Intersections

I went to Sidney’s this morning for coffee in the usual manner. Ordered a “Shot in the Dark,” which is basically their Peruvian blend with espresso. I explained that I had been born in Peru. This elicited some interested hoots from the wonderful coffee-ladies. Naturally, full disclosure necessitated that the truth be explained, and it was.

“Not really. It’s a small town in Illinois.”

But it became interesting again, right.

“Mom’s a soil scientist, dad’s a forester.”

Got my coffee and went my way. As I was crossing 14th Street, sans WALK signal, I was almost creamed by a pickup truck. This is no joke: if the driver hadn’t been paying attention, he would have turned me into a road-pie. It certainly didn’t help that I was wearing the following in brown: shoes, socks, pants, shirt, and tie. It wasn’t so much getting plowed-up by a truck that would have been embarrassing, it would have been that I was spending my time crossing the street thinking about stopping in at Sidney’s for coffee on a weekend. Maybe if the coffee-ladies weren’t so cool, I wouldn’t have almost got crushed.

Moral of the story: I didn’t have an adrenaline rush; no emotional response whatsoever besides humor. There was a mad smirk on my face as I made it across the street, though. Weird.

A Sudden Lack of Knowledge to the Heart

Sitting here doing lots of schoolwork; trying to figure out the true character of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. This is not easy.

It came back to me again that I never knew my maternal grandfather. I only barely knew my maternal grandmother; I was too young to even realize what was happening when she passed on.

And even though both my paternal grandparents were still around up to my sophomore year in college, I never made a coordinated effort to sit them down and learn everything that I could. I did it passively, not actively.

So there are for sure two whole datasets and two partial datasets that are completely absent from my processing capacity. I'm not too pleased about this. I suppose I'll have to invent some sort of machine to fix this problem, eh?

Tinker, tinker, tinker.