This is my 100th post on here.

Eric is moving to San Francisco. I haven't seen the kid in a couple months, and in the past year or two haven't seen him very often at all, but there's something about his moving away I find quite depressing. First Dave, now Eric. I am now roommate free. Kate has pointed out that San Francisco is a great city to visit, and she's right. It's definitely a nicer visit than Kansas or Ohio, where I was thinking of moving a few years ago. Plus I have a few other friends who live in SF. Eric should like the weather out there, it's always slightly too cold.

I'm sampling the band These United States because they're linked from the Page France myspace page. I'm digging this song "Honor Among Thieves". Sadly, all their other songs on myspace are much softer. Not sure I'll get this album.

My desktop has caught some malware. When I open firefox it opens a large popup in IE advertising random software or software-related books on amazon. I was just searching for a flash tutorial on google, honest. And I downloaded a flash plugin without thinking about it much, maybe that was the problem. For now, I've routed IE through a fake proxy so that it can't connect, and disabled all my unknown firefox extensions. I'll reinstall the OS later when I have more time.

quote pending

Just spent a fun weekend in Woodstock, NY with my sister, cousins, their friends and Kate. We spent some time in the hot tub, sitting by the fire, and playing drinking games. The SUV I rented turned out to be totally unnecessary and pretty expensive, but that's alright. Also it turns out that it's impossible to rent an SUV that has 2 cigarette lighters. I wanted to run a gps device and my fm transmitter at the same time, but instead we had to swap the music in when we hit long stretches of highway.

I got pulled over by the police today for the first time ever. This was in dc. After dropping kate's things off at her house I was giving her a ride to her office and then I was going to go on to return the car at the airport. A cop pulled in behind us somewhere around Logan circle, and I watched her (it was a lady cop) in my rear view mirror. She drove up, looked at my license plate and then punch it into her little computer. (The rental car for some reason has georgia plates, so I thought this was the reason she thought we were suspicious.) She followed us though the circle, for 2 or 3 blocks, and just when I was discussing with Kate how you could tell whether the cops wanted you to pull over or not (because they routinely drive around with their overhead lights on), the cop lady beeped her siren at me and pulled me over.

Now, I'm not totally sure what happened. Maybe Kate has a better understanding of the events. I was busy focusing on not arguing and appearing compliant so that I don't get dragged out of my car and beaten.

Cop: I pulled you over because your tags are out of date, and you just ran a stop light.
me (surprised): Really?
(This was a real surprise because I noticed at the exact instant that the cop car pulled into the street behind me, and I usually pay attention to stop lights even when there isn't a cop behind me. But circles can be tricky so it's possible.)
Cop: Are you from around here?
me: Yeah, though I don't drive often.
Cop: Can I see your license and registration.

(I gave her my license and she took it back to her car. Kate and I did some fishing around in the glove compartment for any registration information but came up totally empty except for some insurance stuff that didn't really have account numbers or anything. Quality Alamo car rentals.)

Cop (hands me back my license): You know, if you don't feel comfortable driving in the city then you should let someone else drive.
me (very mildly): Well, I do feel pretty comfortable driving.
Cop: It's a rental car, right?
me: Yes.
Cop: (At this point she babbled for a good 30 seconds. It was something to the effect of: it turns out that the vehicle is registered, it just doesn't look that way from the stickers, and so she got mislead. Somehow I think she admitted to messing that up, but made it sound like it was my fault)
Cop: I'm going to let you off with a verbal warning. You need to stay alert and be careful when you drive.
me: Thank you. Okay, I will be careful.

When I got down to the airport and the car rentals, I told the guy that I got pulled over and that the cops said the stickers on the car are out of date. The guy said "No they aren't, come look." Sure enough, the sticker on the back says "10" for 2010.

Now the question of me allegedly running a stop light in logan circle. Kate (who was awake and sitting in the front with me) didn't see me run anything, I didn't see myself run anything. And we both knew there was a cop behind us (we were discussing it the whole time) so you'd think it'd occur to one of us if I ran a stop light. Also, Kate says that the cop said stop sign the first time, and then corrected herself and said stop light after I said "really?". It's a fishy story. I wonder if the dc cops know that it's okay to be in the intersection when it turns red, so long as you're already inside the intersection. I should have asked the lady cop what, exactly, her definition is of a "red" light. Now I'm imagining my future re-tellings of this story where I act much more manly or cunning. Perhaps lying about being an ignorant tourist, or pulling some macho "Woman, don't you realize you're about to try to give a ticket to a man!?! I'm an alpha male!"

(about Revenge of the Sith)
"What kills me is that Spielberg saw this movie and cried. He wept!! That means that Spielberg is either the biggest Star Wars nerd in the history of Star Wars nerds...or it means that he knows nothing about directing great movies and just gets lucky everytime out. Unless he cried at how inconsistent and unfulfilling it was."