potentialities

I stole books from a cathedral!

Okay, they were actually sitting on a bench in front of the school across the street from the National Cathedral, underneath a sign saying DONATED BOOKS, and it was starting to rain at the time, so really, I was saving them from a potentially worse fate. Still, I think this may be a highlight of my trip, which has been quite enjoyable. My finds: a second copy of Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal (for lending purposes!), Understanding Comics, and La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu.

Our flight leaves at ungodly o'clock tomorrow morning, alas.

We made it to D.C., although by the time we arrived at the zoo, they had closed all the buildings and were getting ready to close the grounds as well. We cooed over the red panda, admired the clouded leopard (and heard all about her escape attempt), and conducted a test of a representative sample of water fountains (conclusion: none of them work except as a metaphor for the city itself). Then we had a lovely dinner with Bev and went back to her apartment and met her roommate. Good times!

~

When I worked last Thursday evening, I amused myself by creating a series of clues on Post-It notes for Stan to follow. He instructed me that they ought to rhyme. (Two of them do, in fact, and the third is in Greek, and that exhausted my powers of invention for the evening.)

Apparently he and everyone else working this morning, whom he enlisted in his attempt, have yet to work out the first clue, which is admittedly perhaps the most obscure of the three. If I recall correctly, it goes like this:

So that this clue won't be lost to us,
Let's start with something preposterous.
In spite of their low ethanol yields,
The truth is out there in the cornfields.

I suppose you could try to play along at home by searching our online catalogue, but I think that would be even less possible than finding it by searching the actual library.

The thing I just don't even begin to understand is how my laptop case could just vanish from our hotel room. I didn't take it anywhere the entire time we were in Rapid City and yet, when I went to pack my laptop, I discovered that I had nothing to pack it in.

We turned our hotel room upside down and uncovered two empty plastic vodka bottles concealed in the lower recesses of one of the beds, but no laptop case. This is annoying to me out of all proportion to any joy a thief might get from taking it on account of a.) Apple doesn't make any more 12" laptops so I'm finding the market for suitable replacements restricted to say the least and b.) that case had all of my Prince of Tennis DVDs in it, so now they are GONE, except disc one (episodes 1-24), which was in my not stolen computer and is therefore safe.

It's obviously not the end of the world since I can replicate my efforts, but still. My preciousssss. Wah.

I left handynavi custody of our Sims while I was gone and even procured a house key to lend him. (I don't have a house key. I asked my mom to have one made for me, but she doesn't have a house key. Just ... I don't know.) Unfortunately, my mother decided that just locking the doors like a normal person was insufficient and had my father barricade the door with a 2x4 right before we left, so Sam still couldn't get in the house even with the key.

I pondered this conundrum and concocted a scheme that I felt would afford the greatest chance of success to a person seeking entrance to our house which unfortunately I will omit here in case any of you are stalking me and are perched in the neighbor's tree right now with your laptop and wireless internet connection, trying to figure out how to take things to the next level. However, I can report that Sam and his sister did succeed in breaking into my house on Friday night, which is basically completely awesome. You only wish you were that cool.

I also have a few vacation stories that have nothing to do with breaking, entering or theft, and there are pictures, but now I think I'm going to do something slightly less strenuous like maybe lying around.

A few days ago, you may recall, I mocked the interest-worthiness of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

Well, apparently someone found it slightly more interesting, because today they set it on fire.

My dad was right at the top of the hill when this occurred, and fortunately he did not catch on fire as he snapped a bunch of pictures while the fire burninated all the grass, the trees, the peasants, etc. There happened to be a football field nearby for comparison, so I'd say there were at least 20-30 football fields of crispy grass. I thought this was quite a lot of burnination. The firemen, who were still messing about when my dad brought us by to check it out, thought this was pretty much all in a day's work.

Now, the reason my dad is here is to install their new upper air system. Luckily, this meant that they had removed the nitrogen which they usually keep in that particular location for launching the weather balloons. Otherwise, upper air system very possibly go boom.

( Me, my brother, and these four other guys )

We made it to Rapid City, although there was a time, wandering around the labyrinthine hell that is Wall Drug and expelling more than my own body weight in mucus, that I didn't think that we would. I have eaten buffalo (it tasted like one of those hamburgers you hear about in science fiction synthesized by computers that don't quite understand). I got this terrifying rabbit that I think was supposed to be cute, and that in fact looks like the rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

( Mere photographs do not adequately capture the terror )

All right, I understand that we're going to go pirate miniature golfing now. Arrrrrrrrr!