we join our hero, he stopped off at a Wal-Mart to make a pit-stop while he decides whether to eat out or go home after furniture shopping. A man with small child enters the room...

Child: There's a short one; I can do it myself!
Man: Ok, here... no, don't hang your ass out¹... there... and don't touch it², you'll get cooties.
Me: (begins to struggle against silent giggles)
(long pause)
Man: And don't pee on my foot.
Child: Sorry!
Me: (exits almost shaking, and wanders the floor for a few minutes chortling.)

---
¹ Interestingly, the thing with pants and small children seems to be a theme. I can remember hearing a man chastising a small child in the stall of a rest stop on one of my driving trips this year: "What did you take your pants off for? Nobody takes off their pants to go potty in a public restroom, that's disgusting."

² No, I don't know what "it" referred to, as I wasn't looking that direction, but I'm assuming he meant the urinal. If it was a different "it", then I understand why the child was having trouble with, uh, direction.

I'm Official

I've got a Pennsylvania license and registration, and the title is on its way. I'm even registered to vote. (Plus I get to vote against Santorum now.) It could have been a lot worse, even though Pennsylvania is a little weird when it comes to car stuff.

First off, they have no DMV. Instead, they have independently licensed "Drivers License Centers" which issue licenses. But I found one, and sense the Department of Transportation web site told me what I needed, I got the license pretty quickly. However, you have to go elsewhere for registration and title. When I searched the DOT website, it told me the closest location where I could get a registration and title was in Harrisburg, over 200 miles away. Fortunately, friends let me know that what I needed to do was go to AAA. You're not reading that wrong; in Pennsylvania, you register your car through the auto club.

So I went to the AAA office. I asked somewhat hesitantly, expecting the woman to give me a funny look and ask "Are you nuts?", but instead she just waved a big stack of papers and said, "Yup. These are titles." She also told me that Pennsylvania is the only state to do registration and titles this way, and that it takes up so much time at the AAA offices that you must request TripTiks two weeks in advance. So I got my registration, and my new title is being sent. They've even improved services, as I didn't have to take my car to a garage to have the VIN verified. (For some reason, having a title and registration for a particular VIN from Virginia does not simply translate into a title and registration for the same VIN in Pennsylvania; they require someone to certify that you have a vehicle with that VIN. Fortunately, they had someone who could certify the VIN themselves.) AAA even recommended a garage where I could get my inspection, so I did that too.

Everything was taken care of in a few hours, so I don't have much complaint, but I really think Pennsylvania must be one of these states that's afraid of "big government" for some reason. I can't imagine any good reason to separate all the vehicle services and send them out to different private companies just to avoid having a DMV. On the other hand, I also have a letter from the electric company listing a batch of electricity producers, and providing a helpful list of questions to ask them all, so that I as the consumer can take over the job of deciding which producer is worth having. Thanks, folks.

Weird Literature

In searching for something on Half.com, I ran across the following, which I present with only the comment that I find it very weird:

The Differential Calculus As the Model of Desire in French Fiction of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Kenneth C. Hockman Hardcover, 1997 - Not in stock.

The Battle of the Bugs

I seem to have a modest war with bugs going on now.

When I first moved in, I noticed an ant or two around. I put out some ant bait traps. They're still around, not in hordes, but often enough that it bothers me. I've put out the remaining bait traps in an attempt to get rid of them all. I'm wondering if I'm going to have to get a bunch of sealable plastic bins to put all my food into.

To cool off the apartment, I usually have most of the windows open. (Of course I end up opening and closing various blinds and windows based on where the sun is coming from to minimize heat coming in and maximize cool air. This is a pain. I will never live anywhere without central air again.) At night, this becomes a problem, because if I turn on a light in the apartment, I get flocks of tiny little gnats, which can apparently fit through the screens. I bought a "bug light" which insects are supposed to not be attracted to and put it into a lamp which I used for a while at night. It does seem to draw somewhat fewer gnats, but those that come in swarm around the lamp anyway, so I'm not sure how well it really works. More recently I've taken to isolating myself in my bedroom (where I have the window unit) with the door and windows shut at night. For this problem, the coming of winter will actually be a blessing, since I can leave my windows shut.

Then there are the spiders. I found one big one inside my front door the other day. (He is no longer with us.) There was one who kept building a big web attached to my mailbox. I would knock it down everyday when I saw it, and it would keep getting built back. (I didn't want whatever it was to try to eat the mailman someday.) I never could find the spider who built it 'though. Last night I when I went to take out the trash, I found the bugger rebuilding the web. Great big nasty looking thing. I squooshed it, and now the mailbox is web free. (Yes, I know the spiders will help with the other bugs, but there are some places I just don't want big nasty looking spiders. If the one on the mailbox had relocated somewhere else--say, the bush below the mailbox--I would have been OK with that.)

Life is Better with Air-Conditioning

I finally managed to get a window unit installed in my bedroom, which is making my bedroom much more comfortable now. I was somewhat at a loss for a while because I had looked at installation instructions, and they seemed to include all sorts of bits to screw into the window itself. These are of course not really my windows, so I was a little hesitant about this. But after talking to people at Sears and Lowe's, I decided I could just ignore the bits about putting in screws and bolts (at least for a small unit).

However, I still had a thin rim of the window which juts up out of the sill over which the unit has to fit. (This is pretty standard. It's just what the window slide down against when it closes.) Unfortunately, no manufacturer seems to make units with any sort of groove or channel to accommodate this. The standard recommendation is to lay a 2x4 along the window sill and place the unit on this. So that's how my unit is set up now, and I have ignored all the instructions about screwing or bolting anything to the window itself. If it falls out and kills anyone, I'll let you know.

Of course, all this begs the question of why the manufacturers of window units don't build the units to accommodate what is apparently a fairly standard window design, and instead suggest that you jerry-rig it with a couple of boards.

In the words of Yoda, "That is why you fail."

I recently went through that time of the year again, where students were desperately trying to figure out their grades to within a hair's breadth, and trying to make deals with the devil (me) to pass (or get whatever grade is needed to counteract how they are doing in all their other classes). I posted all the grades for the last test in my classes to help people who are trying to decide whether to use a late drop. (Students could drop a small number of classes in their careers near the end of the semester.) I also got all the calls and e-mails from students desperate to pass, frequently sure, just positive, that they could not have done so badly on the last test. The machine must have made a mistake with their opscan. I also always get the (slightly) more subtle students asking hopefully if there will be a curve. (By which they mean, "Will you add some points to the tests so my score is better?")

But I usually get one other type of question near the end of the semester, usually in my lower level class: "How do I figure out my grade?" Or frequently just: "I keep trying to figure out what my grade is, but I don't understand how to do it." Granted, I have a moderately involved grading system which involves several categories, such as labs, homework, quizzes, and class participation as well as three tests and a final, but ultimately these just boil down to following the instructions to calculate each component of the grade and adding these up.

A few years back I just gave up and gave my students an Excel spreadsheet into which they can enter their grades to find their final grade. But I think about it every semester, and it occurs to me that if students are having trouble figuring out their final grade, they are having trouble with fairly basic math (averaging and percentages, mostly), and that this does not bode well for their grade in a math class. It comes back to what a friend of mine told me years ago: students who are failing math classes frequently don't know it, because they're bad at math, so they can't correctly figure out their grade.

(As an aside, they are usually disappointed to discover that it will not tell them their grade without knowing the final exam grade, which is worth 20 points of the final grade. They often want to know "But what's my grade without the final?", which I don't understand at all. Without the final, the highest grade they can get is an 80. If you want to estimate your grade, you have to input some estimate for the final, because the final contributes to the grade. It's that simple. I can't calculate your grade without the final, because the final is a part of it. I usually recommend students use their test average to estimate their final exam grade, but it is an estimate. Anything you do to figure your grade "without the final" involves in some way estimating the final, but students don't seem to get that.)

I'm Back

I'm moved, partially settled, back on-line, and doing a million things.

I'm sort of adjusting to the new place, although I've had a few shocks, like when I found out it didn't have air-conditioning. (In the South, if no one mentioned a lack of air-conditioning when selling you an apartment, it would mean they were trying to kill you. Up here it just means they're trying to make you moderately uncomfortable.) I'm looking into window units, particularly since having the windows open all the time doesn't combine well with either the fraternity a block in front (which holds late night parties) or with the cow pasture a block behind. (I like seeing the cows; they're pretty. I just don't care for smelling them when the wind changes.)

Eating has gone pretty well so far. I'm in walking distance of a few restaurants here in town, and I've had good luck with the nearby big city (no giggling) of Erie. In fact, I've found the good shopping district of Erie. I always know I'm in good shape when I've found where the Target is. (OK, I'm sure someone thinks Target is tres gauche, but I like it and I generally always like the areas where they build them.) In the same area I've found the Mother-of-All-Supermarkets, called Wegmans. They have everything, and every time I go in, I find more stuff to buy than I intended to. Last time I discovered the olive and antipasto bar. Then some cheeses. And ooo--look at those donuts in the bakery! That was the point at which I figured I needed to leave so I could still fit through my front door by the time I got home.

In any case, I'm still in the halfway point of unpacking. I have all these boxes half-empty, plus a bunch of boxes of books I can't unpack at all because I don't have any bookshelves anymore. In fact, I have no furniture at all for my living room or dining room, since I opted to give away a lot of old furniture when I moved. But this means I have to shop for furniture now, which is another thing for me to do.

But in any case, I'm here. And I can't help but think, as I did right after my partner and I both moved last time, of the ending of the Lord of the Rings. (The books. I don't remember if it's in the movie that way.) At the end, when Sam has seen off Frodo, and gone back home to greet his family simply with "I'm home," there's a melancholy and unsettling feel to it, almost unsatisfactory. Frodo is gone, and the story is closed, although there's certainly more living to happen. But things didn't go back to the way they were, and they never can. It's a theme Tolkien seems to like. Near the end of the Silmarillion, Tolkien makes some comment about the fact that the story started with the high and light, and ended in a certain degree of gloom and despair; he says that is the way of the world, and things will never return to the way they were, unless it is at the end of all things when the world is broken and remade anew. (I'm probably way off on the phrasing here, but hopefully not on the sentiment. I'd look up the quote, but remember all my books are in boxes.) It's probably related to general Christians theology, with the idea of an early Garden of Eden, followed by a fall (a descent into darkness), which will never be fully righted until the end of the world. But my main point here is just that there is the same sort of sad, almost empty feeling when Sam says "I'm home" at the end of the story, even though things have mostly turned out alright. A story has ended, and nothing will be the same again.

So as I said to myself after the last time my partner and I moved about two years ago, after I had said goodbye to him for a while and returned to my (then) new apartment: I'm home.