Daytona is more than a race site. I assume.

This weekend, my adventures took me to Daytona for an over-night stay at the home of one my rocket scientist friends. I know that sounds impressive, but they are literally everywhere in Daytona. They're like kudzu there.

Thanks to Orlando traffic, we didn't arrive until 7 in the evening. Honestly, I should have known better than to plan to drive one of the worst sections of I-4 between 4 and 6 on a Friday evening. In the end, my compatriots and I stayed in, ate pizza, drank beer, and played games, one of which involved shaking our heads really fast and taking pictures. Like so:




Not one of my more attractive moments, I'll admit, but this picture provided many laughs. We also played Charades, which is a low-cost form of fun and one that should really be employed more often. Charades is great! Are great? Eh.

In the morning we ate Denny's, where I was introduced to a monstrosity. I only had one bite, but I'm pretty sure I lost at least a year of my life. After consuming far more calories than are reasonable, I returned home, thereby completely eschewing anything that could be considered Daytona-specific fun. Aww, well, thems the breaks!

In unrelated news, I was reviewing some of my YouTube subscriptions last night, and I remembered this gem from a friend of mine, Michael McGuire. The audio tracking is a bit off, but that's him, folks. I've heard it with mine own ears. How this failed to get him a part on Glee I will never understand.

In lieu of a creative post, I am copying and pasting an article from Washington Post

If you want to quibble, the following should probably be on my "Funny Things" page, but I found this so amusing when I read it this morning that I decided to post it here. It comes from the Washington Post, as I said, and was such a well-written criticism of Facebook that I also posted the link on Facebook. Enjoy!

Gene Weingarten: I hate Facebook sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much. . .

By Gene Weingarten
Sunday, Sep 26, 2010
Critics contend I am unfair to Facebook merely because I have described it as an ocean of banalities shared among persons with lives so empty they echo. I defend my thesis but admit my evidence has been unscientific -- entirely anecdotal -- based on my occasional dips into this tepid, lifeless lagoon of dishwater-dull discourse.

But that has changed. I find that it is now possible to mathematically quantify the tedium, thanks to a new Web site. Openbook, at youropenbook.org, is a search engine for Facebook "status alerts" -- the prime way Facebookers communicate with their friends. With Openbook, it is now possible to search for a word or phrase and find out not only how often it has been used in status alerts, but also when and by whom.

The creators of this site intend it as a cautionary implement, to warn people that the social medium is not adequately protecting their privacy. But in the hands of an objective researcher such as myself, Openbook can be a valuable hermeneutic tool. Through it, one can analyze Facebook anthropologically.

I have done so and am here to make my report.

· When people find it necessary to inform their friends about how unbearably arid and stultifying their lives are -- which they do at a rate of roughly 2,000 status updates an hour -- the word they choose most often is "boring." They tend to spell it with extra o's or r's, for emphasis. If you check for "boooring" and then keep adding one o, you find at least one hit, until you get to 31 consecutive o's. When you try "borrrring" and keep adding r's, you get to 47. Just for the record, the person who, by this metric, suffers the most crippling ennui on the planet, boring with 51 r's, is Heather S. of Waterloo, Ontario.

· Over the course of 16 days, 130 people alerted their friends to the fact that they "have a pimple." The location of the blemish is usually specified, as is the size. The most frequent location is the forehead, followed closely by the earlobe and then the buttock, most often the left one. The most colorful size comparison was to a tomato, but the largest was "Jupiter." M. Mandel of New York named her pimple Steve. (She also is a fan of Justin Bieber AND the Jonas Brothers, and, under favorite books, notes: "I don't like readingg.")

· Literally thousands of people send out communiques describing their excretory imperatives. Frequently, these involve the phrase "have to go to the bathroom." It would be incorrect and unfair to conclude that all of the people using this phrase are vulgarians and/or boors. The rigorous researcher discovers, for example, John Paul Weisinger of Lufkin, Tex., wasn't discussing his own biology at all. He was merely sharing with his friends a joke he finds funny: "A pig walks into a bar and orders drink after drink after drink and never goes to the bathroom. The bartender asks, 'Don't you ever have to go to the bathroom?' and the pig replies, 'Nah, I go wee wee wee all the way home.'"

· It is possible to mathematically gauge the relative strength of people's love by observing the number of o's they use in the expression "so much." For example, Katherine Baker-Hernandez of Lakewood, Colo., loves her kitty more (57 o's) than Lorne D. Stevens of Detroit loves sour Jolly Ranchers. (10 o's.) There does not appear to be an upper limit to people's love.

· Facebook users may be bored, but, paradoxically, they also are easily amused. We know this, because they are always laughing out loud. LOLs occur with such frequency they are literally impossible to count: Dozens arrive every second. A subset of those laughers are simultaneously rolling on the floor -- but still in numbers too large to tally. It is only with a third winnowing -- those both rolling and laughing their behinds off -- that the numbers become manageable: 390 per day.

· In a five-day period, 266 people referenced the chief executive of the United States as President "Oboma." Sixty-seven others called him President "Obamma." Almost all of these people were making the point that he is a stupid incompetent.

What I Bought in Athens

Hatuhs gonna hate.

Journey to Gainesville (FL)

No, you are not experiencing déjà vu, dear reader, I have indeed visited two different Gainesvilles in the past week and a half. I drove many hours today, leaving Tennessee (and CST) at 8:00 a.m., arriving in Athens, GA for lunch with my friend Dot at 1:30 p.m., and finally coming to a stop for the night at the home of my eldest brother at 9:00 p.m. The road was ever so long, but I was kept entertained for 10+ hours by my trusty book on tape, The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan.

To any fans of the Percy Jackson series (I'm talking to you, Neville) I highly recommend this book. It is basically the same thing as that first series but with two main protagonists, who trade off the narration, and Egyptian mythology in lieu of Greek. Needless to say, it is delightful. If you haven't read the Percy Jackson books yet, read them too. Here is Neville's review of that series.

Anyway, I'm headed back home tomorrow and thus, will not be spending much time in this second Gainesville, but I wanted to update you on my journey, gentle reader. Hopefully tonight's post has introduced you to a few worthy distractions from the drudge of another work week. Cheers!

Mit Glitzer!

I found this puzzle in my friend Julie's living room. So we assembled it!




If we had named this puzzle, it would have been something along the lines of "Pretty Pink Princess Pony." (Alliteration!)

And if you were wondering if it has glitter, yes!

Washington, the District of Columbia

Hint: If you want to get to DC using a GPS, make sure you type in "District of Columbia" as the State. You would think "Washington", but that would be wrong.

Monday, the Boyfriend and I drove from Richmond, where we visited my sister, to the capital of our great nation to meet a friend for lunch. She is a grad student at George Washington AND works at the Japanese Embassy, which is pretty cool, no?

The plan was to meet her around DuPont Circle, where one can find many shops and eateries. Our trusty global positioning system got us there, but it failed to give me two vital pieces of guidance: how to navigate a multi-circle roundabout and how to find parking during one of the busiest times of day. There must have been a better option than the one on which we settled (paying $15 to park in a garage for 2 hours), but at least none of our luggage was stolen while we were eating lunch. Small blessings.

Lunch was at a Turkish tapas restaurant on P St., just off the Circle, called Ezme. I know, the words Turkish and tapas seem incongruous. Just think "small sharing plates." I got a dish I have been craving for two years, ever since I went to Turkey: Iskender.




This little beauty is a combination of lamb and veal covered in tomato sauce, sitting on a bed of bread cubes. The white stuff on the side is a Turkish yogurt that you mix in with the meat and tomato sauce. The bread soaks up all the deliciousness, thereby intensifying the flavors. Try it. Is good.

We were going to do some site-seeing* after lunch, but after driving approx. 24 hours over 5 days, would you really be in the mood to look at a giant phallic symbol? Well, maybe you would. We weren't. Plus all the traffic. Oy, what a headache.


*Autocorrect told me to spell this word "sightseeing." Google confirmed this, but I think it is dumb. You are seeing sites, as in "places." To say that you are seeing sights, as in "things you see," is redundant.

W&L Football

I'm in Winchester, TN today, visiting the Boyfriend. Around 11:30 this morning we headed up the mountain to Sewanee (University of the South), where the Washington and Lee Generals were taking on the Sewanee Tigers. We hit up the bar at the W&L Alumni tailgate (of course) before kick-off at 1.

I'm sorry to say the game wasn't terribly exciting because we were beating Sewanee so soundly. The score was 3-27 five minutes into the third quarter. And it was hot. So we trusted our Generals to finish the job and we went to the local soda fountain for Bloody Martys. A Bloody Marty, for those who think I just mistyped Bloody Mary, is a non-alcoholic beverage consisting of lemonade, grenadine, and possibility some other, currently secret, ingredient.

Also I bought some greeting cards. A good day, indeed!