Unintentional Mallrats

After my usual morning routine of showering, breakfast, and a little web surfing and email, I went into work. Jason was [unexpectedly] there when I arrived. We spent the morning tinkering with that mount we've been building. With the Lowell asteroid ephemeris service still down we did nothing but manual labor on the mount. As lunch time rolled around, we decided to make a run to the mall for supplies and to shop for Kevin's groceries. Dr. Leake shuttled us out there and Dr. Rumstay came along. We all had lunch at a place similar to Red Robin back home called Ruby Tuesday's. It was a good lunch where I weirded out the waiter due to my order: a veggie burger plus bacon. That always get's 'em. After a great brownie-type dessert, Jason and I set out on our quest for supplies.

With a few unscheduled mall stops and a few introductions to people to which I previosly wasn't aquainted (Jason works in the mall and knows a lot of them) we both bought a CD then headed over to Home Depot for our supples. Let me just take a minute to contemplate about our society. Let me start by asking, "How friggin' waistful can we be?!" A store like Home Depot is actually an amazing example of how material and comsumption-happy our society really is. When you can stroll past bins full of screws of every shape and size and can walk down a row with drills that can do everything from mount jewelery to help construct a 40-story skyscraper, something's terribly wrong. Where's the need? No one can look me in the eyes and tell me that buildings that reach forty undivided feet in the air and could cover a football field or two that are filled from floor to ceiling with plastic, glass, and metal products and supplies is necessary. I suppose I'm not really sickened by it really but am astounded. I have a hard time imagining what would drive the need for a store that could basically hold its entire town population inside it let alone that provides material enough for each family member (pets included) of that town to build a comfortable, 2,000 ft2 home. What's going to happen when too many of these stores pop up in one particular area? You may as well build walls and a ceiling around the entire town so you can truly have a store that has everything.

Enough of that from me. Jason and I were stuck at the mall for longer than we wished because I relied on VSU's wonderful shuttle bus system. Maybe I read the schedule wrong but I swore it went out to the mall on Thursdays. At any rate, we got back because of a kind co-worker of his and finished our work on the camera/spectrometer mount. There only remains the actual testing and usage of the project. Without may clear skies, that could be interesting. Jason and Amanda then topped off my evening by inviting me over for dinner and a movie. Their friend Gordon also joined us and Jason subjected/introduced him to his recent obsession: So I Married an Ax Murderer. I swear that man has done nothing but watch that movie for the last week. At any rate, before evening's end the conversation shifted to (my favorite!) geology and the Solar System. Jason and I both dazzled and informed Gordon about much of the fantastic features of our solar neighborhood and the geologic situation that exists back home in the Pacific Northwest.

So after a great and fulfilling day I must say that I'm still happy here. I also bought another Harry Connick Jr. CD today that I've been meaning to purchase. Blue Light Red Light is from Harry's original big band days and is a really kickin' album. Great stuff that makes me want to do nothing but sing and play really high and screaming trumpet. What am I saying? I still want to be an astronaut.

Today, rather than a picture-perfect sunset, I provide you with an artificial and unromantic image I created while dabbling with the features of the computer animation program I use.

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Thu. June 24, 1999

Unintentional Mallrats

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