(no subject)
It's been over a month since I've said anything about my life. Sometimes, that's a sign that life has been boring. But I do not believe that is the case this time. I'm just not quite sure what to say about it all. So, in lieu of a conversational path, I'll just blather on for a bit.
The weekend of 5/30 I caught a flight to Charlotte for ConCarolinas. The purpose of this trip was two-fold: seeing vileone, vilejynx, and ladyinthetower for the first time in over a year, and meeting taliakit for the first time.
Upon arrival at the Charlotte airport, I hung around waiting for the theoretical shuttle that the hotel had told me came around approximately every hour. (Sadly, they did not tell me which part of the hour.) So I spent the better part of an hour waiting for it. In the process, I re-acclimated myself to southern accents. It was pleasant to hear them. It was also pleasant to hear a bunch of different ones... deep south, white trash, Appalachian... Charlotte Airport apparently gets all sorts. There was one big family, where all the girls had on long skirts, all the boys had on shorts, and it was pretty obvious that the patriarch had taken the whole "be fruitful" thing to heart. I was pondering what subset of Christianity they were part of. Sothern Baptist was too easy, and the uniformity of the long skirts made me think one of the more conservative sects was more likely. I never did find out.
I got tired of waiting for the bus, so I started walking. Unsurprisingly, after I got past the parking lots, it became clear that Charlotte airport, like every airport I've been to except BWI, was simply not interested in letting people walk in or out. There was no shoulder to the road, and there was no real grass between the road and the tree line or ditch. After some mulling, I found a way to hop a few things to get over onto a nearby railroad track. I knew that the new Charlotte light rail (all 5 miles of it) was connected to a larger rail system, I figured that if I walked along the rails long enough, I'd hit something closer to civilization. The rockbed the rolling stock was on was a bit annoying... the rocks were just the right size to capsize under my feet. Still, after a couple of miles, I made it out to a road that, while the name was vaguely familiar, I couldn't place in my head. Also, unfortunately, it was near noon, so the solar position wasn't being as useful for orienteering as I'd like. As a result, I picked a direction mostly on gut and went with it. I did this a couple of more times, until I realized that I was pretty much circling the airport, at which point, I sent a message to taliakit and called trystanknight for some google map directions. It turned out, somewhat to my surprise, that I'd gotten to the southeast corner of the airport, which is where I wanted to be, pretty much, without realizing it. Thus, my destination was only about another 5-6 miles away. So, I started hoofing again.
Along the way, a biker chick passed me, and gave my shirtless bod a (probably sarcastic) "woo-hoo". It made my day.
After I arrived at my location, I laid down on a stone half-wall outside the convention hotel to dry off before putting a shirt back on. While lying there, a woman came out with a box; apparently, a cat had decided a nearby bush was the perfect place to birth her litter. The woman left, unable to coax her, or the kittens, out of the bush.
Once I felt sufficiently dry to redress, I went into the hotel, and found ladyinthetower in short order. I was expecting to just hang out with the Vile Pirate LARP people this year, rather than play, seeing as how I'd already played in this LARP before. (I blogged very vaguely about it here.) Instead, ladyinthetowersurprised me with a player folder. Apparently, they had plotted up a way to create a character who could be in the game who had massive knowledge of the way the last version of the game went. As a result, I had a great deal of fun telling people entirely too much about themselves over the course of the LARP. On the other hand, I pretty much epic-failed on all of my goals, so it was probably the least successful run I've ever had with them in that regard. Still, it was interesting (and quite fun) LARPing with a completely different group of people than I have in the past.
Later Friday evening I finally met up with taliakit. She dismayed me by inviting one of her high school friends (who was a nice enough chap) and one of his friends (who was annoyingly talkative/loud in that socially-inept-nerd-stereotype way) along to dinner... though it did make the whole going-to-dinner process faster... even though she insisted that the Five Guys we were going to wasn't as far south as it turned out to be. Also, this was an odd Five Guys, in that it had fried mushrooms, but not non-fried ones, on the topping list. I was rather taken back... had I finally crossed a line in the south, such that everything was to be fried? So, disappointedly, I got a mushroom-less burger. Still: Five Guys! Yay! (Sure, they're not the best burger in the world, but there is something pleasant in the reminiscence and familiarity.)
I made taliakit go to Chipotle Saturday for lunch. It was the first standalone Chipotle I'd ever seen. I think the building may have been put up specifically for the Chipotle, but I'm not sure. It felt cramped, which I suppose it better than not having enough seating. It was also interesting, as it was my first time in a Chipotle in an area with a sizable minority middle class. (While DC may be mostly African-American, I promise you that the make-up of the average Chipotle in DC does not match that demographic.) Actually, I can expand that out to: it was pleasant being someplace that *felt* racially integrated again. By and large, as I've traveled to lots of corners of the Boston area, it's pretty much felt like a starkly segregated place. I expected that of Blacksburg, but I've been somewhat surprised by it up here. I suspect it may just be a facet of life in the Mid-Atlantic region that I took for granted growing up, that simply doesn't exist anywhere else, because the Mid-Atlantic had such an idiosyncratic position with respect to slavery throughout the history of the colonies and states.
Which segues well into another topic on my mind: all the reading I've been doing lately. For many months, I've been slowly working my way through Team of Rivals, a Lincoln biography that came highly recommended. It was well written, and *massive*, but ever since I stopped sitting in Panera regularly, I haven't spent as much time reading. (And it wasn't the size of book I could go walking with.) Having finished it, I did appreciate the viewpoint it provided on Lincoln. I went from it directly into Founding Brothers, which was a Pulitzer-winning short series of stories about several of the prominent early members of the American Revolution and resulting government, and their relationships with each other. I also got around to reading The Wages of Wins, which is basically an economic study of statistics in the major American sports, particularly basketball and baseball. I started in on An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, but it's turned out to be a dry scholarly paper that basically sets out to prove that self-interest was at least partially responsible for the political viewpoints of the founding fathers, which seems self-evident (but was apparently not so in the early 20th century, when the book was written).
All in all, Founding Brothers was the best of the bunch. It did a good job of illustrating the ways in which the revolutionary generation was split between the "Declaration" bunch, like Jefferson, who firmly believed that any centralized power was part of the problem, and the "Constitution" bunch, who saw the Articles of COnfederation as a failure, and viewed a federal system as necessary to maintain any sort of functional large government. This was a pretty stark contrast, to me, from the notion I feel I got from the history books, where the founding fathers are viewed as a big happily family until Washington died, when they divided into parties and started hating each other. It was also interesting to see that party politics, and the immoral actions that come when one is so sure that they are right that doing wrong to prove it stops seeming so bad, started *before* Washington died. Jefferson himself paid someone off to, basically, write vicious lies about Adams. Hamilton did similarly cad-like things.
It was also educational to compare the lack of change in viewpoints between the founding generation and Lincolns. Basically every argument for and against slavery was made in the Constitutional Congress, and then again in the early discussion of slavery that occured in Congress in the late 18th century before Washington died, before it reared up again in 1820, and, finally, leading up to the Civil War. The Jeffersonians realized that it only made sense that the Declaration be applied to all men and that, therefore, the unspoken rule that slavery not even be *discussed* at the federal level for decades was basically a win of "practicality" over morality. The revolutionaries were idealistic enough to revolt and write pretty prose, but were willing to do away with their ideals in the name of unity. They were... human.
The weekend of 5/30 I caught a flight to Charlotte for ConCarolinas. The purpose of this trip was two-fold: seeing vileone, vilejynx, and ladyinthetower for the first time in over a year, and meeting taliakit for the first time.
Upon arrival at the Charlotte airport, I hung around waiting for the theoretical shuttle that the hotel had told me came around approximately every hour. (Sadly, they did not tell me which part of the hour.) So I spent the better part of an hour waiting for it. In the process, I re-acclimated myself to southern accents. It was pleasant to hear them. It was also pleasant to hear a bunch of different ones... deep south, white trash, Appalachian... Charlotte Airport apparently gets all sorts. There was one big family, where all the girls had on long skirts, all the boys had on shorts, and it was pretty obvious that the patriarch had taken the whole "be fruitful" thing to heart. I was pondering what subset of Christianity they were part of. Sothern Baptist was too easy, and the uniformity of the long skirts made me think one of the more conservative sects was more likely. I never did find out.
I got tired of waiting for the bus, so I started walking. Unsurprisingly, after I got past the parking lots, it became clear that Charlotte airport, like every airport I've been to except BWI, was simply not interested in letting people walk in or out. There was no shoulder to the road, and there was no real grass between the road and the tree line or ditch. After some mulling, I found a way to hop a few things to get over onto a nearby railroad track. I knew that the new Charlotte light rail (all 5 miles of it) was connected to a larger rail system, I figured that if I walked along the rails long enough, I'd hit something closer to civilization. The rockbed the rolling stock was on was a bit annoying... the rocks were just the right size to capsize under my feet. Still, after a couple of miles, I made it out to a road that, while the name was vaguely familiar, I couldn't place in my head. Also, unfortunately, it was near noon, so the solar position wasn't being as useful for orienteering as I'd like. As a result, I picked a direction mostly on gut and went with it. I did this a couple of more times, until I realized that I was pretty much circling the airport, at which point, I sent a message to taliakit and called trystanknight for some google map directions. It turned out, somewhat to my surprise, that I'd gotten to the southeast corner of the airport, which is where I wanted to be, pretty much, without realizing it. Thus, my destination was only about another 5-6 miles away. So, I started hoofing again.
Along the way, a biker chick passed me, and gave my shirtless bod a (probably sarcastic) "woo-hoo". It made my day.
After I arrived at my location, I laid down on a stone half-wall outside the convention hotel to dry off before putting a shirt back on. While lying there, a woman came out with a box; apparently, a cat had decided a nearby bush was the perfect place to birth her litter. The woman left, unable to coax her, or the kittens, out of the bush.
Once I felt sufficiently dry to redress, I went into the hotel, and found ladyinthetower in short order. I was expecting to just hang out with the Vile Pirate LARP people this year, rather than play, seeing as how I'd already played in this LARP before. (I blogged very vaguely about it here.) Instead, ladyinthetowersurprised me with a player folder. Apparently, they had plotted up a way to create a character who could be in the game who had massive knowledge of the way the last version of the game went. As a result, I had a great deal of fun telling people entirely too much about themselves over the course of the LARP. On the other hand, I pretty much epic-failed on all of my goals, so it was probably the least successful run I've ever had with them in that regard. Still, it was interesting (and quite fun) LARPing with a completely different group of people than I have in the past.
Later Friday evening I finally met up with taliakit. She dismayed me by inviting one of her high school friends (who was a nice enough chap) and one of his friends (who was annoyingly talkative/loud in that socially-inept-nerd-stereotype way) along to dinner... though it did make the whole going-to-dinner process faster... even though she insisted that the Five Guys we were going to wasn't as far south as it turned out to be. Also, this was an odd Five Guys, in that it had fried mushrooms, but not non-fried ones, on the topping list. I was rather taken back... had I finally crossed a line in the south, such that everything was to be fried? So, disappointedly, I got a mushroom-less burger. Still: Five Guys! Yay! (Sure, they're not the best burger in the world, but there is something pleasant in the reminiscence and familiarity.)
I made taliakit go to Chipotle Saturday for lunch. It was the first standalone Chipotle I'd ever seen. I think the building may have been put up specifically for the Chipotle, but I'm not sure. It felt cramped, which I suppose it better than not having enough seating. It was also interesting, as it was my first time in a Chipotle in an area with a sizable minority middle class. (While DC may be mostly African-American, I promise you that the make-up of the average Chipotle in DC does not match that demographic.) Actually, I can expand that out to: it was pleasant being someplace that *felt* racially integrated again. By and large, as I've traveled to lots of corners of the Boston area, it's pretty much felt like a starkly segregated place. I expected that of Blacksburg, but I've been somewhat surprised by it up here. I suspect it may just be a facet of life in the Mid-Atlantic region that I took for granted growing up, that simply doesn't exist anywhere else, because the Mid-Atlantic had such an idiosyncratic position with respect to slavery throughout the history of the colonies and states.
Which segues well into another topic on my mind: all the reading I've been doing lately. For many months, I've been slowly working my way through Team of Rivals, a Lincoln biography that came highly recommended. It was well written, and *massive*, but ever since I stopped sitting in Panera regularly, I haven't spent as much time reading. (And it wasn't the size of book I could go walking with.) Having finished it, I did appreciate the viewpoint it provided on Lincoln. I went from it directly into Founding Brothers, which was a Pulitzer-winning short series of stories about several of the prominent early members of the American Revolution and resulting government, and their relationships with each other. I also got around to reading The Wages of Wins, which is basically an economic study of statistics in the major American sports, particularly basketball and baseball. I started in on An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, but it's turned out to be a dry scholarly paper that basically sets out to prove that self-interest was at least partially responsible for the political viewpoints of the founding fathers, which seems self-evident (but was apparently not so in the early 20th century, when the book was written).
All in all, Founding Brothers was the best of the bunch. It did a good job of illustrating the ways in which the revolutionary generation was split between the "Declaration" bunch, like Jefferson, who firmly believed that any centralized power was part of the problem, and the "Constitution" bunch, who saw the Articles of COnfederation as a failure, and viewed a federal system as necessary to maintain any sort of functional large government. This was a pretty stark contrast, to me, from the notion I feel I got from the history books, where the founding fathers are viewed as a big happily family until Washington died, when they divided into parties and started hating each other. It was also interesting to see that party politics, and the immoral actions that come when one is so sure that they are right that doing wrong to prove it stops seeming so bad, started *before* Washington died. Jefferson himself paid someone off to, basically, write vicious lies about Adams. Hamilton did similarly cad-like things.
It was also educational to compare the lack of change in viewpoints between the founding generation and Lincolns. Basically every argument for and against slavery was made in the Constitutional Congress, and then again in the early discussion of slavery that occured in Congress in the late 18th century before Washington died, before it reared up again in 1820, and, finally, leading up to the Civil War. The Jeffersonians realized that it only made sense that the Declaration be applied to all men and that, therefore, the unspoken rule that slavery not even be *discussed* at the federal level for decades was basically a win of "practicality" over morality. The revolutionaries were idealistic enough to revolt and write pretty prose, but were willing to do away with their ideals in the name of unity. They were... human.