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Yesterday, on the way back from my 22 lap swim, I noticed a group of cheerleaders walking across campus on their way to their cheerleading camp and it made me wonder…

Is there a collective term for a group of cheerleaders?

A herd of cattle, a murder of crows, a flock of seagulls… how about a “blitz of cheerleaders”?

I dunno, it just popped into my head. Anyway, the blitz of cheerleaders were walking not quite in formation and were practicing one of their cheers. And it sounded… a little militant. As though they could easily start marching while carrying rifles in one hand and batons in the other. I don’t think I would want to go up against a blitz of battle-hardened cheerleaders – I suspect they would be well organized and have a very precise combat formation. Making them dangerous – and annoying.

In other news… I squared off against two giant centaurs last night in the Tomb Raider game – and got my ass handed to me. Repeatedly. To the point where today I’m going to try and look up some suggestions on the net. Still got a lot of the game to get through and I don’t want this to stop me in my tracks.

Also last evening I went over to my room-mates co-worker’s new house to assemble a futon she had bought from me that I don’t need anymore. Her husband helped me – I had the bolts going the wrong direction at a critical part. I was making progress, but it would have been nearly impossible to take it back apart in the future. We made short work of it – then went to Arby’s.

Finally, I stopped for fuel this morning and noticed that the “cheap” fuel button was nearly worn away, but it was in the opposite position as most gas stations I’ve seen. The sequence of buttons went from Highest to Lowest – instead of the usual reverse. Looks like they were trying to mess with people and get them to pick the “wrong” one. I usually look for the one most worn away, so I was in the clear. Still, with the virtually random changes in gas prices and sky-rocketing price gouging – maybe a little honest and good nature would be a nice change of pace.

That’s it for now, back to work…

It was a little foggy on the road this morning – and though a lot of people don’t like that kind of weather, I’m delightfully creeped out by the way things are hidden and sort of fade into view.

Played a bit more of Tomb Raider anniversary last evening. I survived the sandslide, the pillars of fire, the gators, and now I’m facing a room full of moving pillars and spikes. Oh, and pretty much everytime I turn a new corner, there are two giant gorillas charging at me. You’d think I’d get used to it, but they still make me shriek like a little girl. Not Laura Croft though, she just stands there with her guns blazing and together we take them down. Kinda wishing I had a grenade launcher, but there you go.

Actually, a grenade launcher might come in handy in real life – though I’d imagine it would be tricky to get ammo.

Had a meeting yesterday – it didn’t really go as well as I would have hoped. Not well focused and I had a hard time asking my questions since I don’t like to interupt people. So, it ended early and I’m still a little in the dark. It’s not a big deal – I was mostly looking for confirmation of a particular process, but it still would have been nice.

I’ve got three meetings today – it will be a challenge to get some real work done. I’m going to try and get my laps in as well – but I don’t know if I’ll have time. I suspect lunch will be a shortened time today. We’ll see how it goes.

Talked to my Dad and my sister last evening – had a good conversation with both of them. I need to do that more often, but it seems a little silly to call them if there’s not much new going on in my life. Got to save up my stories, I guess.

Well, that’s it for now – time to get back to work…

I took a little trip up to Cleveland on Saturday to go to the Half-Priced Bookstore and encountered the Worst. Construction. Traffic. Ever. It was extra annoying since I was relying on a map.

Finally got to the store and brought in my 4 boxes of books. In a surprising short amount of time, they returned an offer of 26 dollars. Which seemed a little low, but I went ahead with it – most of the books were paperback anyway.

So, I shopped for a bit and was disappointed. The sci-fi/horror section was small and was heavy on Anne Rice and Stephen King. The crafts section had only 2 books on Origami – and the one labeled “Advanced Origami” was, on closer inspection, not very advanced. The comics? Terrible. No bags, no boards, all of them stacked loosely on a shelf in no particular order. It was sad.

I checked out, got over charged on the comics I did find (but didn’t really care at that point) and exited. I made a brief stop at the nearby world market for some rubber ducks, green tea, and candy from Japan – then headed home.

On Sunday, I decided to go see Transformers. I checked the movie times, noted 12:35 as the time I wanted to see, then headed out at 12:05 to ensure a good seat. Well, I purchased my ticket and saw that the next showing was, in fact, at 1:00. So, instead of being a little early, I was a lot early. I decided to buy some popcorn while I was waiting, and when I finally go the attention of the clerk, he spieled me with combos and up sizing – even though I was making it pretty clear that I wasn’t interested. I think the only way I could have made it more clear was to reach across the counter and smack the shit out of him – and I was pretty close to doing that. All I wanted was a small popcorn – which cost me $5.00

I folded some paper, ate my popcorn and waited. At about 15 till, I headed in and got my seat. 30 minutes of previews later, the movie started.

And I liked it. It was funnier than I expected and the effects were amazing. With the exception of Frenzy/Soundwave – the characters were well realized and the story was well written. There were some cheesy moments, but still really good. And the actors fit into the CGI seamlessly.

There were a lot of themes in the movie – war, power, love, friendship, loyalty, technology – but I think in some ways, it was really about a boy and his first car.

And I have to admit that when I left the theater, I was a little nervous when I got into my own car. 🙂

That’s it for now – got a big meeting coming up. later…

I had another zombie nightmare last night. This time, I was in essentially a chain-link fence box. Three sides and the “roof” were chain-link, but the north side was open. I was inside with a man and a woman – who I didn’t know – and outside, moving from east to west, were endless hordes of zombies. The man was standing near the entrance, but not too near. None of the zombies noticed him for some reason, so we were lucky. I was further back in the box, but trying to stay away from all the sides, just in case. The woman was near me – or rather, I was near her since she would shriek if given the opportunity. Granted, we were all pretty scared, but I couldn’t seem to convince her that the screaming would just bring the zombies down on us. So, I had to stand next to her with my hand covering her mouth to keep her quiet while I tried to calm her down and/or get through to her. It was very dark in the dream and pretty much all we could see was the night sky and the zombies moving outside the fence. I remember thinking two things:

1. Why wasn’t the man back there with us helping keep her quiet. It seemed like the two were connected somehow, but he was doing his best to ignore her.

2. How did I get in that box? Rule number 1 with zombie attacks – Don’t let them back you into a corner. The best advantage is speed and dexterity – both of which are nullified if you get yourself trapped in a box with only one zombie blocked exit.

I woke up without any kind of resolution to the dream – and I’m not sure what it really means.

In other news… I swam 21 laps yesterday. Felt a little tired afterwards, but I think I could have done more if I’d had more time.

Lots of meetings and big projects today – better get back to it…

The drive home from work has an interesting feature for me. It involves an entrance ramp, a heavy merge since the lane is ending, and an exit ramp. All of which I need to use in a fairly short span of time. It is, invariably, a delight. A couple of days ago, I was attempting this feat as I usually do and managed to get over into the proper location without too much difficulty. I found myself behind a police officer, who I could tell was getting annoyed at the people ignoring the gigantic yellow “Lane Ends” signs and decided to move his car to cover both of the lanes.

Then, a complete idiot in a pickup truck comes barreling down the road and decided that he was in far too much of a hurry to put up with the merge process. So, he arrogantly ignored the Lane Ends signs and the horizontal marks across the shoulder indicating a “no drive here” zone – and drove on the shoulder in an attempt to get past all of us. And it would have worked except that he was also ignoring the cop. As some as the pickup truck flew past him, the cop put on his lights and pulled behind him, nearly hitting him in the process since the truck slammed on his brakes. I slowly drove past, nearly cheering in the shared triumph of seeing the stupid and arrogant being punished for being, well, stupid and arrogant. It was the highlight of my drive home.

In other news… last evening I went to Friday’s for dinner and tried something new. I got the fried green beans, which sounded pretty good. The huge portion came with cucumber and wasabi dipping sauce. Now, anyone that knows me will be able to tell you that I don’t dip very often. Not a big sauce guy. And cucumber? Not high on my list of favorite vegetables (and I actually do have a list like that). But, the lure of wasabi tempted me and I tried it. And, lo and behold, it wasn’t bad. Not great, but I didn’t have to spit anything out and actually went back for seconds.

The main course for me was shrimp that was, essentially, burned. I still ate most of it, but I really should have just gotten the fried shrimp. I mean, if I’m getting fried green beans, I clearly couldn’t be bothered to care about fatty foods.

Anyway, I tried something new and it turned out okay. Will wonders never cease?

That’s it for now… later…

I had a terrible nightmare a few nights ago. I was on a tram that had just stopped to unload in a cave. It was supposed to then keep going, but it got stuck and another tram slammed into it. The carnage was terrible. We managed to transport everyone to a second level and then started first aid. Two guys had been decapitated, I started working on the one who had also had his head nearly sliced into three sections. The only supplies on hand were rolls of medical tape, so I first lined up and taped the three sections back together, then taped it to his neck. I asked another of the survivors how we could revive him, when the man’s eyes flew open and he shouted at me to “don’t talk about me like I’m not here”. I was startled – mainly because I didn’t think he was alive and that if he moved around too much I thought the tape might give way. I also realized that because of the time I had spent on this guy – the other decapitated guy was really done for.

It was one of the most gory and surreal dreams I’ve had in a very long time and I was shaken when I woke up.

In other news, I had some smell/taste-based hallucinations today at the pool. While swimming my 20 laps, I had a weird smell/taste sensation – but only while underwater. The first was a combination of baby aspirin and tang – a sort of false citrus flavor. It faded out and a little later I had a powder/pine flavor that shifted more strongly to powder then faded out. The final wave was baker’s chocolate/caramel/powdered sugar. I smelled this one more strongly while above water and it’s possible that the rest of the mostly off-duty lifeguards were having a snack. In any case, it was damn odd and it threw me off a bit.

I was wearing my swim gloves this time around. Supposed to increase speed while strengthening the upper body. I’m tired, but it’s not unusually so. Not sure if they are really making that much of a difference – maybe with the different stroke?

So, that’s about it for now. Got some work to do before my afternoon meeting.

later….

A few photos…

1. Shells from the beach…

2. An interesting rock I found in the ocean, along with a weird thing (coral?)

3. A casing from one of the fireworks we watched on the 4th in Akron when we were Far. Too. Close. This one bounced off my room-mate’s foot.

4. This one landed behind us. Yeah, we were way too close. And the embers we had to knock off our arms and out of our hair were a little too close for comfort.

Just got back into town last night from a week-plus trip to Myrtle Beach with my room-mate and his extended family. A few highlights:

1. On the drive down there, we passed through the Polymer Alliance Corridor. Which was fitting since I work at a university known for polymers.

2. While driving, I nearly got attacked by what I’m guessing was a hawk or an eagle – or maybe a pterodactyl. It swooped in front of my car on its way to someplace else and I recall saying some very bad words.

3. Spent a lot of time at the beach – and SPF 50 was my new friend. No major burns to report – which is a nice change of pace.

4. The first day we were there, we went out onto the fishing pier and saw a guy throwing fish scraps into the water – where the 1/2 dozen 5 foot-plus sharks were waiting eagerly. Not sure what kind of sharks they were, but they were pretty cool. And they were only about 50 feet away from the swimmers in the ocean. I didn’t swim anywhere near the pier.

5. Speaking of swimming – I tried to get some distance in while swimming in the ocean. The waves made progress very difficult – but I think the buoyancy made it easy for me to try the butterfly stroke again – did okay with that one.

6. I got mistaken for an author by someone who saw me reading and remembered me from last year when I did a lot of writing. She illogically thought I was reading my own book – I had to explain that I wrote a web-comic last year and that I was reading just for fun. A little odd but kinda cool.

7. We went out for dinner one night and waited 2.5 hours. If I had been on my own, I would have bailed out and gone to Chic-fillet, but it wasn’t an option.

8. I brought back some sand with me – on purpose. There is a quote by William Blake (that also showed up in the Tomb Raider movie) that goes like this:

“To see your world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower. To hold infinity in the palm of your hand, An eternity in an hour.”

So, I want to take a grain of sand and encase it in lucite or something clear. Just in case I want to check out the world.

9. The Myrtle Beach – being more “family oriented” – tends to shut down pretty early in the evening. So, very late one night, I snuck out to the beach, found myself a deserted strech of sand (not difficult to do) and “dropped trou”. I prompted walked out into the ocean and swam around for a bit. It was cold and I was mindful of the dangers of rip tides and beasties in the water so I didn’t stay out long. When I walked out of the water, still in the all-together, I felt like some kind of minor sea-god. Felt like something ancient and powerful. I found my swimsuit again and got dressed before heading back to the lights and people. Just for a moment though – the ocean was mine and mine alone.

10. After about a week on Myrtle Beach, we headed to Ocean Isle, NC for a bit more beach and sunshine. Lot more shells on this beach and the place we stayed was really top-notch. Still, despite the grueling drive home, it is good to be back in Ohio.

I’m off today and tomorrow as well for the 4th of July – back on Thursday and Friday to finish out the week. I’ve been trying to go through my emails and I’m starting the process of getting caught up.

Guess that’s about it for now. later…

I’ve been 20 laps in the pool pretty consistently now – and since 18 is a half mile, I’m feeling pretty good about it. I’m trying to push myself harder through those 20 and get my time down.

I’ve been very out of sorts today – feeling like one of those video effects where they try to simulate a time distortion and the image lags and then catches up. I’ve felt like that since I got up this morning – made the drive into work really interesting. I’ll get over it soon enough I know, but it’s odd.

Kind of a short post today, but I’ve got a lot of work to get done. later…

Driving home last evening after getting my hair-cut, I got caught in rain and traffic. And, despite this being Ohio where weird-ass weather should be the norm – everyone freaked out and creeped along the highway at 2 miles per hour. Or they randomly stopped entirely.

The temp gauge in my car started to rise a bit – nothing serious, but just a little bit – and I decided to help things out by turning on the heat. The blast of warm air hit me and with it, since I had vanilla air fresheners in the vents, the smell of baking cookies.

I actually laughed out loud as the silliness of the association – then went back to singing along with the radio and waiting for the traffic to clear and let me go home.

later…