Nerd patrol

Readers of this blog and people who know me personally might have a sneaking suspicion that I am a nerd/geek/dork/dweeb/... I just want to lay those suspicions to rest once and for all.

A key indicator that I may be a nerd is the glasses adorning my bountiful proboscicus. But, what would a dork do if the earpiece on his glasses broke? Yeah, thats right, sir dweebenstein would tape up those glasses and get a couple of swirlies for good measure.

Yours truly said, "Forget the tape, all the cool kids are using super glue!" There you have it, case closed.

(puts on shades)

(shades now superglued to side of head)


(and he still looks cool...)

Do not pass go

Regular readers and even those who are a bit consternated, may recall that I recently had a mishap wherein my car accrued a series of parking tickets. What you may not know is that prior to that incident, I mistakenly left my car in a 20 minute parking zone for over 24 hours (no tickets that time, and the statue of liberation has expired, Uncle Stan!). And what you definitely don't know is the tale I am about to relate.

Last Wednesday, I met some folks to see the Whiskey Brothers and play some yahtzee as is our habit on the first and third Wednesday of the month. All was well and good until I made me way to my automobile. Fishing in my pocket for the keys, I opened the door and got in. Now heres the wrench in the works, it turns out my car was being protected by the club.

Normally, one would consider the protection of the club to be a blessing. However, that would assume that the club key happened to be on the key ring that one had in their pocket. For all the arm chair Agatha Christie's out there, you may have already guessed that the club key was not in fact in my pocket, but at home safely tucked away in a drawer.

With my friends' car having left with a full load and the hour approaching midnight, I decided to hoof it home. The silver lining is that I was able to incorporate this into my marathon training by waking up and jogging back to my car in the morning before Rita could get to it.

If there was such a a thing as a parking license, I believe I would have had mine revoked thrice over by now.

I Owe You One

As you may or may not know, I live in California. And since 99.999% of "Californians" are not from California, the question that inevitably comes up is, "Where are you from, originally?" When I answer Iowa, I am treated to a series confused notions of the Midwest. I told the last person that I had given up defending my home state, so I'll give it one last go and send interested parties a photocopy when the need arises.

Lets start clearing up some of those misconceptions:

1) Iowa is the Buckeye state and you guys grow megatons of potatoes.
It may be tough for all you coasters out there to wrap your tongues around all those vowels, but in order those states are Ohio (oh-hi-oh), Idaho (I-duh-ho) and Iowa (I-oh-uh). Iowa is the one that grows corn and lots of it.

2) Iowa is soooo flat, like I mean soooooo flat. Sorry, contestant, you may have been thinking of other midwestern states such as Nebraska or possibly Kansas. As a matter of fact, some of my fellow scientists have proved that Kansas is actually flatter than a pancake.

3) Iowa is the most developed state in the nation, that must be soooo depressing to look at (I wouldn't even dignify this as a misconception except for the fact that someone actually said this to me). For anyone whose knowledge of where food comes from goes no further than the CostCo parking lot, it turns out that crops have to be grown somewhere and Iowa happens to be one of those prime spots and a beautiful one at that as this painting by Grant Wood illustrates (its rolling hills also happen to contradict that point above as well).

4) If you build it they will come... Contrary to popular belief, if you do in fact build an indoor rainforest in Iowa, people will not actually come to see it. OK, I admit it, nobody outside of Iowa ever had that misconception.

What else can I say:

Iowa, certified by Frodo and approved by the Kutch!

This post brought to you by the Iowa tourism board!

Hot for Teacher

No this post isn't about me having an unrequited crush on Marvin Cohen. Though being the third most highly-cited physicist and revealing the secrets of solid state physics every Tuesday and Thursday is oh, so alluring.

Nope, this post is about the results from the teaching test I took a while ago. Well, lets just say that I did not score in the average performance range. For example, in the "Classroom Managment Techniques" category, I scored 1 out of a possible 8. When "Addressing Learning Differences and Special Needs" I scored 2 out of 8 and an impressive 2 out of 9 in "Assessment of Student Progress."

Now, there were a few bright spots. Apparently I have a hidden talent for "Working With English Learners," where I set the high water mark at 6 out of 8! Admittedly, I know next to nothing about "Working With English Learners," so all you real teachers out there, go beat my score and start making sure nobody gets left behind!

Lovely Rita

At the final soccer playoff (we finished third and also third in softball for those keeping score. Woo-hoo!), I drove my car to the game and bought a parking pass from the dispenser. Much to my chagrin, I saw a ticket on the dash of my car when I returned. Seems that I'd flipped the parking permit onto my dashboard upside down.

A couple of days later, I call the parking office to contest my ticket and they say, "Sure, just send in the permit. But, before we can process that ticket, you need to take care of an outstanding violation at the Bowles Lot on August 29." "I have no idea what you are talking about. I never recieved that ticket," I respond. The conversation ends with the scent of mystery floating in the air...

Fast forward to Saturday night. I'm on my way out the door when my roommate queries, "What's up with your car? I haven't seen it all week." (record scratch) Wheels in my brain clicking slowly backwards... What exactly happened on Monday night.

I was on my way back from prison and wanted to grab my computer from my office. Unfortunately, all the temporary parking spaces nearby were taken, so I went up the hill to a random parking lot. I grab my computer, but run into someone else on their way home and decide to walk with them. Now, where does this leave my car? Parked all week in a permit lot.

Back to Saturday night and me sprinting up the hill to my car expecting it to either be towed or have the boot on it. Fortunately, I find it with three tickets on the dash, one for every two days. Luckily, the first ticket is not for my car, but for a car extremely similar to it in most ways except it inexplicably possesses a different VIN than my car.

The final tally:
Lovely Rita 2
Brian Maxwell Kessler 2

We'll call this one a draw.