28th Birthday Post-Mortem Pt 1.

Celebrating my birthday came early this year. My sister Courtney got me my first present around the 11th. She got me chocolate frosted donettes from Wal-Mart, a thing of Peachy-O's, a couple balloons (helium filled, mind you) and a card. The outside of the card read: "Know what you're getting for your birthday?" and the inside was blank :) I got a great laugh out of it, and it might be one of my favorite birthday cards ever.

Skip forward to last Friday, and the really cool stuff happened. I got to go see Everclear in concert! I've been waiting about 14 years to see them, and even though it's not the same lineup it was still incredible. I got my picture taken with Art and got an autograph too. I went with my friends Mindy and Andrew so the trip was a lot of fun too.

I missed the deadline to request the entire weekend off, so I had to work Saturday, but that went by really quick. I did manage to request Sunday and Monday off however, so Sunday dinner became my birthday dinner with the family. Donald and Lisa got me an awesome song writing book, so I'll be putting good and extended use to that for sure. So Sunday was a very good and relaxing prologue to my actual birthday on Monday.

When I realized my birthday fell on a Monday, I decided I would stay home from school. Yes, I can hear your collective gasps and takings of umbrage, but it's my birthday. Don't worry, I'm here today and I won't be absent again.

So taking advantage of my truancy, I slept in 'til about 9:40 when I got a text from my friend Mike wishing me a happy birthday. He was second only to KaTrina, who wished it to me on Facebook at 5:19AM PST (7:19AM CST). She's always very punctual. I didn't get a present from her (yet?), but then again, I never told her what I would like.

I have an idea in mind, but I'll leave that for Part 2 of my 28th Birthday Post-Mortem Extravaganza Spectacular!

Obligatory Birthday Post

I'm 28 today.

...yup. That's all I've got.

I'll add more if the need arises.

When parking is a commodity...

You don't sit in your damn car with your tail lights on!

It's nerve wracking driving to school in the morning. I have to put up with drivers that are content to drive five miles under the speed limit, refuse to merge in a timely manner, and get in the way of everybody. Once that's over with though, and I get to school, I still need to get a parking space. There are more students that drive than there are parking spots, so just imagine what kind of hell that can be.

I get to school this morning and classes still have two minutes before they let out, and that translates to four minutes at least until students get out to their cars. It doesn't seem like it will be a problem, because there's a red Dodge Durango sitting with it's tail light on. I don't care where you're from, but that's a universal symbol for "I'm backing up now." Some people take longer to do it, but they eventually get out of the spot.

So I wait. I keep waiting. I keep patiently waiting for this nice lady to get her shit together and move! By then, a truck was sitting behind me ignoring me as I tried to wave him around. So I decided to see what was going on.

I got out of my car and walked up to the driver's side of the idling, red Durango. I knocked on the window, spooking the lady (good) who rolled down her window and asked in a very rude way,

"What?"
"Umm, sorry, but are you moving?" I asked, very politely I might add.
"No." she replied, again, very rudely, as she was rolling up her window.

I smiled, said "Thanks." and went back to my car, ignoring the burning urge to do anything rude back. I didn't honk, shout "Then turn off your damn lights!", or make any gesture. I just got back in my car and found an even better parking spot.

But damn. The bitch knows that people are desperate for parking, and there's no reason to have your lights on teasing and tricking the people desperate for parking. I'll just be content with the fantasy of her suffering the annoyance as me.

Or getting a rock through her rear window from somebody with zero tolerance for jerks. Either or really, I'm not picky.

My reputation precedes me, apparently

Working in a pit isn't exactly how you gain notoriety, but where there's complete lack of effort to change that, there's a way.

I got a text from my boss during Archaeology today, asking me to call him as soon as possible. My first thought was "Great, I need to come in early to take care of that 275 person breakfast buffet we had this morning", but that wasn't the case: Brandon has my back when it comes to that kind of stuff.

Instead, he was letting me know that Pasco would be short on dishwashers from Thursday to Tuesday and they wanted me to cover it. I think I was asked for specifically, but I'm not entirely sure. Still, whenever a dishwasher is needed the banqueteers are usually tapped, so it's surprising that I'm the one stuck with it. Regardless, I'll be working there Saturday and Monday.

I've never been in the Pasco Red Lion kitchen, but my friend Mike says it's a confusing place. Great. The dish washing machine they have there is supposedly new, but if it's anything like any dishwasher ever, I'll still have to clean everything before I send it through. So my co-workers in Kennewick don't have to worry about me not coming back.

I'm not looking forward to closing a different kitchen, or being a foreign exchange employee, but at least it's only two days. It's no fun being famous. /sarcasm

I can be pretty smart sometimes

Last quarter, I took Cultural Anthropology and I learned a nifty new term: Ethnocentrism.

Ethnocentrism essentially the belief that one's culture is better than all others. Obviously this isn't a desirable quality to have. There really is no best culture. Yes, I know, America is pretty kick ass, but we're not the best at everything.

For the last few months, I've really started to get annoyed at the condemnation of current cultures and societies for what happened hundreds or thousands of years ago. For example...

The Crusades? Well that's proof right there that Christianity is evil and anybody who practices it is evil as well and must be stopped!

Slavery? Any person or family who owned slaves at any time at all is a horrible person and must be regarded as unethical trash. Which was almost all of the "civilized" world until a couple hundred years ago, by the way.

Now, there is no question that the Crusades and slavery were horribly wrong. Trying to "retake" land that wasn't stolen in the first place, and reducing people to property is evil. We know that now. Back then however, it was just the way things were.

This is where the smart comes in. I've been trying to think of a word, like ethnocentrism, that means believing that humanity at a certain time is superior to all other times. It wasn't until tonight that I came up with the word Chronocentrism that means just that. I was pretty happy with myself to be honest.

Just to make sure I was being original, I started typing it into google when seven letters in, the word popped up. Apparently I wasn't being original, as American sociologist and criminologist Dr. Richard C. Monk (thanks Wikipedia) coined and used the term already.

Even so, I stand by my smartness in that I came up with it on my own and without a fancy PhD.