there is no time for klax

yes. i have finally joined you all in the 1990's. i bought my first computer! i broke down and went for it. i have a caveman mentality when it comes to technology. i have your grandma's mentality. i am caveman grandma (another great idea for a blog alterego). but lately i have been on the up and up. i am one of you young folks now. next thing you know i will be wearing shortpants and dancing on sunday. chewing gum. sending electronic mail. staying up past 7:30 pm. i got a free ipod and printer with my adorable little macbook as well, which made it all the more lucrative. i am overly excited considering i work with a much nicer mac at work, but this one is MINE. i have to get internet, as i have been borrowing someone's neighborhood connection and it is annoyingly unreliable. i pound my caveman club, why this no work? once i break down and shell out the money for the real deal, and once the professor returns from whence he came, i will be an internet fool. i'll show you all.

speaking of expensive electronics, my sega and nintendo both konked out this week. the sega has been pretty far from functional for a long time, but the nintendo really hurt. no more lazy-man's monopoly (the nintendo did all of the work, all you had to do was hit the a button and reap the rewards. sigh. no more.) also, my microwave went to cook frozen dinners in the sky. with all of these events coinciding with the introduction of my new compubot and company, i have to wonder... did these old friends feel neglected? a sad thought. i am trying to see how long i can go without buying a new microwave, it seems like those things should be free by now. i didn't realize how much i used that old guy until he was gone. and it is actually cheaper for me to buy a used playstation than a used sega. how can this be? rest in peace, friends.

my man leaves soon to go back to new orleans, but before that we have to make a trip back to the midwest for his friends' wedding. the professor will change out of his everyday tuxedo and don a far less fancy wedding tuxedo. i will wear my dressy ninja mask, hurl bejeweled ninja stars, casually refrain from killing guests. we will both be able to see some family and friends while home, so who can complain? oh wait, freaking expensive plane tickets will be bandied about by my ass kicking. this has been an expensive month. you'd think i made more than i do the way i am tossing money about. hey everybody! look at all these one dollar bills, i've got so many i can't even hold them all! woooo! mayhaps i shall buy more things with all of these dollars. mayhaps.

trains, trains, and trainomobiles

a rare photo of professor romance and the casual ninja, boarding the even more rare ninja train.

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hello friends. what adventures were had! unfortunately our train was cancelled due to flooding in the northeast. this was very upsetting as we received the phone call a mere 2 hours before our departure. it really was a sad scene. both of us sitting there with our bags all packed, our shoes tied tight. the house all ready with timers on the lights and such. i was wearing my traveling clothes, you know, pill box hat and matching miniature poodle for my lap. i get the call and the woman tells me the train is cancelled. i ask what our options are and she tells me to call the airlines. maybe that isn't funny to anyone else, but does it seems like a bad sign that a company is so indifferent to receiving your business that they send you to someone else as the first option? we decided to reschedule to the next available train, which wasn't for another 3 days. this may not sound like much, but once you're all packed up and in a traveling mindset, it is hard to turn it off. i mean, my tolietries were all crammed into their little zipup case and everything. i couldn't bring myself to unpack so i had to deal with that everytime i wanted to brush my teeth. we decided to bump our return trip by a few days as well or we would have only spent a day or so in st louis before returning. it ended up being a very nice few days, as i had already taken off work and we had to eat out a lot because the fridge was vacation-empty. by the time the three days were up, it was sort of hard to leave. vacationing in my house was more enjoyable than the idea of leaving. the train experience was rather odd, but overall enjoyable. almost every employee we interacted with seemed to need instruction on how things worked, which was especially awkward as neither of us had ever ridden the rails and these people were running them. the ticket lady told me i had only purchased tickets for one person. "then why are there two names listed on the screen?" we ask. i point out that the roomettes accommodate two, she pretends to do us a favor by pressing the print button and confiding that she had "corrected" our mistake. the roomettes are very snug. too small to really be able to take a picture that would show more than individual elements. when we entered ours, my traveling companion of passion pondered if the small and oddly shaped end table below the drop-down sink was a toilet. i laughed and said of course not. i was wrong. a toilet in a closet-sized room for two. delightful! the train was empty enough on that leg of the trip that we were given a sleeping room and a sitting room across the hall. we were kings among men! our lengthy layover in chicago meant we could walk around and look at things, eat a deep dish pizza pie and feel like we had a day's vacation.


weird metal jellybean-looking sculpture in chicago's millenium park
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interior shot of jellybean. can you find us?
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we also got to hang in the swanky "metropolitan lounge" at the station. swanky meaning we got free soda drinks and mini-muffins. from there we had coach seating (or "tuberculosis seating" as it turned out) and it was far less glamorous. there were no mini muffins to be had. aside from the hacking coughs of our cohorts in coach, we were not interacted with on this train. no one ever checked our tickets so theoretically we could have snuck into a roommette and stayed on until california, but we declined. at one point, after sitting on the track without moving for an hour, i heard a guy behind me calling the 1-800 number as he hoped to get information on what was going on. i have been spoiled by air travel where, for better or worse, they explain every moment of turbulence or delay and the presentations are somewhat staged and regulated. when someone finally came back to respond to my call button, he sort of yelled in the direction of our cab: yeah, i guess a freight train broke down across the track in front of us, um, yeah. we watch in the distance as the train is pushed out of the way and he tells us there is no way of knowing when it will be pushed out of the way. yeah!

in st louis we saw some of the professor's kin (our main purpose for travel), watched fireworks from a back porch on the fourth, saw learning center compatriot c-dogg and company for an evening out, went up in the arch (my first time), and went on a tour of the budweiser factory.


the best part of the tour
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on the way back home we had constant delays. we lost our layover in chicago as the train was 4 and a half hours late leaving st louis. the coach cab smelled like stomach-turning methane or sewer gas was periodically leaking into our cab from the vents. (insert joke here.) this forced our exploration of the train and we discovered the viewing lounge. little mini couches and swivel chairs facing giant walls of windows. it was lovely. the train is a great way to travel despite of or because of some of its quirks. you can't enjoy the scenery as well if you are driving the interstate or fumbling with a map. there is much more room and freedom than a plane and it is kind of like a sleepover adventure sleeping on the little foldout beds. and brushing your teeth in a sink that folds out of the wall (and must be carefully folded back to drain it's watery contents.) the top bunk has a seatbelt-like harness to keep you from rolling out of bed and breaking your neck. fun! the most exciting anecdote occured while eating dinner on our final leg of the journey, i spotted someone i thought looked very much like courtney love. i didn't say anything to the professor, until later when he pointed out someone who looked EXACTLY like jake "the snake" roberts. it was uncanny. and guess what folks, THEY WERE SITTING TOGETHER. were they traveling partners? lovers on the look-alike circuit? the real deal? the world may never know.