Bloggers: a comparison

I'm Kirsten, from All About Me - And Then Some, and Jordon is super busy right now so he asked me to help keep his blog alive, so here I am. Today I wanted to do a comparison because I didn't know what else to blog about on someone else's personal blog.

Jordon: blogs about stuff
Kirsten: blogs about herself - and then some

Jordon: living the collegiate life
Kirsten: living in a cubicle

Jordon: lives in balmy Florida
Kirsten: lives in blistering Las Vegas

Jordon: is 21 and doesn't look like he has any wrinkles or gray hairs
Kirsten: has been 29 for seven years now and while she's avoided wrinkles so far, the gray hairs are creeping in

Jordon: knows html
Kirsten: knows html, more or less

Jordon: knows php
Kirsten: knows php when she sees it but doesn't quite know what to do with it

Jordon: is a coding maniac
Kirsten: sucks at all kinds of coding

Jordon: knows what algorithms are
Kirsten: barely has any rhythm

Jordon: listens to The Beetles
Kirsten: listens to angsty chick music

Jordon: will graduate college with a 4-year degree and some career direction
Kirsten: graduated with a 2-year degree in liberal arts and still has no direction

Jordon: went to Europe and was able to meet all sorts of people because of years of dedicated, self-motivated Esperanto studies
Kirsten: went to Europe and was not able to speak to anyone despite 6 years of French studies

Jordon: puts interesting links at the end of nearly every post
Kirsten: stayed up way too late and couldn't find anything link worthy, so is encouraging everyone to go to wikipedia and just keep clicking on "Random Article" until something interesting comes along

Get carded

As you may know, my parents have sold our house, and last weekend, I went there for the last time. When I wasn't attending the Red Bull Flugtag, I was in my room, going through all my things and deciding whether to pack them, sell them, or throw them out. One of the things I came across was a brochure called "Legal Guide for New Adults," produced by the state bar association. It consisted mainly of questions and answers such as (paraphrased):

Q: Why is the drinking age 21 and not 18?

A: The Florida Legislature has the power to set the drinking age, and that's what they've decided is appropriate.

In other words, the classic because-we-said-so argument with which we are all familiar. (For the real answer, read about the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984. The history of alcohol purchase age limits by state is also interesting.)

Anyway, Tuesday was my 21st birthday. After I wrote my birthday blog post, I continued studying until the exam (except for a brief study break at Taco Bell). I was gradually joined with other people in my class, and we all sort of ended up commiserating. That's always fun. The exam itself was pretty challenging, but I don't think it was harder than the last one, which I got a pretty good grade on, all things considered.

By the time I was done with my exam, it was already 9:30. Andy picked me up, and we went to Gainesville Ale House on Archer Road. Andrea met us there. I picked the place because it was one of the only restaurants in town I'd ever been to that was open after 11 PM (the others being the Original Pizza Palace and Chili's). Plus, there would be a wide variety of alcoholic drinks to choose from if I so desired.

I so desired. I needed to unwind after that exam. After much deliberation, I decided to get a whiskey and soda (Jack and Pepsi, to be exact). I almost thought the waitress wasn't going to card me, but she did. To eat, of course, I got a burger. Since this establishment was half-bar, they had a trivia contest going on, with the questions and answers being announced over the speakers. The three of us put our heads together and got most of the questions right, although we didn't actually participate.

Andrea had the audacity to ask the waitress whether I would get a free desert. She said I could get a free slice of ice cream cake and brought one out. The three of us enjoyed it together. Andy covered my part of the check since he owed me money (it's a good thing he remembered because I didn't). Then, Andy and I went back to our apartment, where Andy had decorated the living room with balloons and other birthday decorations as a surprise. We threw the balloons around for a little while. After midnight had passed, I started working on homework.

I report my music listening habits to last.fm because I enjoy seeing the statistics. Here are some more statistics for last.fm users: The Obscurometer tells you how obscure your musical tastes are compared to others'. Apparently, my obscurity level is 30.1%, and my musical tastes are more obscure than 27.9% of all users.

This article does a great job of explaining how The RIAA and MPAA Have Failed to Understand a Cultural Shift. Everyone who doesn't understand why the RIAA and MPAA's tactics are wrong should read it.

No direction home

South Florida is vast and crowded. For years and years, my parents have wanted to sell our house and move someplace quieter. A while back, for about a year, they had the house on the market, but no one bought it. They've spent a lot of time fixing things up and recently put it up for sale again. They gave me the news yesterday: there's an official buyer. We have to move out by July 29.

Well, it's more them, really. Since starting college, I've only spent about 20% of my time there. According to this year's census, I don't live there; I live here at my apartment in Gainesville. But I only intend to have this apartment for as long as I'm in college, and I've always considered my home in South Florida to be my permanent address. In my heart, I do live there, and I've already planned to go back at least a couple more times.

Since my parents have made their intentions known for so long, I've had a lot of time to come to terms with the move. Still, I can't help but feel a little sad that my permanent address will be no more.

We moved in on December 6, 1997. I was eight years old. We were only moving across town, and we were able to keep our phone number, but I was still pretty distraught. I had lived in our old house for my whole eight-year-old life, and it was everything I knew. My parents had taken my sister and me along on dozens or hundreds of "house hunting" trips. I remember seeing for the first time what would eventually be our new house. I remember seeing the old big-screen TV in the corner where we would later put our Christmas tree.

I remember us having a garage sale—the only garage sale I think we've ever had for as long as I've been alive. And I remember the last time I was in the old house, when it was completely empty. We had to get rid of our dog because our old house closed in October and we couldn't move in to the new one till December, and we would be living in a condo in the meantime. Also, at the new house there wasn't a fence around the backyard.

I'm going to miss that backyard. I was so excited to have a real pool, even though I take it for granted now. I remember jumping into it with my sister in February and then jumping right back out again. I remember my friends and I wandering around the backyard with our guitars, my sister supervising the photo shoot with a disposable camera I bought with some money I had somehow managed to scrounge up. I remember having birthday parties there. A pool party early on. Was that the one with pie fight? Well, whipped cream in pie tins. And later, the infamous birthday dance parties on the patio. I think we had them four years in a row.

I remember the band practices in the garage or sometimes in the living room, the Driveway-A-Thon, and our secret spot at a juncture of fences behind the house. I remember the lake across the street that's not actually a lake but part of a canal. I remember getting pushed into the lake, and I remember getting other people to run into the lake. I remember playing video games with the neighbor with the two-story house, and my other neighbors' mom leaving a pitcher of water on the front porch overnight to make it North Pole water.

I remember sitting at the old computer, my dad and I composing an e-mail to Geocities asking how to sign up for an account. I remember declaring my latest web site ready for the world on a Sunday. I remember being lighted by artificial light as I wrote a post for a camera. I remember the wall getting painted red and the computer moving to the opposite one.

Dishes broke. I dropped taco meat on the kitchen carpet. The tiles detached themselves from the living room floor; we moved out for a week. The house weathered more hurricanes than I can try to remember. Georges, Frances, Jeanne, Katrina, Wilma. My room was repainted. My sister's room was repainted. More carpets were replaced. Our next dog made that necessary.

But there's still a spot on the inside of the front door where I would place my greasy, pubescent nose as I tiptoed to look through the peephole. There are still lots of holes in my bedroom walls that my dad drilled so I could hang up random stuff. And there's still the sad-looking concrete lawn flamingo with rebar legs that we found on moving in and that I for some reason find irresistibly charming.

I remember packing up and leaving for vacations and being thrilled to come back. I'll miss the place.

The "someplace quieter" that my parents want to move to is the same general area I'm in now. But they still haven't found the right house. In the meantime, they'll be living with my grandmother in her house. And I'll be changing my address for everything.

A fake movie trailer: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. (Via waxy.org)

Another list: 7 Totally Awesome and Totally True Ways People Quit Their Jobs. (Via The Presurfer)

The Landa Kongreso: Sunday

This is the second post in a three-part series on my trip to the 58th annual National Congress of Esperanto-USA. Here's the previous installment in case you missed it. And for Andy's point of view on what happened the first day, read his post, "At the National Esperanto Convention (Part 1)."

On Sunday morning, Andy and I went with some of our cohorts to Caribou Coffee. I made sure to get back to the hotel in time to listen to a lecture by the eminent Esperantist Humphrey Tonkin, who talked about the need for Esperanto organizations to adapt to today's Internet-based society. Next, there was supposed to be a video chat with participants at the Russian Esperantists' Congress, which was going on in St. Petersburg at the same time. For whatever reason, they weren't able to get that going, but I managed to text Kate, who was at the Russian convention.

At the same time in another room, Andy gave a presentation about the different types of sounds in Esperanto and their representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Even though his lecture wasn't listed on the program, the room filled up. I was going back and forth, trying to see if they had gotten the video chat working yet. Andy didn't mind because what he was saying wasn't new to me. That's the kind of stuff we talk about in the living room on Thursday nights.

Next, it was getting to be lunchtime, so a bunch of people went to Chipotle, also a short walk away from the hotel. After that, I attended lectures about Esperanto-USA's website, how to lecture about Esperanto, and the World Esperanto Association's relationship with the United Nations. Those were all okay, but I was really looking forward to Darcy's talk about her experiences starting and running an Esperanto club at a university. I think her talk was better attended than most of the others. The main bits of advice that I took away were to emphasize to people that Esperanto is fun and to make all of the club meetings fun.

After that, there were some games going on. Some of us got wrapped up in a game that involved guessing words one letter at a time. That was fun, and it seemed like a good way to build vocabulary. (Maybe we can play it at our meetings next year.) While that was going on, the rest of the youths (and some of the semi-youths) decided to go to a nearby tapas bar called Jaleo, so Andy and I joined them. I think there were 18 of us in all, sitting at two long tables. I just ordered some gazpacho, which I hadn't had since I had first tried it in Spain last year. Ah, the memories...

After our early (or seemingly early) dinner, we went back to the hotel, and I sat in on a lecture about the 6th World Congress of Esperanto, which was held in Washington, DC, in 1910. (Its 100th anniversary was one of the factors in the decision to hold the national convention in the DC area this year.) The lecturer mainly showed contemporary newspaper articles, which described the events of each day of the congress in detail. More people were aware of Esperanto back then.

Next, there was some entertainment, including a much-hyped visit from a mysterious guest. The mysterious guest turned out to be one of the guys from the conference in drag lipsynching to Esperanto translations of "Material Girl" and "Dancing Queen." There were also more conventional performances of bluegrass and other folk-type music, mostly in Esperanto. I especially enjoyed a performance of "Here Comes the Sun" in Esperanto on the ukulele. In between performers, we watched Conlang, a humorous short film about a power struggle in a small club for lovers of constructed languages.

After that, it was pretty late, but I and the other young types decided to go out. Some of us wanted to go out for a bite, and some of us just wanted to go out for a bit. I was all for going to the diner that they had gone to the night before. Like everything else, it was a short walk away from the hotel. It was called the Tastee Diner, and it was definitely the dineriest diner I had ever been to. We had the same waitress, a young woman with a strong Russian accent, that they had been served by the night before. I got a patty melt and chili cheese fries, but it was a tough decision to make. I wanted everything.

Back at the hotel, I was able to sleep in a bed because some people had already left. I slept better than I had the night before, when I had slept on the floor.

Watch this really, really epic TV theme song medley. I've only seen a few of the shows, but I still thought it was well done. (Via waxy.org)

Some guy writes about why theatre was the most important class he ever took. (Via Lifehacker)

Graffiti that dares to be erased: "COME ON PAINT ME WHITE AGAIN." This really reminds me of my friend Brian. Brian, if you're reading this... sarcastic graffiti makes me think of you? (Via waxy.org)

Attack of the parasites!

A few months ago, my sooth-seeking friend Andy took in a stray cat. He named him Tucker and kept him in his bedroom in our apartment. I would go in once in a while and see Tucker there. He was affectionate but unfortunately never very healthy. After about a month, Andy and his vet decided to let Tucker go to the great scratching post in the sky.

Three weeks later, Andy and his friend Scott, who was visiting, discovered that Tucker had left something to remember him by: fleas.

They took swift action, vacuuming and flea-bombing Andy's room and the living room. They asked if they should do my room too. I said not to worry about it. Mistake of the Century. Shortly after that, I said:

Andy and Scott left on Wednesday, and I've been alone in the apartment. It hasn't been so great, but not for the reasons I would have expected. I'll go into that later.

I was left to fend off the fleas by myself. On Thursday afternoon, I went to the front office to ask for pest control to come, and I was told that they only come on Thursdays and that I had just missed them. Andy, who took responsibility for the whole situation, gave the office a call and got the pest control people to maybe come on Monday.

It was a long weekend. I called a vet's office, and they said to put Borax onto the carpet and vacuum a week later, but I couldn't find Borax at the grocery store. (Is that something you can get at the grocery store? I don't want to waste my time again.) I did buy some insecticide for fleas, and it seemed to get rid of them after a few days of spraying. I also did some vacuuming to (hopefully) get rid of the flea eggs.

I don't like spraying chemicals all over the place. It's not due so much to my concern for the environment as it is to my tendency to accidentally spray myself (which did happen, as usual). So I made a flea trap by setting a bowl of soapy water on the floor and angling a desk lamp over it. Fleas are attracted to heat (this ordeal has made me a damn flea expert), so they jump toward the light bulb and fall into the water, where they get stuck. It's also a fire hazard, so don't try this at home. I won't do it again.

Needless to say in a world where "yes" means "maybe" and "maybe" means "no," pest control didn't come on Monday. They called me on Tuesday and asked if the whole place had been vacuumed up because apparently they wouldn't even come if it weren't. I said no and asked them to come on Wednesday. They didn't. They were definitely supposed to come on Thursday, as usual, but they didn't even appear then. They finally showed up on Friday, but by then they could tell I had already gotten rid of the fleas, so they didn't do anything.

(Before you say anything: no money was lost here. The management of my apartment complex hires said company to do free pest control work for residents. We had considered hiring another company, but it would have been too expensive.)

I haven't seen any fleas in five days, so I think they're gone for now. Then again, they hid for at least three weeks, between the time Tucker died and the time anyone noticed them. Hopefully they're not like an STD that pops up from time to time and can never go away. I'll have to do some more vacuuming.

This is why software is awesome. Someone wrote a Python script that does some time-stretching and -compressing on a song to change the beat. The result: everything swings. Sample tracks include "Every Breath You Take," "Enter Sandman," "Around the World," and "Don't Stop Believin'." (Via waxy.org)

Here's a breakdown of cable subscription fees by network, showing how much you're paying for channels you don't watch. (Via The Consumerist)

American kids don't have a monopoly on stupidity: 10% of British children surveyed thought that the Queen invented the telephone. Some also thought that Luke Skywalker was the first person on the moon and that Isaac Newton discovered fire.

Installapalooza

I talked about my Thursday, but I didn't get a chance to mention my weekend yet. It was... interesting.

For many college students, the weekend begins on Thursday, and the people living in the apartment below me are no exception. They had a party on Thursday night. I don't mind if people have parties, but I do mind if said parties are extremely loud and preventing me from going to sleep. Usually I go downstairs with my roommate Andy and we ask them to turn the music down, but this time, Andy volunteered to go by himself. He didn't come back; he had joined the party.

On Friday night, there was another loud party downstairs. A normal person probably would have been able to sleep through it, but I have a hard time getting to sleep unless it's quiet. Still, I thought I should try. I did sleep for a little while, but the noise woke me up at 4:30 in the morning. That's when I called the police.

Over the next hour or so, the noise still didn't go away. At 6:00, I went downstairs and told one of the guys that if they didn't turn the music down, I would call the police. He asked if I already had, so presumably some officers had paid them a visit. I said I hadn't called, and he said that that the party was ending anyway. A half an hour later, the music stopped, and I instantly went to sleep.

I probably won't call the police again. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now they probably know that I did it, and I don't want them to be mad at me. There are more of them than me, after all, and they know where I live.

I always wake up early, even if I go to bed very late, so I wasn't worried about oversleeping. Imagine my surprise when I woke up well-rested at 11:15 in the morning. I was supposed to be on campus at 11:30 for a Linux installfest!

Technically, I didn't quite oversleep, but I came very close to it. The only time I actually did oversleep was about a year and a half ago when I was supposed to be giving a presentation for a class. Why do I only oversleep (or almost oversleep) when I have to do something important? Well, I guess if it's not important, then you're not really oversleeping.

My friend Mark, who was going to give me a ride to campus, had been waiting outside for a few minutes. I got ready as fast as I could, and we weren't too late. The installfest actually went pretty well, and we had a pretty good turnout. I helped a guy dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows, and Mark got a guy's graphics driver working. There was also a lot of food, and we got to take home what was left over.

Know Your Meme is indispensable. If you've seen the one with the old-fashioned painting of a guy striking a non-old-fashioned pose and saying things like "It feels most outstandingly pleasant to be involved in gang-related activities," the site explains what that's all about. (Via waxy.org)

British humor: How to Report the News, presented in the style of a news report. (Via waxy.org)

Do you use Last.fm? HacKey will show you the musical keys of your favorite songs. Apparently a whole 18% of my favorite songs are in B major, which I thought wasn't a common key in popular music (well, it's hard to play on the guitar). (Via waxy.org)

Crystal blue persuasion

I've been an avowed Firefox user since 2004, and I intend to stay that way. But I feel constant pressure from all sides to adopt or at least try out Google Chrome as my browser. Reasons for trying it include that it's fast and that it's by Google. That's about it.

First of all, I don't get all the Google idolatry. It's just as bad as the hype surrounding Apple's products. (These two companies could make the bubonic plague trendy and popular.) Within days of Chrome's release, it had accumulated more users than Opera had managed to scrounge up in 12 years. No, I don't have a citation for that, but I remember reading it somewhere. In any case, Chrome is now the third-most popular browser out there.

I also don't like the user interface. It probably does make sense to have the tabs above the address bar, but they shouldn't be where the title of the window is supposed to be. An application's look and feel should be consistent with that of the operating system on which it runs; anything else is the result of either ignorance or sheer arrogance. Firefox can fit right in with GNOME and other Linux environments.

Google Chrome now supports extensions, a feature that Firefox users had been asking for. I depend on a lot of extensions (currently about 30) to make my browsing more convenient, and I doubt that most of them have been implemented for Chrome. In particular, NoScript, which no web surfer (has anyone said that in the past ten years?) should be without, cannot currently be made to work on Chrome.

Finally, there are privacy issues. I use Google for searching the web, but I don't want to trust one company with that and my browser, e-mail, news, RSS feeds, documents, photos, videos, DNS service, operating system, cell phone, voicemail, web hosting, instant messaging, social networking, electricity, advertising, stats tracking, and Internet connection. And that's just what I could think of off the top of my head. It's just too much for one business to potentially know about me.

Advantages of Chrome over Firefox include faster JavaScript performance and keeping separate processes for separate tabs, but Firefox developers are working on those features.

TinyOgg converts Flash-based videos to the patent-free Ogg format.

For my fellow Beatles fanatics: Charting the Beatles, a series of infographics relating to the Beatles' music and career. (Via J-Walk Blog)

More fun uses of Google's search suggestions: What boyfriends and girlfriends search for on Google. (waxy.org)

Freein' them PCs

This week, I helped install antivirus and free software for students as part of Florida Free Culture's semiannual Free Your PC event. We got an unusual amount of journalistic attention and, despite that, an unusually low turnout.

We usually pick three consecutive days for Free Your PC, but there was a scheduling conflict, so we picked Monday, Tuesday, and today. On Tuesday, a guy who I think was from the Alligator asked Mark and me some questions about our club and what we were doing. (They haven't published an article about us, but if they do, it will probably be tomorrow.) Today, my friend Roxy, a journalism student, came to interview some of our members for an assignment, and I think at least one other journalism student did as well.

Also, both Tuesday and today, a photographer from the university's news bureau, which I had never heard of, came around to take lots of pictures of us helping out with people's computers. He said that one of his photos would end up on their web site with an informative caption. He was also interested in the club; he spent some time checking out our swag and asking questions. And, sure enough, I'm in today's photo of the day.

The first day is always the slowest because that's when people see the event going on and make a mental note to bring their computers the next day. On Monday, I think we maybe got one person during the four hours that we were out there. Tuesday was better. I expected us to be slammed on Thursday due to that article that hasn't been published yet, but it hadn't been published yet. Also, it was very cold today, and it's almost spring break. That could be why not as many people came out.

For this Free Your PC, I continued a tradition that I started last semester by making a CD of some of my favorite Creative Commons-licensed music. I think I burned 12 or 14 discs, and we gave out most of them. In case you're interested, here are the track listings and download links for both CDs.

Well, it's almost spring break. I'll be home soon, and then I get a week to max 'n' relax.

Really amazing statistics in video form: The State of the Internet. (Via Lifehacker)

The New York Times has an article on how Restaurants Use Menu Psychology to Entice Diners Trick You Into Buying Tons of Crap Food That You Otherwise Wouldn't Want. (Via Lifehacker)

Finally, more statistics and a vaguely spring-break-themed link: it's an infographic that's basically about how dumb we college students all are and how much money we're wasting going to college.

#9 for the month

It's time for another privileged look into my strange, strange music collection.

I typically have Rhythmbox sort my songs in alphabetical order by title, and I've noticed some pairs of songs that have exactly the same titles. Out of 2,493 songs, there are 21 duplicates, which is more than I expected. (I didn't count different versions of the same song.) As you might expect, the titles are pretty generic. You probably haven't heard of all of the artists.

• "Because" (The Beatles, Dave Clark Five)
• "Changes" (Bridget Kelly, David Bowie)
• "Free" (Dubious Quip, Hobo Twang)
• "Goodbye" (Hootie and the Blowfish, Sean Fournier)
• "Holiday" (Persson, Weezer)
• "How Long" (Allison Crowe, Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band)
• "Intro" (Ampiphy, WhiteRoom)
• "It's a Beautiful Day" (MoOt, Persson)
• "It's Over" (Harbinger, Persson)
• "I Want You" (Marvin Gaye, Savage Garden)
• "Learn to Fly" (Josh Woodward, Foo Fighters)
• "Like This" (Girl Talk, STEEP)
• "Low" (Coldplay, Silence Is Sexy)
• "Mary Jane" (Alanis Morisette, Fatblueman)
• "My Love" (Petula Clark, Junior Walker)
• "Solar System" (Depressive Art, Jamison Young)
• "Talk" (Coldplay, Silence Is Sexy)
• "What's Going On" (Blind Mr. Jones, Marvin Gaye)
• "White Moon" (The Dada Weatherman, The White Stripes)
• "Woman" (John Lennon, Peter and Gordon)
• "You Can Have It All" (Yo La Tengo, Kaiser Chiefs)

Additionally, I have a couple of threebies (triplicates?):

• "Time" (Hootie and the Blowfish, Persson, Pink Floyd)
• "Wake Up" (Alanis Morissette, Josh Woodward, Smoke Fish)

If you have some time to kill, this may be fun to check out. How many duplicates do you have? Do you have more than three completely different songs with the exactly the same title? (My predictions: no one will answer, or people will include similar but not identical titles. Prove me wrong!)

And, while we're at it, here's some Ask Jordon.

Kate: What do you think about vegetarianism? Could you give up eating meat for some reason (and what could be this reason)?

I don't mind if other people are vegetarians, but I don't want it forced on me by anyone. Let me eat whatever I want, and I'll let you do the same. I don't care if the animals are mistreated or anything like that. If other people do care, then good for them, but I'm more concerned with human welfare.

I would give up eating meat if my life depended on it, but I can't imagine a situation in which that would happen.

From the American Museum of Natural History: a video that zooms out from the surface of the earth to the edges of The Known Universe. Watch it in HD! (Via Pharyngula)

A voice actor does a really good impression of Morgan Freeman: Morgan Freeman Talks About... Toilet Paper.

It happens to the best of us: Why It's Better to Pretend You Don't Know Anything About Computers. (Via Lifehacker)

Kate's visit, part five

I was tired on Monday night, the 18th, but Kate had been wanting to jam with me and Andy. She had brought sheet music for a couple of songs—"Sunshine of Your Love" and "Tears in Heaven"—and we played them in Andy's room. Kate played Andy's keyboard, Andy played his bass, and I played my guitar. Kate also sang on "Sunshine of Your Love."

The next day was the Kate's last full day with me. She and I had Krishna lunch on campus again. After lunch, she spent a while in one of the computer labs making arrangements for the last leg of her trip, a few more days in New York. Later, she joined me for my Databases class.

In the evening, Andy, Kate, and I had a good video chat with Kate's French-Canadian friend. We mostly used Esperanto, but we slipped into English sometimes because her friend was more of a beginner. After that, Kate said her goodbyes to Andy in case we didn't get a chance to see him in the morning.

Later, I tried figuring out how we would get to the Greyhound station by bus (it's conveniently not located along a bus route). After much frustration in trying to figure out the best combination of buses, which would have taken at least an hour and a half anyway, Kate suggested that we call for a taxi.

Kate woke up at 6:15 on Wednesday, January 20. Her alarm woke me up, but I lay in bed for a while, trying to go back to sleep. At 7:00, I got up and prepared her usual breakfast of bread and cheese. Even though she was packing her things frantically, I thought we would be late for our cab, which was arriving at 7:30. But somehow, she managed to pull it off, and we were early. She got another chance to say goodbye to Andy, and we went outside, where the taxi was waiting for us.

It was cold and foggy, and I couldn't remember the last time I was out that early. The drive to the bus station seemed very long. It was essentially a drive across town through some minor streets. Along one of the streets were statues of the planets in planetary order. I hadn't seen them since my visits to Gainesville as a child, and since I had moved here to go to college, I had always wondered where they were.

The cab driver made small talk, asking how we knew each other and what Kate thought of the country and things like that. I didn't really feel like answering questions, but I did my best. After all, being a taxi driver has to be one of the most boring jobs. At one point, he got a call on his cell phone, apparently from his son. "Not now," he said, "Daddy's got people in the car." I didn't ask him about it.

Finally, we arrived at the bus station. I had never been to a Greyhound station before. It was pretty much a large room with a ticket desk, some rows of benches, and a few other people. It didn't look fancy, but I should have expected as much. We were about a half an hour early, so I sat next to Kate for the last time, away from the TV that was competing for my attention.

We exchanged words. I could see the tears coming down from her eyes. I was starting to get emotional too. This was it.

The bus came. We shared one last kiss, and she got on.

She sat by the window where I could see her. I fought back tears. But she smiled.

She smiled, and I smiled back. The bus moved forward. I followed it through the parking lot until it stopped at the street. She smiled at me again.

The bus turned right and drove away.

I walked the other way, toward the nearest major road, where I could hopefully catch a bus to campus. Cars zoomed past me. It was still kind of cold.

I saw Firpo's, a diner that we used to go to when I visited Gainesville as a kid. At least, it used to be Firpo's. It was something different now.

Not far away was my bus stop. According to the bus schedule that was posted there, I had missed the bus by five minutes and would have to wait 55 minutes for the next one. I decided to keep walking instead.

One of my pet peeves is when people treat walking as a last resort, a mode of transportation for only the most destitute and desperate—worse, even, than riding the bus. People are always oddly fascinated if I tell them I spent more than 15 minutes walking to get somewhere, as if using my legs as nature intended were something I should be ashamed of. But what could be more beneficial? It's good exercise, it's entertaining, and you're actually getting something done.

So, I kept walking. I had never seen this part of town. It looked like a lot of other parts, with gas stations, small strip malls, and even some neighborhoods. I passed by a historic house. I had never heard of it, but it was apparently one of the oldest in the city, dating from before the Civil War. I never would have been able to read the historical marker if I were in a car or a bus.

I kept walking. On the opposite side of the road, there was a real estate agent's office with a marquee in front. I expected it to say something about houses, but it said:

LET GO OF
WHAT EVER HOLDS
YOU BACK

Walking further, I made it to University Avenue and started walking toward campus. This was the way I had walked with Kate when I first met up with her 12 days ago, and now I was making the same walk alone.

I made it to campus and to the building where I work. I had been walking for a little less than an hour. The sun had come up some more, but it was still early for me; I wasn't supposed to be at work for another hour. But I got started early.

My room seems quiet and empty without Kate here. All of her stuff is gone except for a few things that now decorate my room: the monthly calendar of St. Petersburg, a few more yearly calendars printed on single sheets of paper, a New York City subway map, a tiger-shaped bag containing coins from around the world, and a couple of record albums: a Soviet Beatles compilation album called A Taste of Honey and Paul McCartney's Снова в СССР.

On my desk, she left a sticky note that she had written on early in her stay. It reads:

Life is a movie
without
a happy end.