Cannibal?

I'd play those odds!

44%

Link found via PopCandy.

My day off

So to celebrate the greatness of Martin Luther King Jr. day, I took off with my friend Jenny and went to Caprock Canyon state park kinda up near Amarillo. It turned out to be quite the adventure...

First there was the boar. That's right, a boar! Who sees road kill boar while driving around west Texas? And who stops, turns around, and takes a picture of it? Me, that's who. At first I thought it might be a dog, or a monster armadillo. Nope, just a giant, dead boar. Weird.

Then we got to Caprock Canyon. This place was sweet - especially for Texas. It looked a lot like Moab, UT. Red cliffs, scrub vegetation, actual hills. For being in the middle of Texas, totally unexpected. Did some hiking, and saw some dirty buffalo. For those unfamiliar - I hate buffalo. I'm totally sympathetic with the buffalo hunters of the 1800s that almost wiped them out. Luckily, these buffalo were pretty tame.






Also, on both the way in and out we visited the metropolis of Turkey, TX. Grabbed the picture above while 'downtown.' Turkey was a pretty sweet town. As in, 'Fun to visit for about 3 minutes.' But, while filling up my gas tank there I almost saw these guys drop some big metal thang off the roof. I actually sat at the gas station for a few minutes watching them. Yes, I am white trash.

So I get this email...

So I got this email at school. It had this link, which I find incredibly disturbing. My questions are
1) How wide spread is this? Does it occur in other states? Does it occur in American Congress?
2) Wouldn't it be easy to install finger print verification scanners in the desks? The things run $80 bucks at Best Buy - you'd think they could find a couple grand somewhere to do this, hook them up so they have to put their print down before a vote - which would eliminate the fraud.
3) Shouldn't we all be a little more involved in what our representatives are voting for? Especially with Congress, who gets elected every 2 years - if they don't vote the way we want, let's vote them out!

If you've got an hour to kill

If you've got an hour to kill, I highly recommend this not-quite-a-profile on Pete Carroll, the head coach of the USC football team.

Rocket Stove

I had never heard of a rocket stove before, but this is pretty dang cool. They were/are apparently being introduced in Rwanda and other wretchedly poor places as a more effective means of cooking food. I think it would be nice to have at a cabin in the woods.
Rocket Stove demonstration.

In case you were wondering

I am now back in Lubbock. I got my grades for last semester, and let's just say that I need to do better. I'm not flunking out, but I'm certainly not in the run for 'Top of the Class' either.

However, some of you may have thought in looking at that picture of Tim and myself that I posted a few days ago that I had put on some weight. After going to the gym today and weighing myself, I can verify that, indeed, I put on some weight. 15 pounds. In 2 1/2 weeks I put on 15 pounds. Apparently eating out twice a day, visiting the cookie shop twice a week, and not working out (or working period?) makes you fat. Weird.

The Coastal Empire

So tomorrow I fly back to Lubbock to begin the new semester. So long Savannah.
This part of the country calls itself The Coastal Empire. Seems kinda pretentious, but whatever.

So this morning I went to 2 places I absolutely recommend for anyone visiting Savannah. The first place is The Atlantic Ocean at dawn. Watching the sunrise over the Atlantic isn't quite as convenient as watching the sunset over the Pacific, but the feeling of seeing the sun in a blue sky while enduring the cold morning breeze was still incredible.









The 2nd place was Bonaventure Cemetery. This cemetery was made famous by the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which I haven't seen yet, but I am reading the book. What I found amazing about this cemetery is that it feels like a real cemetery, it has an old world feel to it - and unlike modern cemeteries they can't just drive a lawnmower about to clean it up. I went near dawn, and it was empty, but I think going at dusk would be creepy beyond belief.

When I first got to Savannah I was a little frustrated to be here - but the longer I'm here the more I keep finding to do. Maybe the amount of things one finds to do in a place is directly tied to A) How much time they have to find the things to do and B) Effort they put forth to find things to do. If I put forth a little more time and effort in Lubbock, maybe there won't be tons of outdoorsy stuff to do, but I could find more to do than I have.

Savannah and Raleigh

The past week or two I've actually come to really like Savannah. What's weird about Savannah is that there are tons of little shops in the downtown area, but they all close about 5 or so. So if you're driving around downtown at night, it seems dead, but really, there's quite a bit downtown. I've taken some evening strolls around, and I really like it here. If I were going to live permanently in Savannah I'd probably have to get a sea kayak and a boat...
Here's a little view of what downtown Savannah looks like at night.

Yesterday after my last day of work I drove up to Raleigh, NC., to visit my friend Tim. It was really nice to visit him and see Raleigh - a delightful town.

Paula Deen?

I don't know who Paula Deen is, but people keep asking me about her restaurant. (She's apparently on Food Network). I haven't eaten there because I choose not to wake up at the crack of dawn to stand in line to eat at an expensive restaurant alone - weird, I know. But it looks classy.

Also, if it's raining in Georgia, I promise it's better to just wait it out rather than running for it.


As for my New Years Eve, I went down to Jacksonville to an institute party I had heard about. It was about what I was expecting, but I met some people and it was nice to be doing something for the night rather than just sitting about the hotel room.