What's in a Name?

An excerpt from the book I just finished....

"Varmint!" he would call from his bedroom, "Get in here, Varmint."
And I would drop whatever I was doing - which usually involved a hairbrush for one reason or another - and walk into his room, feigning an air of disinterest, but secretly thrilled.
"Yeah, what do you want?" I would say, in as superior a tone as I could muster.
My brother never called me by my actual name. He was seven when I was born, and from this moment on he called me Varmint. Because I idolized him in the fashion that younger brothers will idolize older brothers, no matter how freakish and defective they might be, I loved the name. When I asked him once, "What is Varmint?" he said, "A varmint is a small, furry animal."

This struck a cord with me, I guess it might start to explain why for most of my life I was known around the house as "boob". And just to be certain, the rule still goes that anyone outside of my family calling me this is open to having me metro-sexually kick their ass. Also, yes, I must admit that I do really like the name.

As Fate Would Have It...

I was finally able to finalize where I will be living down near Portland for the next month or so. Yes, I have to move out on Friday; yes I just finalized it on Wednesday...yes that is exactly like me. I'll be living in Wilsonville. Duh...Duh....DUUUUUUHHHHHH

Wilsonville

I traveled to Wilsonville, OR last week. You might begin to notice that I describe many things as "eerie", perhaps I am easily spooked, or perhaps I have a keen nose for things that do not seem right. Perhaps those are both the same thing. Regardless, Wilsonville was eerie. I was hungry and stopped by a Mcdonald's as I came into town. Nothing was strange about the restaurant itself but it was in a large strip mall with stores and other restaurants. There was not only this strip mall, but others everywhere I could see. Not eerie in itself but everything was brand new. Ok, fine. I drove around town trying to find the company, I for some reason had only written down the address and not the directions. I stopped for directions at the local post office, which was also brand new. I also drove by the police station which was a storefront in yet another strip mall, as if you could buy a cop if you needed one. (of course in this town you wouldn't need one...ever) I found the company and their building was brand new, and smelled like fresh carpet. Hmm, starting to get eerie. I found a different way to the interstate, passing yet again strip malls with new stores and brand new landscaping. This is when the eerie-ness of the place struck me, it was as if the entire town had the new-car smell. I could picture someone driving down I-5 for a weeks vacation in california and driving by nothing but fields, and driving north again to pass a fully developed community of happy consumers. I had visions of the Truman Show and Stepford Wives, and any other movie that has the same themes and feelings as the Truman Show and Stepford Wives. I don't want that job.

Dating Site

A friend of mine and I have come up with a flawless business model. We are going to make a dating site based on orphans. The main component is that many people hope their mate values their family...however, if that mate is not from the same region of the country or even the same country you can't both live near your family. (if that is important to you) Thus, marry an orphan. They will greatly value family, but the only family they have will be yours...problem solved. Also there is a great abundance of tag lines including those that feed off avoiding in-law conflict. I am currently seeking names for this service and am open to any suggestions. I'll keep you posted on the progress.

A Long Drive

It turns out that this is a long way to drive, but also very beautiful for the most part. Also I discovered that I-94 is slightly confusing going north out of Chicago, and it might not be wise to be talking on the phone while you transverse it. But I guess seeing 1.5-2 hours more of the country on an already 33 hour drive is not too bad...besides, southern Wisconsin is amazing, I didn't know that cheese actually grew on trees! I don't have a whole lot to report about that drive, the landscape is hard to describe and all at once amazing and depressing. Here are a couple of points.

I found myself very disappointed that the Twin Cities in Minnesota are not in fact twins. As a child I always pictured them as standing just across a river from each other and having identical skylines. This is not so. They are close to 10 miles apart and look very different. I guess that I would have assumed this in my aged wisdom, but I still found it very disappointing. The first night I stayed just past Minneapolis. The second day I drove almost exactly 1000 miles to Butte, Montana. I like to pronounce this (Boot-TAY), in actuality I have no idea how it is truly pronounced. You drive through a mountain range and then come out the back side and look down across the valley and Butte. It was beautiful, just like all those scenes in movies where the characters park and look "down at the stars", unfortunately I was not driving a classic yellow Cadillac or making out with some hot actress. It looked like this:



The next day I drove through the rest of Montana. I was driving through the mountains when I noticed that what I thought to be fog actually smelled like everyone in the state was burning their leaves and a few of them were burning their saunas. I realized that there must be a very large forest fire close to were I was, it made me sad but smelled delicious so I drove with my windows down for a while.

Idaho sucks. The mountains are nice but I was sick of driving in mountains and the construction didn't help matters at all. One thing of note was a small town I stopped in to get gas, the perfect picture of a small mountain town that hasn't progressed past the 30's, I think they still have gun fights in the streets.

Eastern Washington is no treat either, the only cool things were the dust devils that I saw all over the place and the fields that looked like rivers when the wind blew. The worst part was when I got within 15 miles of my destination but had timed it so that it happened at 4:30 Seattle time. Thus, with my bladder about to rupture it took 2 hours to go the final 15 miles.

Two things I forgot to mention and don't feel like trying to fit them in above. The gas station I stopped at in Butte was connected to a casino and the store was a small cash register nestled in among a vast liquor store, seemed funny to me. The second thing is I saw buffalo. I was driving past a large canyon and where it met the road there was a small hill. On this hill and facing the road was a huge buffalo standing there very stoic as though he were the guard who protected the door to the canyon. I thought it had to be fake...it wasn't. The thrill of seeing buffalo was later ruined by seeing a whole herd fenced in and sitting down to tea.