Start It Out, There's Nothing New

Those are lyrics from the Indians' "Oblivion" from the TFiOS Soundtrack. There aren't many words that are usable from M83's "Wait", but yeah...

The issue with self-policing is that the only authority you are answering to are yourself. It usually works because, at least in my case, your own guilt pushes you to do what you wanted. Well, I skipped a month - the guilt was there but the time/days to post weren't. So I apologize. Sometimes my own life gets in the way of recording it. As the title suggests, there isn't much new to record. Except that I have a car now, but it's not new.

I am now the proud owner of a 1992 Ford Tempo. It was my [paternal] grandmother's, but she doesn't drive anymore and it was in need of an alternator and some other little things. My parents, being awesome as usual, had it fixed up for me by our mechanic (who is the father of a kid I was in cub scouts with... fun fact - thanks again Bill!) and turned over to me. Enter the task of bringing it from legal to comfortable.

All told, I cleaned out roughly a garbage bag and a half of things that had either worn beyond use - umbrellas that crumbled, a sun shield that was falling apart - and others beyond use - a Valvoline engine check invoice from 1994, napkins, and used windshield wipers. An assistant to our mechanic graciously cleaned some black gunk off the side of it, and all I had to do was wash the exterior, vacuum the interior and go through the trunk. The car probably hadn't been driven since 2007ish - believe it or not, it only has only 26,200 miles on it! It runs really well, and was well kept - exactly the way I intend to keep it.

It's a 90's car in every sense of the word - manual windows, cassette deck, these sort of terrifying automatic shoulder seat belt things that try to strangle you when you start it - but I love it. It's a 4-cylinder engine, so it's fun to drive - sort of like a golf cart controls - but has the safety and stability of an American-made steel framed amazing.

The stereo system is also quite good, this coming from someone who has run a variety of sound systems, and because it has a cassette deck I can use an adapter to play my iPod over the system - if my brother would let me play my own music!!! [Sorry, he likes to control it and I've just about had it after two weeks here...]

This is indeed a new start, but nothing in essence new. I'm thrilled to have a car, and a grandmother who is okay with this all, and all I need is to name it...

There’s an Endless Road to Re-Discover.

So it's Wednesday. I don't post on Wednesdays. But this has been an interesting week of exceptions so far, and I have a story to tell.

On January 14, 2014 I took my driving road skills test and passed. I have a license to drive cars (and anything under like 26,000 pounds if I'm not mistaken).

So this adventure all started after school that day, when my mother had arranged to pick me up outside of school and take me down to the DMV. There are a wide variety of people who are in the DMV at any given day (I've been there a few times before, for Photo ID's and some other things) and Tuesday was no exception. I sat in the corner and waited for the gentleman to call my name.

He took me out, and we went through all of the standard in-park operating-your-vehicle things. Then off to parallel parking world. Now I'll be honest, I practiced with my mother a good 20 times parallel parking. It became one of those things like when you're a little kid, and you've just learned to do something, and then you ask every cat, dog, fish, and bird if they've seen you do it. I did it over and over, and parallel parked a little bit of everywhere.

So I went to the spot, and parked. He said I had three adjustments, and when I geared in to drive to adjust, he stopped me and said "you're in the spot, works for me." Not good for my OCD, but hey, he's the examiner. Then I went out onto the road. I'll spare you the details except potholes. At the end, I was nervous beyond anything, and my (terrible) parking job reflected that when he said flatly "Well, you passed." What followed was a back-and-forth "should I straighten out the car in the spot" "no".

From there it was a whirlwind: I sat in a new section of the DMV, they called my name to get a picture (which someone named Alexandra heard as her name, so that was fun). I signed up to be an Organ Donor, and then continued until I was red-flagged for not having my parent approve that. Irrelevant. Bottom line, I was handed my Driver's license and promptly freaked out.

I'm walking out of the DMV with my mother talking about what happens next (insurance, driving timeshares, etc) and I tell her where I parked. We go over there, and make it to the row before our car. And for some bizarre reason we both stop and watch this guy pull out of a parking spot, pull back into it, and then back out and forward. What followed I still don't know what to say about. It's one of those bizarre things that will live forever in my mind.

He went forward and CRUNCH. Right into the back bumper of the tank. At which point I notice three things: 1) this guy was taking his driving test 2) he had the same examiner and the kicker 3) THIS IS THE THIRD TIME IN THREE MONTHS THAT SOMETHING BIZARRE HAS HAPPENED TO THE CAR. Like, first the Baltimore accident, then a deer (I didn't blog about it because it was pretty anti-climatic) and now this.

I don't understand it. Originally I blamed my poor parking job, but then the examiner informed us that he had told the dude taking the test that he was going to hit our car and he still proceeded forward. I felt bad for the guy taking the test, I know how nerve-wracking it was. Nevertheless, I had just got my license and just started laughing at this point.

But seriously, I think I'm drawn to bizarre car adventures. It's never our fault (this is probably the freakiest of the three incidents), but I'm always there. It seems like when I'm near the car, bizarre things are drawn to me. Exhibit A: The goats.

So that's it: I have a license, there was a freak accident at the DMV, and goats. Oh well. I will probably post again Friday, but this was just too strange to wait. Here, have two pictures:

But What a View from the Fifty Ninth Street Bridge

An alternative title is "Of Sandcastles, Roadmaps and" there's a third thing, but I couldn't think of it when I sat down to post. Add whatever you want there.

So I didn't write last week, and that was because I was on a 400ish mile adventure on our (my family and I's) way to vacation in Delaware. Roadtrips are interesting things: the basic premise is that you have a long road that you need to get over in order to go someplace that you're not.

Due to my knack for remembering things like addresses and memorizing routes, I end up playing navigator to get there. And it can get stressful, very stressful when I was put in the back of the car and barking directions to circumnavigate around Baltimore, but we get there nevertheless.

When I was little, I used to think my life was just one ridiculously long reality television series (this is what television did to me, which is part of the reason I don't watch it much anymore. The other reason? Because, internet.). Part of that crazy idea was that when we got in the car, the stuff that ran by wasn't really there. I would sit in a car for an hour or whatever and when I got out, the sets would have changed to the point where I was 'someplace else'.

The reality hit me around age 6 or so that such a thought was ridiculous. Though at times I wish that I was still in that. Take for example last year when I first crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge spanning from Annapolis to the nonexistent peninsula that is DelMarVa. The reality that cruise ships (gigantic things from what I've seen) can pass under this thing without problem is sort of unnerving. It also helps this time when we had to go in the opposite direction (something having to do with rush hour and EZ-Pass) as everyone else on the particular part of the bridge that we were on. I'm just glad I wasn't driving for that part.

Once we got over onto DelMarVa, I can say that I've officially driven (that's proper use, right?) in two states: Pennsylvania and Delaware.

So part of the adventure of vacations is checking out the local television networks and comparing them with back home. Last year I was introduced to Captain Willie Dykes and the crew of DelMarVa ' s (a made up word combining Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia) news leader WBOC-16.

Oh My. So yeah, though we may grumble back in the burgh about little quirks at TAE, Channel 11 and the Special K, nobody has the weekly adventure that is OUTDOORS DELMARVA. It's really something else. Check it out sometime.

But I wasn't in nonexistent DelMarVa to critique local news, I was there to build sandcastles and take pictures of stuff. Though I haven't finished looking through everything yet, I will post everything eventually to my flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexanderpopichak) and will share this gem from Ocean City, Maryland:

It's the pleasantville effect... Click for larger

The thing about vacations is that, as Wikipedia puts it: A vacation or holiday is a specific trip or journey, usually for the purpose of recreation or tourism. In essence, it's an adventure for no great reason but to live.

And I think in a larger sense people take vacations in order to appreciate their hometown more. I know that the beach is great (and so is the ocean and the rest that comes along with it) but nothing compares to being home, which when googling to find some deep and profound definition, I realized that I was seriously about to google what home is.

Alright, new posts eventually. Summer ends for me sometime next week, so I may be spotty when it comes to posting for the first week or so.

And then I realize it's a Thursday, not a Friday. Oy vey.

And After the Storm, I Run and Run as the Rains Come

So there's good reason I didn't blog yesterday. I was at a drive in.

The Line to Get Into The Drive-In

For those of you who belong to my generation and choose to do nothing but scroll blogs, drive in theatres are these magic inventions where you drive into a parking lot (thus the name) and watch a movie projected on a HUGE screen outside. They were apparently all over the place during the 50s-80s, but apparently they weren't cool anymore? I don't know, they seem pretty awesome to me

I went with my mother to see "Monsters University" because we had some groupon and I had never been to a drive in before.

These are magic inventions, and there were people outside of their cars waiting for it to get dark, and kids playing with things and just plain people being out and enjoying themselves.

Yay Magic Screen!

In order to hear the movie, they told you at the gate to tune your radio to a certain frequency and you could hear the movie from there. And here I'm thinking, oh it's some low power frequency, you will get static. No. Crystal Clear. Wow.

So that was how I spent my Friday night, watching a movie at a drive-in.  Sorry for the brevity of this post, it was either this or an adventure in parallel parking. I can sum that up in three words:

It. Was. Scary. 

That's where I wanted to end the post. Hit the labels, and hit publish. But I kept writing.

Okay, so the past few days have been rough. Another friend passed away suddenly. He was 19. I didn't know him all that well, but I will say this: that was too young. My prayers are with his family, and his close-knit group of friends. It's just rough.

My Uke Needs Tuned and Other Adventures

Okay, so this week was sort of rough... yet at the same time very unproductive. I lost a friend from church sort of suddenly, and I don't think that's hit me yet...

The title was a suggestion from a friend... I don't have a ukulele...

So this past weekend I spent up at CAMP! doing various miscellaneous things. My mother and grandfather trusted me enough to drive them to errands and the sort, like to the KMart in Clarion to buy a wheelbarrow.

One of my more productive ventures was to re-do the fire ring there. My grandmother decided she didn't like the rocks surrounding it... so we found some patio bricks. The idea was fairly simple, build a square around the existing circular ring. My grandmother didn't want to have the rocks that were there at all, but I had a (better-ish) idea to re-purpose them.

So the end product looks a bit like this:

Excuse the shovel... this is what it looks like though!

We used some of the rocks to level out the ring down under it, and around the ring for decoration. It looked pretty awesome... until it dawned on me. The rocks could be sandstone. To those of you who aren't familiar with the fun sandstone is around fire, it explodes. And it's usually not too good when that happens.

There was one real way to test it, which was to build a fire and see if it explodes. Unfortunately, or probably fortunately, there is no story here. It was probably some other sedimentary rock (I'm no geologist!) but it DID NOT EXPLODE. But it did rain that night... which made me sad.

However I did make a mountain pie in it. Yes, a mountain pie in the rain and storm, because I can.

That was really the highlight of my week... other than being kicked out of the high school. I can't say much for fear of libel, lawsuits, and other scary stuff from the school district, but bottom line I was working with a group of friends rearranging and updating our high school's video studio and we were informed that we needed to leave. Those are all the details I feel comfortable giving... and we were essentially stranded outside of the building walking the track until our one friend's aunt came to rescue us. Mind you, I'm a volunteer. Thanks.

And Open Up Your Eyes

I spent the weekend at my grandparents' house in beautiful Petrolia, Pa to attend my cousin's wedding  And here's the terrifying part - I drove a little over 15 miles on windy and twisty road to get there...

So I'm driving along this road, and this is the same road that I've rode on as a kid for years (usually listening to a Jimmy Buffet Casette), so I know it pretty well. There is a hill before you get to Chicora that at the crest of it has a huge sweeping turn overlooking a farm with a pond and cows and general lovely.

So I crest this hill overlooking the general lovely and stop dead in my tracks..... granted, I think I swore a bit when I realized what actually happened. Because before me were three random goats standing in the middle of my lane.

Well, we don't have a car, but whatever....
DRAMATIZATION (Click for Larger)

About half way through stopping, my mother said "GOATS" but at that point I had already hit the brake hard enough to not, well, attack the goats.

So what do these goats do? They just stand there and look at me. So I slowly try to move around them, and I guess in their goat minds it went like this:

GOAT: WOAH, Big scary green thing coming after us. DIVE DIVE DIVE!

And by dive I mean that the three goats literally dove under the guard rail and into the general lovely.

I had never seen goats in that field, and I probably wont again, but I did that day. And whether they realized it or not, the fact that I was only going like 40 miles an hour and was scared of the road saved them.

I should get a medal or something for that...

The wedding itself was quite lovely, albeit I don't understand the hoopla for getting married - I guess I don't particularly understand why such planning is needed, but then again I don't understand much... or plan much.

Finals are coming up soon here and then summer comes... and then hopefully I'll be able to post better content....