15 things I learned/realized/confirmed on my trip to Milwaukee

(stream-of-consciousness style, in no particular order)

1. Listening to "Requiem for a Dream" in a cabin in the woods is something everyone should try once. Nature sounds add a lot to it.

2. The Brewers' offense is good. Their pitching staff, however, is terrible.

3. People in Wisconsin don't know how to respond to the greeting "howdy." (In other words, they fail the "howdy, dammit" test. Yes, that's what it's called. I'm not using profanity without due cause.)

4. I can't be trusted around other people's laundry. I have this almost pathological need to disturb it. Not sure why. Yes, I realize how absurd this sounds.

5. Never tell my mother if you're planning to leave for any extended period of time without having all the logistics worked out. She'll freak.

6. Indianapolis is an easy city to drive through on the interstate.

7. Chicago is not. (Driving through large cities always reminds me why I would never want to live in one, at least unless it has an exceptional mass transit system. Traffic there is terrible, and it wasn't even rush hour either time I went through.)

8. Oil change technicians don't always remember to make sure your hood is securely reattached when they're finished. This almost led to total disaster on the road in Louisville. Luckily I've become pretty good at averting total disaster. I've had a lot of practice.

9. I can't remember the last time I drove to Louisville when there wasn't road work in progress on I-64. (And it never helps. Traffic in Louisville is almost as bad as Chicago.)

10. It isn't windy enough in Indiana for wind-generated electricity to be reliably, consistently viable. I didn't see any of those giant windmills actually turning while I was driving down the interstate, although it did remind me of Don Quixote.

11. Country music and pop are gradually becoming indistinguishable. Taylor Swift doesn't sing country music. So she sang about riding in a truck once. She also sings a song about freakin' Romeo and Juliet, which I have no problem with except that it isn't a topic typically found in country songs.

12. Speaking of which, commercial radio is insufferable. (Why? Commercials, naturally.)

13. You can't trust an alarm on a brand-new cell phone to work perfectly the first time you try to use it. (Especially if you didn't read the instructions.)

14. When you go to a cabin in the woods, remember to bring a book so you don't go completely insane. (Also remember a flashlight. And a towel. These should both be self-explanatory.)

15. Wear long sleeves -- or sunscreen -- when you drive for an extended period of time. Or else, one of your arms will get sunburned and the other won't. And then you're just lopsided, which is no fun at all.

All right. Enough foolishness for one day.

All right, I'm back...

I'm not really sure if anyone will ever see this or not (since that is what happens when you don't post for a month and a half; I fully intended to stop using this thing, hence the disappearance of all the posts from my time in D.C.), but since I don't really know how to get rid of this site (aside from just ignoring it), I might as well use it.

Life is good. It's June 19, so it's been almost two months since getting back from D.C., and yet it feels like so much longer really. I've been pretty reasonably busy since then. Went camping with some of the kids from the church one weekend, then all of the grandparents were in town for Dad's ordination, so that was an interesting and fun week or so.

I've also spent some time just volunteering around the church, and this week Ethan, Dad and I worked with some of the VIM folks from the church on a Habitat house here in Harrodsburg. We finished the flooring and got all four exterior walls and all the interior walls framed and up, and began putting up the Tyvek when we got rained out yesterday (it was actually raining sideways, the wind was blowing so hard, and it was just about pitch black... at noon).

Also, I have an internship with the Danville Advocate-Messenger lined up (in fact I'm covering a golf tournament this weekend, assuming it doesn't get thunderstormed-out), and am doing the job hunt thing on top of that.

So it's going to continue to be a very busy summer, I'm sure. And exciting.