So, ignore the drab, boring layout. I just drove four hours, mostly in the dark, and I’m tired. So I’m not going to stay up to all hours working on a layout. (But, you know, now that I’ve said that, I probably will. Oh well. Assume that, if you come to this page and find it prettified, I probably stayed up to find the perfect theme and tweak it so that it was just right. Edit: Yes, I did, in fact, stay up to fight with this theme. We both came out of our tussle a bit bloody, and a bit bruised, but both the better for it. And I learned that, sometimes, mucking about in code that I don’t understand can produce fun consequences… Such as the disappearance of header images, and then their mystical reappearance.) Of course, before it got dark, I managed to snap a few cool pictures of the pink sun and clouds. I took a (hopefully) good one on my 35mm, (after wishing I could take some film of the beautiful sky, realizing I had my Canon in my trunk, pulling over on a random gravel road, bursting out of my car, wrenching open my trunk, and throwing things about to get to my camera) but I got a few decent ones with my phone to share in the mean time. Here are the best ones

These are not in order. The first picture.

Number two.

These captions are pointless. I’m going to stop writing them now.

I also am including a random picture of a flowering tree outside my dorm that I took before I left campus for the summer. I don’t know what kind of tree it is, but if you could tell me, I’d really appreciate it. :-)

What Kind Of Tree Is This: A Sudden Storm Mystery
Can you solve it?

Okay. If you’ve gotten this far in this entry, I applaud you. But you may want to stop reading now if you don’t want to waste any more of your precious life reading this.

Stopped reading yet?

Good.

Okay. So, I have an interesting driving story to tell. I was on my way home from campus for the summer, and I came across an interesting dilemma:
26, right off of 31, was mysteriously closed for construction. Of course, I hadn’t seen signs warning me about that every weekend I’ve been home for the past month. Of course not. (You know… Sarcasm is hard to get across in text on a screen…) So, I’m sitting at the stop sign, wondering how they expect people to get around the construction without signs telling them where they’re supposed to detour. (But that’s Russiaville for you, I guess.) Seeing a nice, big, white Ford truck, I decided to follow it and hope beyond all hope that it would take me to where 26 was accessible. (I love Fords, which is why I decided to follow this particular truck. That, and because random strangers never steer you wrong. …Right?)

I think he thought I was a creeper. He kept driving faster and faster, and I kept driving faster and faster to keep up. Eventually, the road we’d taken dead-ended at another road. There, I faced my second dilemma: right, or left. Right, I knew, would take me farther from 26, but had the possibility to lead me back out eventually. Left, I figured, however, had to lead to 26. (Besides, Mr. Ford went left. Maybe I’m impressionable.) So I turned.

Well, this road, too, dead-ended at another road. This road was called something that was not 26. Frustrated and just wanting to get home before midnight, I decided I’d grab my handy dandy atlas and have a looksee. But, there was a car that pulled up behind me, so I had to scratch that idea, and decided to just throw caution to the wind (because, after all, when else can you make stupid decisions and follow random strangers around than when you’re in college and have nowhere to be at any specific time?) and turned right. After Mr. Ford. And as soon as I started scanning for a place to pull over and grab my atlas, what do I see? A virgin Mary statuette underneath a wire arch that I see every time I drive 26.

So, needless to say, I was pretty excited. Not only did I manage to get back to where I needed to be without getting terribly lost, and not only did I follow a complete stranger and end up exactly where I wanted to, but I’d gotten to drive fast over little back-country, bumpy, undulating roads. I haven’t done that since I lived in Wisconsin. It really took me back.

It was a fun drive, obviously, if a bit boring once I hit Illinois and congested tollways, but I’m so glad to be home, even if being around my cats makes me allergies a bajillion times worse. I actually sneezed about 30 times within the span of one minute.

Funny thing, that… Amidst all of that sneezing, feeling like I had to sneeze, and trying not to, I noticed something: I had always assumed that a sneeze came from inside the nose, but I could literally feel the sensation beginning where my nasal passages connect with my throat, and moving up to the rest of my nose like pins and needles after your arm (or foot or butt) falls asleep. It was quite an interesting thing to notice, and it made me want to keep sneezing, because I wanted to feel that strange, almost electric movement from nerve to nerve again.

Oh well. Maybe tomorrow I’ll rub my cat all over my eyes and face. I’m sure that’ll get me some reactions from my body.