Thoughts on the latest crop of dancers:

• The Situation, Audrina whats-her-face, Rick Fox, Kurt Warner, Kyle Massey – who cares.
• Bristol Palin – EW EW EW do we really have to give that horror show in Alaska any more attention?!
• Michael Bolton – if his hair is still long, cool; if not, who cares.
• Florence Henderson – awwwww everybody’s favorite TV mom, she will be fun to watch!
• Margaret Cho – YAY plus size queer chick.
• Jennifer Grey – haven’t seen such a ringer since Kristi Yamaguchi won.

I’m typing this on my friend’s wireless Mac keyboard, and I have hit Shift-7 every time I wanted to type an apostrophe, because that’s how it is in Japan, where I also typed on a wireless Mac keyboard. Ha.

And then I realized: I like flexibility. If you use the fully hosted version of WordPress, you are limited to the designs and plugins they choose for you – and there are SO many more out there than what they offer! Sure, things might be messy on the admin side of things over here, but it’s a mess I made, as I tinkered and tweaked just how I wanted.

Everything that WordPress.com has made easy – upgrades, new plugins, new themes – is now part of the base WordPress program. (I used to get paid to upgrade WordPress for friends, before they became a one-click process!) It couldn’t be easier to run your own WordPress installation today, and have super flexibility. Most web hosts even offer it as a one-click installation in the first place! You do need your own domain, and not everybody wants that, because it costs money. But if you have one, you don’t have to be tied down to what WordPress.com offers you.

A little bit of my own blogging/web history. My first webpage was a school project in 1996, hosted on Geocities, back before they had subsections under the neighborhoods. Then in college in 1997, I had www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Union/1234, where 1234 was the number of the house where I grew up. In 1998, I moved briefly to Tripod, and then to Chickpages. In 1999, I bought amanita.net, and I’m still here.

I blogged a little without software back in the day, and then in 2001 I started at LiveJournal. I switched to self-hosted Movable Type in 2002, and to self-hosted WordPress in 2004. I have been hosted with Virtualave, Blogomania, and Dreamhost. My webpage is my favorite hobby, though I haven’t done much with it since I went back to school in 2007…but after I graduate I will probably tidy things up and make everything perfect!

Suddenly, while on H St NE, somebody honked at me from in front. Wait, what? I suddenly realized that the guy driving toward me with his brights on was IN MY LANE. Driving toward me, in my lane! What the hell? I thought maybe I was confused, the traffic pattern changes often on H St because they’re building the trolley line there. But I looked, and…no, I was on the correct side of the yellow double line! He was driving on the wrong side of the road! Scared the hell out of me, I tell you. And HE honked at ME! Dude, what the hell?! I’m still a bit shaken.

So I made it into Northwest, and had just turned from H onto 7th, in Chinatown. And I came up behind a car stopped in the middle of the road, with a female standing outside the car, leaning on the window, chatting with the driver. I tapped my horn – no response. I honked hard for a few seconds…nothing. So I went around, going onto the wrong side of the road myself to do so. I cut as close to the woman as I could, hoping to make her nervous. That was unnecessary and immature, but it made me feel better, a little.

And then a guy cut me off at 7th and Pennsylvania…ugh! What a drive!

So I haven’t been posting lately.  I haven’t even been doing very much, I guess.  Just kind of hanging out at home.  I’ve been depressed over money.  Yeah, I bought a new phone (Samsung Vibrant), but other than that I am doing things like learning how to cook so I can save money (frozen dinners are expensive) and not going out or other places or anything like that.  I don’t even know how to say it.  I’m just having a really hard time financially.  I only have about $800 to my name, I guess.  The $500-900 for my fillings (Sept 15th) is going to come from my wife.  Paying off my $1300 credit card bill came from my wife, she doesn’t like me to pay the minimum, she believes in paying it off in full.  I got $3500 from Gallaudet for tuition, so I guess that is going to leave me with about $2500 to pay myself?  I don’t know.  That will come from my wife, too.  I am going to try to pay for my meds myself, but my wife says I shouldn’t cut back on them, so I might need to borrow from her for that, too.  It’s amazing how much money I have borrowed from her.  All the money I got at the NAD Conference went to Japan.  I have written up a thing about how I spent about $7000 total on the trip and Gallaudet only gave me $2000.  So I’m hoping they’ll find it in their hearts to give me a little more.  I plan to appeal directly to the president’s office.

So anyway, I have been feeling some major depression because of this.  I don’t want to do anything much.  Including reading; I downloaded The Force Is Middling In This One by Rob Kroese (author of the wonderful Mercury Falls) and it’s funny, but I just haven’t been in the mood to read it.  I have been playing Bioshock 2 a bit, because it is deliciously engrossing, but that’s just about it.  So, there.  That’s where I’ve been at.

Edit: Okay, I read some more of that book, and I was actually cracking up the whole time. Mr. Kroese is hilarious, people.

“It’s an unsaid apology … Why wouldn’t it be? Why would [Roos] go? It doesn’t make any sense.

“I know it’s the anniversary, but I don’t know what the hell they’re trying to do. It needs to be left alone. The war is over.”

“It’s making the Japanese look like they’re the poor people, like they didn’t do anything,” he said. “They hit Pearl Harbor, they struck us. We didn’t slaughter the Japanese — we stopped the war.”

“What’s his purpose? I don’t know what it’d do,” … “History is history, the past is the past. You can’t change it and I don’t know why he’d visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“This all sounds like, ‘Oh, we did you wrong.’ That’s what it sounds like.”

Maybe Mr. Tibbets should visit Hiroshima for himself. I’ve been there. And yes, we did them wrong. You can talk about Operation Downfall all you want. You can talk about how many people died in the fire bombings elsewhere in Japan, or in Pearl Harbor, or that every Japanese citizen (man, woman, and child) was ready to kill Americans, given the chance. But I’m sorry, it’s still wrong. Use of the atomic bomb is wrong. Period. And Roos or Obama visiting isn’t apologizing for what we did…on the contrary, it’s acknowledging it. Yes, we did this. When I saw the A-Bomb Dome…fuck, man. We did this.

I don’t have words for how ignorant I find Mr. Tibbets to be. And he’s just using his dad’s celebrity to voice his opinion. Hell, would he care at all if his dad hadn’t been the pilot? Honestly, Mr. Tibbets. Go visit Hiroshima. Then you can talk about whether it’s appropriate to recognize it. Until then, fuck off.

We must stop. Non-proliferation is imperative. Disarmament is imperative. I don’t know how to put it plainly without saying “oh, you just have to go to Hiroshima to understand.” No, you don’t. People can understand without seeing it. But fuck, it makes you care a hell of a lot more.

May those who have died, rest in peace. May those who are still suffering – the hibakusha and their descendants – find peace in this lifetime.

I went to two schools for the deaf after I got back. One is in Chiba prefecture, and my boss and several of the students here went there as children. The school covers from infancy (mommy-and-me programs) through vocational school, but I found it strange because sign language is only used at the high school level and above. Junior high students and below use aural/oral schooling. I asked how the students eventually learn sign language, and the answer was that they learn it the same way deaf kids did in the US during the days when sign wasn’t permitted – from each other. There is a dorm on campus, because the school draws from all over Japan, and students learn from each other there; they use it in the lunchrooms; they learn from Deaf of Deaf children – whatever they need to do. But this explains why so many of the students here at NTUT speak – many of them likely have an oral background, even if they went to a school for deaf children. I do wonder how non-speaking deaf people got through those classes. Sometimes a deaf child doesn’t develop understandable speech (what used to be called an “oral failure”)…what do you do if you can’t speak in an oral classroom? The vocational program was interesting. There are two tracks for high school seniors – college prep, and vocational prep. The college prep students usually come to either NTUT or a hearing college, but the vocational students go into one of two tracks: art, or dentistry. I’m not sure what the exact term is for what they do – the students create dentures, caps, retainers, and other equipment that goes into the mouth. It was interesting (and stinky) but I was again puzzled to see that students are forced into a particular field. If you’re not good at art, you do the dental work. But what if you don’t like dental work? As a funny aside, I kept thinking that there was going to be a glass-blowing program. Even though I had been told the vocational program involved making false teeth, people just kept saying “tooth program” in JSL. The sign for tooth in JSL and the sign for glass in ASL are identical, and my brain kept thinking “glass” and waiting to be taken to the glass workshop – it wasn’t until I actually saw the work being done that I realized there was no glass program, there was only the dental program!

The second school I visited was in Tokyo. It served only junior high and high school students, and all communication was either sim-com or signed. Go read this for the rest, because this entry has been languishing while I fail to write more about the schools.

I went to Hiroshima. What can I say about Hiroshima…basically, if you don’t feel the need to go, then don’t bother. It was sad for me. As soon as you step off the streetcar at Genbaku-Dome-Mae, you’re face-to-face with the A-Bomb Dome. It has been left exactly as it was on August 6, 1945. The reason it survived at all is because it was steel reinforced – the hypocenter was just a couple hundred meters away, and everything around it was destroyed. The dome itself was made of copper, and melted. It was really hard for me because “we” did it. All the horrible things that happened in Hiroshima, the Americans did to them. The innocent civilians…yes, you can say “well every Japanese wanted to kill Americans too” but my god…just the sheer scale of what we did…it’s horrifying. I’ve been reading the Manhattan Engineer District report and we did all this without even knowing what the effects would be. And when they happened, we didn’t believe them: the report contains many comments along the lines of “the Japanese say (insert atrocity here) but we believe this is false.” Just horrible. And I feel we can still be culpable in this situation. I would place no blame on German youth today for the Holocaust: that was one man’s dream, and those who followed him in it are long gone. But the American government works differently, and I still feel there is guilt to be felt about the atomic bombings. What I really don’t get – and there is a section in the Peace Museum about this – is how, after seeing the effects of an atomic bomb, they STILL exist. How can non-proliferation be failing? How can disarmament be at a standstill? If anyone who supports atomic bomb development went to Hiroshima, they’d change their tune. It was just totally striking. To ease myself back into the real world, I walked down Hondori Street, a shopping district, after I was done in the Peace Memorial Park.

I went to Miyajima the next day, and I wish I could have had more time. I slept in a bit, so I only had a few hours. I knew I wasn’t going to make it there in time to touch the O-Torii gate, because low tide was at 7:30am, so I figured I’d just get there when I got there. But the streetcar ride from Hiroshima is about an hour, so I actually had very little time on Miyajima. It was fun though! There are signs warning you not to pet the deer because “they are not always gentle,” but they were utterly tame and people pet them all the time. I saw one eat somebody’s map, it was cute! Nobody was really feeding them, but I’m sure they must get fed or they wouldn’t be so friendly. I didn’t get to see the shrine in Miyajima because there was a long line and it cost money to enter, so I just looked through the shops and took lots of pictures of the famous O-Torii gate.

On Monday I met up with some NTUT students and also an American student who is studying at Meiji University and who knows ASL. We went to Yokohama for the day, and ended up spending a lot more time there than I had expected! Yokohama seems nice, but I would have liked to see it from a more historical perspective. We mostly stuck to the Minato Mirai 21 area, including shopping at the Queen’s East and World Porters malls, riding the roller coaster at CosmoWorld (where I am pretty sure I busted my left eardrum, thanks to too-tight restraints and the ride being so headbangy), and going up the Landmark Tower – which is actually the only time I got to see Mt. Fuji. Apparently you can also see Fuji-san from the trains along the corridor to Kyoto, but nobody ever told me that and I didn’t know where to look, so I missed those opportunities. We had dinner in Chinatown, which was interesting. The American girl with us, Lauren, spoke Japanese and tried to order vegetables with tofu for me…I ended up with a plate of ma po tofu (no pork) and a plate of vegetables! Not what I had in mind, but apparently just like Chinese food is tailored to American tastes in the US, it is also tailored to Japanese tastes in Japan, and they had no idea what I wanted. Oh well!

The following weekend I went to Disneyland! It was pretty spectacular. People thought I was crazy for going alone, but I had fun. On Saturday I went to DisneySea, the unique park for Tokyo – it’s not replicated anywhere else in the world. It was SO HOT that day! I bought a $30 parasol to keep the sun off, but it was still brutally hot. I ate at the Italian table service restaurant, the only place that had vegetarian food, and I got spaghetti sauce all over myself. I got to enjoy a couple of rides the easy way – there is a “single rider” line on three major attractions, so I just walked up and got right on for Raging Spirits, the Indiana Jones ride, and one other thing (forget what). I almost didn’t get to go on Journey to the Center of the Earth because the line was SO LONG that I was going to just leave, but I stuck it out and was rewarded with a really cool ride. I didn’t make it to Test Track when I went to Epcot for one day last year, so it was good to experience the same technology on Journey to the Center of the Earth.

I spent the night at a hotel in Soga, and then went to Disneyland the next day. My first stop was Tomorrowland, where I grabbed a FastPass for Space Mountain and got in line for Captain EO. I love Michael Jackson, so getting to see Captain EO in its original form was really awesome – it was the first movie to incorporate “4-D” effects of smoke, lights, and other things in the theater. The line was pretty long, and I hadn’t gotten any water, so I was so thirsty while I waited…that’s the peril of being alone at such a park! If I were fluent in Japanese, I would have bribed somebody to hold my spot while I got something, but of course I had no way to ask for that. So I just waited, and then the ride let out right before my FastPass time was almost up for Space Mountain! So I quickly bought some water and then ran into the line at 12:24 – my ticket expired at 12:25 so I was lucky! Space Mountain was great as usual, I love that ride. I’m pretty sure it was the same as at other parks, which was nice because most other “thrill” rides in Japan really aren’t that thrilling – Japanese people don’t like to be spun upside down a million times like Americans do. I wandered around for a while, including a stop at the Enchanted Tiki Room. I know the original lyrics from the Disneyland attraction, but not only was this one in Japanese, it had been modified to a Stitch “Aloha E Komo Mai” theme, so I didn’t get to join in at all! I still love the Tiki Room though…my favorite part is how the birds are already moving by the time you are filing into the room. Of course, I had no idea what the plot was, but I could make out that the four main birds were talking about the “Biggu Kahuna” – who turned out to be Stitch, or in Japanese terms, “Sutichi.” That was a little disappointing, to have a classic attraction taken over by something modern, but I guess they have to keep the kiddies entertained. The other ones have probably been updated, too.

I had two more rides I definitely wanted to go on before leaving – rides that I had missed when I went to Disneyland a few years ago. I picked up a FastPass for one of them, Haunted Mansion, and then went directly to Splash Mountain, the other ride I had never been on. It has a single-rider line (the only ride with one at Tokyo Disneyland), so I waltzed right up to the front and got on right away. Once again, everything was in Japanese, but I knew it was themed to the Song of the South movie. This surprises me, actually, because in the US Disney barely acknowledges that it made that movie, because of its racist overtones. That’s all left out of Splash Mountain, of course. It was cute, and the final song ended with “Zip-a-dee-do-dah, Zip-a-dee-ay, something in Japanese, wonderful day!” Yeah…not sure how they came up with that! Anyway, I went to Haunted Mansion next, and I loved it! I have to say it’s one of the best rides in the park. Very well done. Parts of it were even in English, which surprised me. That was pretty much the last important thing I did in the park…I went on Small World, which had ZERO line, and I wandered around a little more, but that was it! It was fun.

My work for the rest of the week included giving a presentation on American Deaf culture, giving a test to two ASL classes, and signing every single word in their ASL curriculum onto video so they could have a native signer do it. On Friday, my boss took me and his assistant out to a lovely Italian restaurant called Faro, I had no idea that such a quaint place was hiding in the middle of Tsukuba’s rice fields! They gave me gifts – I had given them gifts the day before, and gift-giving is reciprocal in Japan – and we had a very nice time.

I moved into the NTUT guest house on Friday night, only to discover that my room had no air-conditioning (at least I couldn’t figure it out) and the LAN wasn’t working (and I couldn’t hit the campus wifi networks), not to mention the lack of elevator (had to haul up my bags). So I spent a very hot and sweaty night with my Kindle. For the weekend, though, I got to hang out with my Japanese-Italian friend, who was back from her trip to Italy. We spent Saturday at a love hotel in Shinjuku, where we sang karaoke for the entire three hours we had booked! (It’s called a “rest” time – because that’s totally what you’re doing at a love hotel, right?) I had never done real karaoke before in my life; fortunately they had a very large selection of English-language songs, including popular hits like Lady Gaga (my friend sang Poker Face) as well as classics like Petula Clark (I sang Downtown). We had gotten snacks and drinks and we had a fine time in the love hotel…it was amusing to see their amenities, like windows behind a thick door, free mouthwash, hair bands, hairbrush, condoms, lotion, etc. The bathtub was huuuuuge and it had a light so you could make the water look colored, but I didn’t want to waste water by filling up the tub. After our three hours were up, we went over to Asakusa and the Sumida River fireworks. It was insanely crowded…about a million people gather at two sites to watch a total of 20,000 fireworks go up. Japan has far more advanced fireworks than we do, and I was treated to smiley faces, an apple, and kitty cats! We moved around a few times, trying to find the best view, and ended up next to a goofy-but-sweet drunk guy. When it was over, we hailed a cab back to my friend’s place, and the drunk guy and his friends joined us in it. (When it’s that crowded, cabs are very hard to find, so we let them join us.) We ended up talking about American movies, and they seemed to especially like Kevin Costner! They eventually got out, and we got out and had dinner at a Chinese place where I stuck to the vegetarian dim sum. (We had fried rice too, and got them to leave out the meat, but some shrimp bits fell in so I had to be careful.) I crashed in her guest room and slept until almost noon! On Sunday we took it easy, just went to Akihabara and looked around, then I went back to Tsukuba for one last (sweaty, internet-less) night. I ate dinner at Coco’s and that was it.

On Monday, I had one final meeting with my boss, and then he had the office call a cab to take me and my giant bags to the train station. I managed to navigate my way to Shinagawa without much incident, but when I checked into my hotel they informed me they didn’t have an elevator. Oh, really? “Well that’s going to be a problem…” but they carried my bags up for me. I took it easy on Monday night, just looked around Shinagawa a little bit, and ate dinner at TGI Friday’s. I felt funny there, but the American food was nice, and I had gotten a free drink coupon on the street, so that’s where I went! On Tuesday I went to Shinjuku and did some shopping and ate at Siam, a great Thai restaurant where they understood only enough English for “no shrimp! tofu! TOFU. NO SHRIMP.” The food was really good though! In the evening, I went to Shibuya and had dinner with my friend Merritt, who is teaching ASL in Japan for a couple of years.

Having completely missed all earthquakes, I decided to start Wednesday by going to the Kita Disaster Prevention Center which has a simulator. There was no English anywhere, but the operator held up fingers to let me know what magnitude he was going to do. It was just me and a mother with two young girls, and we went through 4, 5, 6, and 7 magnitude shocks…I can’t believe Californians scoff at 4s, I thought it was really strong! Next he simulated the Kobe earthquake of 1995, which was quite strong but very short. Then he gave us the big one, the 1923 Kanto earthquake. Holy. Crap. Aside from being huge – 7.9 on the Richter scale – it was also really long. It actually made me nauseous, and I don’t usually get nauseous from simulators or thrill rides. I am disappointed that I never got to experience a real earthquake – the simulator looked out onto normal space, so you could tell that YOU were moving, not the world – but if that’s what they’re like, I guess I’m not so eager to after all! I went shopping in Asakusa for last-minute gifts, and then came back to the hotel for the rest of the day. Tomorrow I get on the plane…

The picture of the pizza was small, but I could see that there were vegetables on it. I thought there might be meat on it too, so I wanted to convey that I wanted the vegetables but not the meat, so I tried a few variations on words I thought might help. None of them worked, though, so I thought I’d try for a margherita pizza, which many pizza-serving places have on their menu. No dice. Okay, so how about a cheese pizza? I said “チーズピザ” (cheezu peetza) because the word for cheese is pronounced “cheezu” and the word for pizza is pronounced “peetza” – I was speaking Japanese, this couldn’t fail, right? She repeated it back to me, and I repeated it back again. I said “just cheezu peetza” and she said “ｼﾞｳｽﾄチーズピザ” (jusuto cheezu peetza)? I said yes. She went over to talk to a coworker, who nodded, and then she put my order in to the kitchen.

About 10 minutes later, I was given a delicious looking pizza, with just cheese on it. Just cheese. As in, no tomato sauce or anything else. It was basically like an open-face grilled cheese sandwich on pizza dough. They used different cheeses, though, so it was actually pretty good, quite hot, and nice and cheesy! Just…not what I had in mind.

I went to a nearby 7-11 after to pick up extra snacks. On the way, I passed an Italian restaurant. I thought, “I could have gone there” – and then I realized…if I had, I wouldn’t have had the “justo cheezu peetza” and it was actually kind of fun.

Cashier: *rings up price*
Me: *touches smartcard to device to pay*
Device: BEEP BEEP (you don’t have enough, the charge is 14,279 yen, you only have 5,047 yen)
Me: *looks at cashier*
Cashier: *punches more buttons, indicates I should touch it again*
Me: *touches it again*
Device: BEEP (you have been charged 5,047 yen and now have 0 yen)
Me: I don’t think that’s right. Now I have nothing on my card.
Cashier: *prints receipt, speaks Japanese*
Me: No, see, you charged me FOURTEEN THOUSAND YEN. [this is about $150. for a bagel and bottle of juice.]
Cashier: *speaks Japanese*
Me: No, it’s a mistake. You charged me too much, now I have nothing.
Cashier: *speaks Japanese*
Me: FOURTEEN THOUSAND. *points to numbers* Ichi… [means 1] Then you did something else, now I have nothing.
Cashier: *speaks Japanese*
Me: No, see, when I came up here – *step away, come back with card raised* I had five thousand yen. Now I have zero. *points to receipt*
back and forth a little more
Me: You took all the money off. *wonders if anybody around speaks English*
Cashier: *speaks Japanese*
Me: It was a mistake.
Cashier: *opens register, gets out 5,047 yen in cash, hands it to me*
Me: That’s fine. That works just fine. That will do. *pays in cash, takes bagel and juice, leaves*

OH MY GOD. How do you NOT NOTICE that you charged me $162 for a BAGEL? Have you ever in your life rung up anything at the BAGEL STORE for that much? How do you fail to understand me pointing at the receipt and holding up 1 finger, then 4 fingers? WOW.

On Thursday night before I left, I met Rachel and Renca (friends from Gallaudet) for dinner at Fusao. It’s a restaurant owned by a lovely deaf couple, and we ended up meeting up with MJ Bienvenu, her partner, and a few other deaf people too. I didn’t get much to eat that night because we were all sharing and there weren’t many vegetables, but the conversation was enjoyable.

Flying home on Friday was pretty uneventful. I spent about $30 on KitKats of various flavors – green tea, wasabi, soy sauce, and so forth. I had a bulkhead seat in economy. Having the bulkhead was nice, but United’s movie method is lousy compared to ANA’s – one movie per channel, and they wait until all movies are done on all channels before starting over. There were also no movies with English subtitles – the entertainment guide indicated that there should be some, but I never found anything. So I was pretty restless and cramped the whole trip back. You know, Economy Plus may seem like a silly luxury, but it’s worth it for such a long trip.

So I flew into Dulles, and my wife picked me up. I made her get out of the car so I could hug her properly! On Saturday, I made some of my friends come out to the suburbs so we could have lunch, and then in the evening we went to a Vietnamese restaurant that had a large vegetarian menu, for my father-in-law’s 70th birthday. On Sunday, we drove to Philadelphia for the NAD conference, and I met up with the College Bowl coaches and half the team. (The other half was flying in from Poland after having competd in the Under 21 Deaf Basketball Tournament.) We went to my favorite restaurant in Philadelphia, More Than Just Ice Cream, for dinner.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty laid back – we had a few practices, but that was pretty much it. On Wednesday I had a rotten day, because I was treated like a child when I tried to explain that we’d been told the night before we’d be in the Opening Ceremonies, as we have in years past. It turned out we had been cut at the last minute, and nobody had told us…but I ended up having a cryfest instead. Guess it was all the constant pressure, or something. In the afternoon, I worked at the Gallaudet booth in the exhibit hall. It wasn’t very interesting because most folks wanted to talk to the alumni office, and I was there with the admissions office. There was only one potential student, I think! At the end of the day I went out and had a margarita, because I’d been having a rotten day ALL day…yes Bob, that line was for you!

Thursday was Game Day. We had a pretty easy day…honestly I don’t remember anything until the game! Gallaudet had a pep rally before the game, which was exciting for me…but it felt a bit odd that it was only for Gallaudet. I think all the teams should get up there. It did pump me up, though, and I was in pretty much constant motion as we waited for the game to begin.

We did well in the first round, ending up ahead of NTID and CSUN. NTID made a lot of challenges in the second round, but we stayed far ahead. Going into the third round, they must have been scared, because they didn’t challenge anymore. Until we got to an entertainment question, which they challenged – so we challenged too, to keep ourselves ahead of them. The question was about the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, which took its title from a hit song from that movie. I gave the answer “Stayin’ Alive” and NTID said “Staying Alive” – well, the apostrophe was right for the song title, but the question was really about the movie, which used the G…so we went down 10, NTID went up 10, and I went into panic mode. They REALLY gave us a run for our money, and it all came down to the last question! Amazingly, we won by a scant two points…though I had done the math wrong on the scores, and I thought we lost! (By the way, in videos of the game, you can see everything I feel…my wife was cracking up after the fact because I have NO poker face.) Fortunately we came out ahead, and we got to give our coach his Gatorade bath. (The story there is that two years ago, he said he’d never had one, so we gave him one. But then he said the one little bottle wasn’t enough…so this time we used two big bottles!)

On Friday we had to be up bright and early for the Gallaudet breakfast. Having gone to sleep at 3, it was a miracle that I made it at 7, but I did. Later in the day, we had a celebratory dinner at the Melting Pot. It was kind of awkward because our coach wasn’t there, but it was fun, and my wife got to come! Well, it was fun until the end of the cheese course, anyway…you know how they warn you that the cheese at the bottom of the bowl is hottest? I was having some spinach and artichoke cheese, for which I’d leaned partway across the table, and just as I got it back to my mouth, it fell. Into my cleavage. I hollered and frantically unrolled my napkin, and managed to get it off, but not before it gave me a second degree burn. I scared everybody at the table, but fortunately I was able to see the humor in being badly burned by CHEESE, so I was laughing too and they knew I was all right. It hurt like crazy though! The rest of the night was rather subdued as a result, and my wife says we can’t go back to the Melting Pot unless I wear battle armor! (I did watch the whole Miss Deaf America pagenant, though, mostly snarking along with our coach’s high school age daughter. “Oh my god, what is she wearing?!”)

The next day, Saturday, my burn was feeling better, and we finished everything up and drove home. I slept the ENTIRE way…woke up once for 10 seconds in Baltimore, and then not again until Tyson’s Corner! Then when we got home around 6, I slept for three more hours. When I woke up, I had some of my mother-in-law’s homemade banana pudding for dinner, and that was the end of my trip home.

This morning we went to Amphora so I could have one last serving of eggs and hash browns, and then it was off to the airport. I blew my last thirty American dollars on a couple of glasses of wine, some cheese, and nuts. And then I boarded the plane! I had upgraded to Economy Plus, so I was nice and comfortable. I might even do it for the final leg home on August 5th.

You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
Stranger: Your eyes can be so cruel, just as I can be so cruel!
You: Jareth??
You: Give me back Toby!!
Stranger: :O
Stranger: !

You: For my kingdom is as strong as yours
Stranger: You are good
You:
Stranger: You get 50 cool points
You: woot!
Stranger: =D!
You: Do I get more if I can watch the whole movie without looking at David Bowie’s package?
Stranger: OH MAN
Stranger: I can’t focus on anything else >.>
Stranger: I give you props if you can
Stranger: lol
You: So there seems to be a 50/50 split from what I have seen
You: do you like the ballroom scene, or hate it?
You: when Sarah eats the peach and falls asleep
Stranger: I don
Stranger: I don’t mind it*
Stranger: do you hate ite?
Stranger: it*
You: I used to, but now I don’t mind it!
You: Who’s your favorite character?
Stranger: Bowie all the way lol
You: yessssss
Stranger: I would totally be his queen
Stranger: god knows i’m obsessed with him O_O
Stranger: I don’t know how she turned down that offer
You: I don’t know how she ever made it out of the junkyard
You: Look, you’re home! NOT
Stranger: I would of never noticed lol
You: I think my favorite character is the old man’s hat bird
Stranger: LOL, it looks silly
You: “ugh…it’s so stimulating being your HAT.”
Stranger: the only scene that creeps me out is the one with those crazy bird things
Stranger: whatever they are
You: the fireys? where they take off their heads?
Stranger: taking off their heads and shit
Stranger: lol yeah
You: hey! her head don’t come off!
You: the lady who choreographed that scene went on to be in Star Trek: next generation
Stranger:
Stranger: really?
You: yup, Dr. Crusher
Stranger: wow, thweet
Stranger: well, i’m off to meet more people! Yew are cool!♥
Your conversational partner has disconnected.