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It took me 45 minutes to drive the two miles to work last night due to traffic. Yes, that’s right: there was a traffic jam in Ames, Iowa.

Iowa as a whole isn’t really known as a high-traffic area. Sure, we’ve got two of the country’s major thoroughfares (Interstates 35 and 80) bisecting the state, but most of the throughput keeps to its own business. A mile or two off the Interstate, when (if) you pass a car going in the opposite (or, heaven forbid, the same) direction, you’ll likely evoke one of two responses:

• A friendly wave, because they know you, or will soon enough, or
• A look of mild surprise at having seen another car on the same road.

I mean, I’m ~from~ Iowa, and when I think “Iowa traffic jam” I can’t help but visualize two cows standing head to head in the middle of a cornfield, each bellowing for the other to get out of the way. Not that we Iowans bellow (or honk, whichever your vehicle prefers). I’ve owned my car for around 18 months now, and I think I’ve used the horn twice: once to wake up (or resurrect) an old man who I’m pretty sure fell asleep (or died) at the light, and once to let Sammie know that we were, in fact, still waiting in the car, and that her hair surely looked good enough for a run to Wal-Mart by now.

But anyway, back to my story.

Ames is a decent-sized Iowa town of approximately 70,000 people. A lot of people who work in Ames do so at the University, located at the northish side of town, and commute home via Highway 30 and Interstate 35 at the southish side of town. As such, there’s a fair amount of north-south traffic around the hours of eight in the morning and five in the evening. Normally, this isn’t a problem. However, all the roads (save a couple) suffer the same flaw: they’re bisected by a set of railroad tracks.

My voyage to work followed as… well, as follows:

• 4:53pm - Left my house on 6th Street (slowly, in order to check out the cute girls working the daycare next door *g*) and drove the five or so blocks to Duff Avenue.
• 4:55pm - Approached the tracks on Duff just north of Lincoln Way. Realized that the train on the tracks was stopped. Completely.
• 4:56pm - In a stroke of genius, I turned onto 5th Street and headed back to 6th in order to make my way to Grand Avenue, the only street on this half of town which passes under the railroad tracks.
• 4:57pm - Turned onto 6th Street and came to a complete stop, surrounded by hundreds of other people who had obviously eavesdropped upon my genius.
• 5:10pm - I’m in front of my house again. The daycare girls are inside. Luckily, I have Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “Love Rollercoaster” playing on my CD player and I’m feeling pretty good.
• 5:15pm - Now I’m listening to “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” by Cake. I’m still in front of my house.
• 5:20pm - I squeal my tires turning onto Grand Avenue, momentarily frightening an old woman in a motorized wheelchair with an oxygen tank strapped to the back. Two seconds later, I come to a complete stop.
• 5:30pm - The old woman in the motorized wheelchair passes me and turns right at Lincoln Way.
• 5:33pm - I stop laughing at the irony of it all.
• 5:38pm - I finally arrive at work, nearly half an hour late. I tell Mark he can’t go home. Mark cries, but only a little. He’s my strong little buddy.

It’s sorta funny, because I was in a really bad mood when I left for work, but the ironies the traffic jam provided were enough to cheer me up a bit. Of course, I think you’ve gotta be in a pretty bad state in order for something like a traffic jam to improve your condition. *g*

The party was, at best, and underwhelming success. A success, in that beer was available, people drank said beer, and those who were at the party seemed to enjoy themselves (save yours truly, who was not enjoying himself much at all, but that is another story). Underwhelming, in that the party never attracted more than maybe ten people at any given time, despite the fact that I personally invited a couple dozen individuals. In order to save whatever tattered shreds of ego I may have left lying forgotten in a corner somewhere, I’ll assume that most people stayed in due to the monstrous storms that rolled through Iowa from Saturday afternoon until last evening. I mean, nearly a quarter of the state (24 of 99 counties) has been declared a disaster area. That’s gotta be discouraging to party-goers, right?

I stayed sober through the entire party, in part because I was on-call for my job and I answer technical questions better sober, and also in part because I was in a horrible mood and didn’t want to further complicate my emotional state with alcohol. As such, I felt fairly out of place with my surroundings. That is, surrounded by drunks. *g* Drunks tend to get on my nerves even when I’m one of them, and doubly so otherwise.

As you can probably tell by my tone, I’m still in a bad mood. Sorry about that. I’ve been in a consistently shitty mood since Saturday afternoon. I get brief breaks from it, of course. I enjoyed myself playing racquetball with Sammie yesterday afternoon, and I had a decent time watching the Blue Collar Comedy Tour on DVD with my roommates last night. But other than those occasional reprives, I’m spending most of my time off by myself, festering in my own anger. Yah. Aren’t I just a bowl of freakin’ sunshine today? *g*

But don’t worry: You’re probably not the cause of my anger. Unless, of course, you are. But you who are (and you know who you are), know you are. Are you they who know?

Well, at least I made myself smile by reading that last bit aloud. *g*

Party at my place (525 6th Street) tonight! For those of you under 25 35, anyways. Sorry, mom, but multiples of 21 don’t count. *g*

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So I went on a little shopping spree yesterday. First, I won an auction on eBay for a set of $45 Logitech Z-560 computer speakers (they retail at $150 - $200). The shipping on the speakers was a whopping $33, mostly because the included sub weighs more than I do. My soon-to-be-ex roommate Mark has a set, so I already know I like them. :)

Then, I bought a performance mod chip for my Kia. Yeah, I don’t know for sure what I was thinking on that one, either. But it was only going for $8, so even if it doesn’t do squat, I haven’t squandered that much.

I also placed bids on half a dozen shirts and two pairs of pants (one boot cut, one bell bottom) from the late 60’s and early 70’s era. I figure they’d be good for going out in the evenings. :) In fact, I’m hoping to make a run to Goodwill this afternoon on the off-chance I can find something fun for the party tonight.

After I got off work(s), my roommates and I made a run to Wal-mart for supplies. I decided to check the electronics section for this DVD player I’d been wanting for a month or so now (the Philips DVP642), because I’d read in various forums that Wal-mart was the only place you could really find them anymore (everyone else is out of stock). They had one: the display model. I bought it for $70. :) This DVD player is awesome because it can play the dozens of DivX movies I have burned to CD.

Luckily, I think that’s where my spree ended (the auctions I’ve bid in that haven’t closed being the only exception). I don’t care to add up how much I spent on random stuff today. *g*

See some of you tonight!

Megan got me Real Genius on DVD for graduation! :) So, obviously, I wanted to sit down and watch it immediately. I am, however, a very busy boy. I worked today from 8am until 10pm. Unfortunate, no? So, I did the only logical thing. I:

• Put the DVD in my computer when I woke up in the morning,
• Set the uncompressed files to copy from the DVD to my spare hard drive while I was showering,
• Used VNC from work to connect to my home system and compress the 4GBs worth of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 files into a single 700MB DivX (MPEG-4) file,
• Burned the DivX to a CD the moment I got home from my first job,
• Installed the DivX codecs on my linux box at work, and
• Watched my movie on my computer at work in the lull between calls.

What? Like any of you would have done anything different? *g*

After the movie was over, I spent the rest of my time surfing the net. By the time 10pm rolled around, I was browsing the selection of vintage clothing on eBay. Yeesh. I’m very worried that I won’t be able to resist the temptation to spend $25 on clothes that were only worth $5 thirty years ago. :) Perhaps I should take a trip to Goodwill this weekend in an attempt to prevent the inevitable. I desperately want some 70’s clothes to wear to parties and whatnots.

So, my sister says to me today, “You’re going to be an uncle.”

My best response? “Wow.” Well, it’s a toss up between that one and, “Huh.” Yeah, so much for the articulate English graduates of Iowa State. At one point, Sandy (that’s my sister) even suggested I make use of an online thesaurus or something so I didn’t embarass myself further. *g* Charlie “Copia is King” Kostelnick would be spinning in his grave right now, were he more dead and less the chair of my department.