You Seem To Take Premise To All Of These Songs

Well ladies and jellybeans, I'm back. I made my much-anticipated return to New York's Capital Region last Tuesday, May 12th, and now I've finally got enough down time to sit and organize the scattered thoughts I've collected since then. I began my work as a mercenary landscaper/general hired hand the day after I got back, and today was the first day I didn't spend at least five hours working for someone else. Instead, today I did work around my own house. I haven't gotten up later than 8 AM since before I left school, and the latest I've gotten to bed since I left Liberty is 1 AM. On Friday night, I was willfully in bed by 11:30. Talk about violating the sanctity. Add onto that all the time I spend at the Little League park and I've got quite the busy summer... and I've only been home for five days. What is the world coming to?

Speaking of the Little League park, on Friday night I was in the bleachers watching my 8 year old brother play. Earlier that evening, my 15 year old sister had asked me to take her to one of her high school get-togethers after the game, which was fine, but I did not know how to get where she needed to go, so I asked my mom for directions. As my dear sweet mother was laying them out for me and writing them down on a piece of paper, another lady right next to us in the stands asked us perplexedly, "You don't have a GPS?" Of course I was slightly irked at the surprise in her voice and the assumption that everyone has a GPS and that we were somehow culturally anomalous because we don't, but I let it slide. Then, the lady behind us went "Ah, MapQuest," and that's what really got me, because the intonation was such that she was basically saying "Ah, you poor unfortunate soul, I'm sorry to hear you're so technologically behind the times. May God have mercy on your soul." Hold the phone... are you actually lamenting the fact that we would have to resort to a convention such as MapQuest in lieu of a GPS system? I'm sorry, but the last time I checked, MapQuest itself is a pretty amazing technology. Think about it: you type in your start point and your intended destination, and it charts your course for you. All you have to do is follow the directions it lays out right there, plain as day. It blew my mind when I first learned about it in Computer Tech in the Fall of 2000. Sure, it would be great if I had a GPS and could just tell it to hold my hand all the way to Hoffman's Playland (which was where I was going, for the record), but since I don't, I guess I'll have to just go blow the dust off the ol' keyboard, get on the Internet, and manually plug my coordinates into MapQuest like they did in the olden times. Man, I can't even begin to imagine what it was like when people actually had to read maps for themselves... what a chore. Life in the Stone Age of the 20th Century must have been unbearable.

I don't know if you've ever heard of a band called 3OH!3, but their song "Don't Trust Me" is getting a fair amount of airplay on the radio right now. Interestingly enough, when I first heard it, I wasn't a fan, but I recall the words from the chorus of "Dead On Arrival," an old school Fall Out Boy classic: "The songs you grow to like never stick at first." How very true. At first I didn't like the song, I found it to be rather obnoxious, but it grew on me after I listened to it a few times, and now I love it. You ought to listen to it, and even if you don't like it initially, give it another shot. Who knows, it might turn out to be your favorite song.

Cough cough. Sorry, I almost choked on a bit of metaphor there.

Yesterday, I was at the park (and when I say "park" I mean the Little League park, for future reference), and I was on the 4:00 duty shift, as I will be every Saturday for the rest of the season. I had just finished selling 50-50 tickets and I was quite thirsty. Now, they charge $1.50 for a 20 ounce bottle of Coke at the concession stand, and anyone who knows me knows I am exceptionally frugal and would normally never pay such an exorbitant price for that quantity of liquid. But I thought about it, and the more I considered my options, the more appealing that Coke sounded, until I basically had to have one. I mean come on, their new slogan is "Open Happiness," and I felt like I could use some happiness. So I went down to the stand, slapped a dollar fifty down on the counter just like that guy in the commercial they show all the time at the dollar theater, and got myself a Coke. In so doing, I demonstrated a lesson I learned from that British guy in Confessions of a Shopaholic: there is a difference between cost and worth (okay, I've always known this, but since I saw that movie I keep finding ways for myself to apply it in my life). Sure, I think $1.50 is too much to charge for a 20 ounce bottle of soda, but at that point, I didn't care, I wanted that Coke, dangit. Plus, it never hurts to support the league. I headed upstairs to the announcing booth, cracked that puppy open, and let me tell you, that was the best tasting Coke I've ever had.

Well, it is now time for me to hang up my blogging hat for the time being, but hopefully I'll be able to make the digital rounds more often in the near future. Until then, keep the milk out of your shoes, kids. I've had milk spilled once in each of my shoes on separate occasions in the last week, and it is not a pleasant experience.