Thanksgiving at home
I know this happened a while ago, but I've collected some random thoughts from my trip home for Thanksgiving. Please allow me to regurgitate them here:
Sunday was my trip home. My parents like to know when I leave Chicago so that they can plan on when they need to start worrying about me dying in a horrible car crash. The flip-side of this is having my parents try to figure out how fast I was going to get home at the time I did. This was the case Sunday, as both my parents looked at a clock when I said hello to them. And then I got the disapproving "you were going too fast" look. There's no pleasing them.
Not even with a Packers win. I watched the Packers/Texans game with them Sunday night, and the intensity in the room is so thick you could cut it out of the air and use it as a paperweight. Whenever the team the Packers are playing has the ball... and it looks like they might get some yards, I can see my dad tense up. He's seated in his recliner, with his feet up, and I can watch his feet lift from the footrest as his whole body tenses. And my mother yells at the TV and curses like a sailor (a funny visual to anyone who's ever met her, but Nate can confirm its truth). When I still lived at home, I found it hard to watch close games with my parents: I would leave the room. Perhaps this is one of the reasons, as Laura knows, that I would rather my Packers win every game by fifty or more points... with the game pretty much decided by the end of the first half. Boring games for you, but I'll take the win thank you.

This is a fantastic lead-in to my DREAM that night. I dreamed that I was selling food at Lambeau Field. In one of the concession stands. That was basically it. Aren't you glad I shared it? No? Didn't think so.

Monday I went to GR with my folks. The reason we went to GR was to get me an early Christmas gift! Hooray! So we went to Best Buy... and the goal was to get me a CD changer for my car (as the CD player was basically working less each day). They had a JVC 12 (twelve!) disc changer on sale for like half-off. And that's what we did.
While they were installing the changer, my parents decided to take me clothes shopping. My mom, for some reason, totally loves buying me clothes. I find it pretty crap to buy clothes at the mall, because mall people are assholes. They either look at you like you're not good enough to shop at their store OR like "thank God you came in today, you tragic tragic boy. I can save you!". Mall people are assholes.
Then we went to the Olive Garden. I haven't been to an Olive Garden since, probably, since I graduated from Albion. Oh oh OH do I love the Olive Garden!
When I got home, my sister and I watched How Clean is Your House? They were showing the bedroom of a woman (the mother of the household), and on one of her pillows was a red stain. I deep, red, big stain. They showed her menstruation pillow. I didn't know that was even something that existed... but it does. And why wouldn't this woman, oh I don't know, CLEAN THE FUCKING PILLOW?! I don't know, maybe put it in water... or throw it away. Yeah... totally gross.

Let's talk about something else right now. There's an article in TIME magazine called "Closing the Gap". It's about middle-class African-American students who are statistically doing worse in school than the white students. The article actually speaks a little about mah boy Obama... he thinks that some black students might still be worried about looking or acting "white" by doing well in school. The article also says that, when a white child isn't doing well, the parents try to make the system work for them... whereas when a black child isn't doing well, the parents are more likely to see the problem is that the teachers are racially biased. Interesting... and something for the other blog.

Speaking of TIME, there's another article I read called "Cosmic Conundrum". This article explores a question that has bounced around my head for years: Why is the universe so remarkably hospitable to life? The Christians believe in something called the Anthropic Principle--the Cosmos is perfectly tuned to us--because it logically brings us to the whole Intelligent-Design movement... the watch-maker, etc. Moving on... the article talked about the possibilities of multiple universes on parallel spheres of existence, and it even gives a few possibilities as to how it might be possible to have multiple universes. Let's explore them, shall we? 1) Black holes: Density and gravity become infinitely great within a black hole. This could possibly be enough to rip a hole in the very fabric of space-time. If space-time is ripped, it might possibly create a new universe expanding out in a imperceptible direction from the black hole in our universe. And, with multiple black holes creating multiple universes... at least one universe should be inhabitable. 2) Inflation theory: During the Big Bang, the universe expanded at a speed far greater than the speed of light. Our universe obviously slowed down rapidly to allow all this *points* to happen. It might be possible that our universe took some kind of side-track, or off-ramp, and that there is still something out there moving at super-high speeds, leaving other universes in its wake. 3) String (or M) Theory. Oh... back in the day when I was way into Physics, String theory was the newest, hottest, most interesting thing out there. It sounds like little else has been decided since I first heard about it (besides the sparsely used name change). It has been a while since I read/did anything involving physics, so I hope you'll forgive me if my recollection isn't 100% accurate, but this is what I know about String Theory. Some physicists believe that all matter, even atomic matter and sub-atomic particles like leptons, baryons, and mesons (btw, quarks are my favorite sub-atomic particles... with names like up, down, top, bottom, strange, and charm how could they not be?! Plus, quark is a nonsense word made up by James Joyce in Finnegan's Wake. Strange but true) are made up of strings and not the 'balls' of matter (atoms) we all studied in high school chemistry. The string theory came about to explain why some light can act both like a beam and a wave. Now, from what I understand, scientists believe that the motion of these strings are difficult to mathematically predict because the strings exist in up to ten dimensions of space. Yes, ten dimensions. That was when I was introduced to some story where a square is looking down on a line and the line can't understand how the square exists... but to the square, 2 dimensions is normal and the highest level of being; meanwhile, a cube is watching the square. And so on. Along those same lines, it has often been postulated that time is the fourth or fifth dimension. So there might exist a being who can see all of time from above like we see 2 dimensional figures (I believe one of Vonnegut's books has this in it [Slaughterhouse-Five?]). With all these extra dimensions, there could exist extra universes within a sub-atomic particle in our own universe. A group of scientists actually did the calculation and, if string theory is correct, then the number of universes that could exist due to string theory is a HUNDRED BILLION BILLION times the number of ATOMS in OUR UNIVERSE. No matter how many times I think about it, I can't wrap my mind around that number.
Regardless of the universes that might exist, we focus on our own to try to figure out why we exist here now. In 1999, scientist Martin Rees claimed that just "six numbers" make life on earth possible (we're talking the gravity, temperature, oxygen content in the atmosphere, etc). The anthropic principle is forcing scientists to figure out if there is anything special about the numbers that allow us to exist. If there is something special, ordered, or recognizable about the calculations to our universe and our existence... it just might prove that we were intelligently designed. Imagine what that would do for the world. Great things?... terrible things?... at least it would be unification of the entire world's population in one thought: At one time, something created us. We weren't a cosmic accident. Throughout history, great things have been discovered while trying to figure out God's plan/design. Perhaps this could be another in that list. Or we could still be all alone... in the chaos that is existence.
No segue
Wednesday Night, I went out to Jeph's with my sister. Rhea and Jean (read: Jean and Rhea) were already there, looking as lovely as ever. They forced me to watch Desperate Housewives, however... which was not lovely of them. But I made it through the show and all it's backstabbing and cross-plotting. Hooray for me! Then we played a home-made version of Scattergories. It's kind of more fun to just make-up the catergories than it is to actually play the real game. And then we asked each other questions... and I think Jeph thought I was an idiot. But that's just the projection of my insecurities. Hey... I sound like a woman!

Thanksgiving: I didn't watch all of the Colts/Lions game because it was almost as painful as watching the Colts/Packers game, except I didn't think the Lions stood much of a chance after about fifteen minutes. Ouch. And Peyton Manning is good. And that's all I'm saying about that.
The Bears/Cowboys was some of the worst displays of offense I've seen from the NFL in a very very long time. Julius Jones (who went to a fine non-arrogant institution) was the best offensive player on the field in that game, and he basically won the game for the Cowboys by himself. That game sucked.
Then was the Thanksgiving feast. The food was good... but I noticed that I can't eat as much as I used to. I think that's probably a good thing... but it's weird to notice that you're different on the inside. You... are different... on the inside. That's a trippy thing to notice. You can notice when you change on the outside... or even when you change idealistically or you change the way you view something, you know that you're changing. But to actually notice you're internally different, it's like... well... it's like puberty.
Speaking of, I finally saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban over Thanksgiving. Yes, it seems like every single character in the movies have hit puberty since the last one (I've got my eye on a certain Ms. Grainger... intelligence is sexy). I watched it with my folks, who haven't read the books, and I was a little upset by how much important, or interesting information, I had to fill them in on because it was left out of the movie. I think this one, more than the last two, left out important information. However, since it was my favorite book of the three that have been made into movies, it's probably my favorite movie of the three. And Hermione is kinda hot. And that's gross for me to say.

Friday, I drove back to Chicago. What made it bearable was the fact that I can put the entire magazine of 12-discs in my car CD changer on random. That's a random CD and a random song... and that's freakin' awesome, because I never know what's coming... but I know it's going to be five shades of awesome. What made the drive unbearable was how much I was worrying about Conservatory letter that was waiting for me in Chicago. But we all know how that ended... so happy day!