my dad called me at work the other day and disguised his voice to sound like some whiny customer and went into a little complaint, but i could tell it was him after like 2 seconds, but it was still pretty funny.

so i called my dad the other day at work and made my voice really deep and slow to act like someone calling him about the car in the shop, “Mr. Comeaux, this is Michael, the Buick Dealer, and your car exploded…” which i thought was hilarious, and i could tell he recognized me, so i couldn’t hold it and broke down in laughter.

Summer is rushing by quickly. It seems that I was just complaining about how long May was taking, and now June has sprinted past without so much as a hello or goodbye.
Currently, I am engaged in a number of activities which are at times both vexing and enjoyable. Here’s the short list:

• Assisting research in the Biogeography Laboratory at LSU. Right now, I’m currently analyzing sediment from the Caribbean that will eventually be used to establish a proxy record of hurricane strikes there.
• Designing the the LSU Biogeography website. With a little help from my friend.
• Reading Gregory Maguire’s Wicked. While I was hestitant at first, the book is actually quite engaging and Maguire’s prose is good as is his rather fantastic imagination. I’m just a little over half way through.
• Playing guitar (of course) with an emphasis on early jazz stylings (esp. Django Reinhardt et al). Actually, I’m hating my playing right now and I’m taking something of a break, just improvising a bit when I feel like it. A musical dry spell if you will.
• Researching some fascinating stuff on information design/presentation mostly via the writings of Edward Tufte.
• Watching the World Cup - wondering if I can indeed “Bend it like Beckham”.
• Agonizing over Miami’s NBA Finals victory. So undeserved.
• Napping

Things that have already happened this summer include a research trip to gulf shores, much hanging out with DC, missing at least one good party, and seeing my mom off for a trip to Chicago.
Things I should be doing: studying for the the graduate examination, searching for a graduate school and/or job for post-college.
I’m not doing these activities because mid-summer apathy has struck and crippled my ability to be pro-active about anything. Sigh. Eventually, I’ll get around to it.

I feel like I’ve got much more to write, but it will have to wait for later. Till then.

i just watched a Rick Steves show on the Alps of France and Swizterland. If you don’t know who Rick Steves is, you are probably just like me before i saw the show on LPB.

The guy makes shows about travel. He writes columns and articles about travel. He has podcasts, nowadays, about travel. He gets money from all this stuff, and then he goes and travels, and makes more money from the stuff he makes about the new travels. This is all way before the super-commercial Travel Channel was ever invented (only bothering to feature places where they take credit cards). It is done in the true public broadcasting style: filmed, narrated, and focused completely on travel and the awesome places in the world to go visit. There’s no stupid scenes where the host, after making dumb commentary on local shopping in some big city, finds some Discoteque and parties it up with some guatemalan dancers, with the camera zooming in and out to the beat.

What a freaking genius.

I really liked the show and wanted to see all of the rest of them instantly, so its a good thing he sells his DVD’s. Wherever i go, i’ll make sure Rick Steves has been there first. And then i’ll go.

For this guy:

Step one: Travel
Step two: Make TV Shows
Step three: ???
Step four: Profit!

when i was but a lad of 15 or 16, i once heard my dad swear off walmart forever. he commented how he despised the chain and its horrible shopping experience, and how he would go out of his way to avoid getting groceries at walmart. i was confused at first at how he could have had such a terrible impression from something that i had experienced myself and accepted.

Previously, i had witnessed a similar displeasure with Best Buy. One time he walked into Best Buy and the store speakers were playing some offensive music. From the best i could figure by his description of it, It was probably a flavor of death metal. He asked kindly for it to be changed, and they told him no, they had to play this special promotional CD in Best Buy Stores. So he’s never spending money at Best Buy again.

Now, he’s not a completely temperamental consumer. He’s just got a well-defined sense of intolerability about certain things.

I have always seen walmart as the place to go for the cheapest durn things you can find, and possibly the most well-stocked. They’ll always have it. The past year, however, i have chosen to shop at Winn Dixie around the corner from my apartment, for reasons of convenience.

So today i needed some milk, and i decided to stop at the walmart on the way home from work. Just need a half-gallon of milk.

We’ve all been to walmart at one time or another, and you know the drill. I guess i don’t have to describe to you how i parked 2135.5 miles from either entrance of the store, nearly getting into 2 wrecks just sitting at a stop sign. It would be unnecessary of me to elaborate on the location of the milk, clear across the entire map, nearly getting my toesies chopped off by speeding carts driven by mad women just walking down the aisles. Because of our common experiences with walmart, i needn’t tell you about the kinds of obnoxious customers that somehow block any possible pathway with their obesity or children or a combination of the two. And then there’s the lines. It’s 6:30 pm on a thursday, the store (by the looks of the parking lot) is at near capacity, and there are 6 open lanes out of a total of 35. Boy, i am lucky i lived through all that, because i saved like 30 cents on my milk!

Winn Dixie may not be the cheapest, or the newest-looking, or the most well-stocked, or even in the same category of “superstore” that walmart is, but holy cow. And now i stand up and support the WD’s across america, along with similar small grocery chains. I will now enumerate the benefits of said smaller stores:
1. “advantage card” gives you similar discounts to Wal Mart
2. small parking lot = small store = less people
3. quick lines (i have extensive personal research on this one)
4. And my favorite: Since they are less stocked, the items you buy are fresher!!! i can purchase items from WD and then the same items a month later from Wal Mart and they have the same expiration date. Smaller stocks mean more old stock rotation, which means you are buying the newest things from WD nearly always.

Clearly, dad wasn’t over sensitive when he claimed that he hated walmart.

june 1st.

another possibly perfect summer month, just asking to be filled with the hazy lazy mornings and hot rocking nights of yester-summer.

but we all know that this month may as well go by a neutral name, like Month 6. just another 30 days to work through and pass by (perhaps with a little patriarch appreciation thrown in). June will have its own special glory, i do not doubt that, and i am always a firm believer in the endless possibilities of new beginnings, but in my office which has no windows and is otherwise surrounded by concrete and asphalt plains, these days will translate only into paychecks.

It’s too bad about that.
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