Prepoceros

I didn’t know a locksmith could make a key just by looking at the tumblers in a lock. I learned this interesting fact after my car key disappeared into the Raging River at Schlitterbahn* (it fell out of John’s velcro-ed pocket somewhere along the 45-minute ride). At the end of the day we called the locksmith, and an hour and 75 dollars later, I had two new keys to my car, inferior to the original key only in their lack of nice plastic heads and the ability to unlock the trunk. I also learned that the locks on my car are just for decoration and serve no practical purpose. It’s nice that no one has been seriously inclined** to steal my old newspapers, broken pencils, or radio.

I also didn’t know that asphalt takes less than a day to set. The parking lot in front of my apartment complex was repaved yesterday morning, and when I got home last night it was open again, cars parked on it and everything.

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Teaching from 6:00 to 9:30 on back-to-back nights when you have class during the day from 11:00 to 5:30 can be rough. At least I don’t have to stand up the whole time in order to learn. Sam, I think, would also prefer that I not be gone so long. Yesterday morning when I left he hid under the bed and barely looked at me when I said goodbye. This morning was better: he still stared at the ground in that depressed-but-adorable mood of his, but at least he let me rub his ears a little.

School is school. Most of my classes seem like they’ll be good ones. A couple are great, a couple crummy. I’m still waiting on my overload petition to go through—I’ll go in and bother the receptionist again tomorrow.

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Man, that was a great vacation. There’s too much to tell here, especially in my current state of exhaustion, in which I’ll be fortunate if I’m coherent enough to spell all the words right in these few sentences.

Driving home from vacation is usually a bit sad, especially when you can feel your week of fun outdoorsy bondy time dissolving into a semester of school and work and chores and commitments.

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The drive took a couple days, so yesterday was our first full day in the condo. The weather here is GORGEOUS. Oh-em-gee, you guys. When we got in on Sunday afternoon the inside of the condo was warmish. The thermostat was set at 60, but it clearly wasn’t running, and we couldn’t find an on/off switch. John called the front desk to ask where the A/C controls were, only to find out that the building doesn’t HAVE air conditioning. We’d never even considered the possibility that you could build a modern building and only put in a heater, but I guess when the average high in August is 71, you can bear a couple warm days here and there.

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Next week, as I’ve mentioned, John and I will be headed to Colorado to soak up the sub-90 temperatures and bone-dry air. It’s gonna be grrrrrreat.

But getting to those mountains requires a twenty-hour drive, a hearty chunk of which is through the Great Plains of Texas. If you’ve never driven across Texas before, you may find this hard to comprehend, but there’s heckuva lotta Texas in Texas. We plan to leave early Saturday morning and will probably spend Saturday night somewhere in the Panhandle. That’s one full day of driving, in one direction, without hitting a state border. Or civilization, for the most part.

While the boy and I do get along rather well, twenty hours of conversation with anyone, with no environmental stimulation besides the tumbleweed and the occasional license plate, is nigh-impossible to achieve without heads exploding. This is where y’all come in.

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Touring the monkey house at the zoo, I passed a group of YMCA campers: a dozen kids, eight or nine years old. One little boy had apparently been told some things about natural history, as he, apparently unprompted, launched into a rousing speech.

Rabble-rouser: I am not descended from a monkey! I am NOT descended from a monkey! Monkeys are not my ancestors!
Kid #2: What about me?
Rabble-rouser: No! Nobody is related to monkeys! We are humans! Humans and monkeys are different! Everybody who is not partly or completely related to monkeys, say “Aye!” [pumps fist in air]
Other kids: AYE!
Rabble-rouser: Everybody who is not partly or completely related to monkeys, say “Aye!”
Other kids: AYE!
Rabble-rouser: I am NOT part monkey!
Kid #3: I’m ALL monkey. [drags knuckles on ground and hoots]