I got ready for work yesterday morning and, like any other Monday, carried a bag of garbage along with my recycle bin out to the curb.  As I walked down the steps, I noticed that someone had left a garbage bag on my steps. 

Being that it was early in the morning, I was a little annoyed that someone would just carelessly toss their garbage where they did.  I looked a little closer and saw that there was a sticky note attached to the bag.  Once I read it, I pretty much freaked out.  A while back, I posted about a cat that would always come by and say hello to me. I don’t like cats so we had a very strange relationship.  It would always run over to see me or I would be leaving my place to find a black cat sitting on my porch.  Part of me wanted to grab a broom and shoo it away yet part of me thought it was kind of funny that this cat grew so fond of me.  Well, it doesn’t look like I’ll have to worry about the cat visiting me anymore.  Here’s what the note read:

That’s right, the cat had frozen in the night.  And there it was.  Dead. Sitting on my doorstep in a garbage bag.  And for some crazy reason, whoever found the frozen feline thought that it belonged to me which bothered me even more.  I’m not a cat person nor do I ever want to be mistaken for one.  Over the course of my time at my current residence, I’ve come to believe that the next door neighbors were actually the ones who owned the cat. I couldn’t prove this, but I know they own several pets, and I would see the black cat walking around on their porch.  So what did I do?  I picked up the bag, cringing that the weight of the dead cat would somehow tear through the bottom of the bag, and placed it on the doorstep of the house next door.  I really hope it was their cat.  Heck, I’m not even sure it’s the actual cat that I’m thinking of because I was too freaked out to even look in the bag.  The bag was gone when I got home, though, so either the neighbors disposed of the deceased animal or they just passed it on to the next house down the block like some twisted game of Hot Potato.

It took awhile for the neurotic side of me to subside and look at the situation for what it was for someone/thing other than myself.  For me, it was a messed up situation that was pretty disturbing (and, let’s face it, made a pretty good story). A cat died, though, because of an owner’s negligence.  I wish I knew if that cat belonged to the neighbor because I would call an animal services number to report them.  It’s really pretty sickening if it was theirs that they’d let their cat freeze to death.  And that’s coming from a cat-hater.

I met up with a few friends Saturday night at Tomfooleries.  Upon walking into the door, I was greeted by a massive gathering of girls in dresses and guys in suits and/or sport coats.  At first, I just assumed that they were from a wedding and were just out celebrating after the reception.  My assumptions were proven wrong the moment I heard the following comment while waiting for a drink:

“Dude, our waitress expected us to tip after every round!  Are you kidding me?  We’re in college.  We can’t do that!”

That’s right, the bar was being overrun by fratters.  My group watched them in amusement at how they would brag about how much they had to drink and whatnot.  One of my friends turned to me and said, “Watch, those guys are probably from your fraternity”.  Yes, I was in a fraternity but surely no one from my beloved house would act that way.  I walked right over to one of them, introduced myself, and asked what brought them in town.  Lo and behold, they WERE from my fraternity although they were from KU, and they had had their fraternity formal that night.  I laughed to myself and snuck him the secret handshake of our house.  Yes, fratters, like Boy Scouts and 10 year old kids, have secret handshakes to prove our bond. I distinctly remember being kind of blown away by this fact when I first found this out at the tender age of 19.  Anyway, the college kid completely freaked out and told me he was going to buy me a shot.  I obliged and next thing I knew I was doing a shot of well tequila with a total stranger.  Classy.  For the remainder of the night, quite a few guys came up to me to introduce themselves as word had passed.  All of them were very nice, quite respectful, and talked of how good they had heard my house’s reputation was at Iowa State.  It almost made me feel bad for passing such negative judgment on them.

I didn’t have to work yesterday because of President’s Day.  I think I may have been the only person I know who had it off which was really weird.  It’s good to know my company loves America.

I went out a couple of times this weekend, and one of the nights happened to be at McFaddens in the Power & Light District.  I’d never been before and had heard different things from people.  Some have told me that it’s too loud and overcrowded.  Others have said it’s a lot of fun and really high-energy.  Having gone, I am happy to report that I think the place is pretty darn fun.  Yes, the music is too loud (man, I sound so old saying that!) and, yes, there are definitely some pretty big douchebags that seem to frequent the place, but the patrons of the bar all shared something in common: they were all having a lot of fun. When I go out, having fun is the number one requirement for me.  It’s also the reason why, as a Plaza resident, I have learned to not go out on the Plaza very much.  I’ve just never had that much fun there.

Friday was also the first time I’ve been able to get a good idea what the P&L District is going to be like at night.  Most of the bars will be more or less forming a U-shaped border around a covered outdoor courtyard that will feature outdoor entertainment.  If all the liquor licensing goes according the plan, people will be able to leave the bar and hang out in the courtyard which could be really cool.  I have yet to visit the new Howl at the Moon, but if those two places are any indication of what the rest of the establishments will be like, I think it’s safe to say that P&L will be a fun, high-energy place.

I’ve also come to learn recently that I’m afraid that I just can’t sleep in anymore — a true sign of getting older.  I’m getting too used to being on a routine of getting up early that I just can’t do it anymore.  My old job had me sleeping and waking up at random hours in different time zones so sleeping in was never a problem.  Now, I end up being completely tired for the entire day afterward.  This doesn’t even apply to when I go out, either.  I stayed in on Sunday night, played a little PS3, read, and ended up getting to bed at 1, thinking that I would be able to sleep in without any problem.  I was dead wrong.  My eyes opened at 7:30 and I couldn’t get back to sleep.  So annoying.

Anyone following news or politics right now have likely heard about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, and how changes for it were voted upon by our Senate earlier this week.  One of the most notible changes include allowing communications that begin or end in a foreign country to be wiretapped by the US government without supervision by the FISA Court.  That’s right, it doesn’t matter if you are suspected of being a terrorist or not, you can be wiretapped.  This absolutely blows my mind.  Another thing that is a part of this whole vote is that Bush and company are trying to grant wireless companies immunity for providing warrentless wiretapping and record disclosure to the government so they could spy.  Again, this blows my mind.  The companies clearly broke the law yet the government is trying to retroactively let them off the hook.  One would think that the individuals that we have elected would surely make sure things things would never happen.

Not so fast. The Senate voted to allow for these changes.
I could go on and on about how this violates human rights, not to mention it’s unconstitutional, but what this whole situation illustrates to me is just how much government officials can get away with anything as long as they use the fear card.  It’s not being talked about that it will allow our millions of US citizens to have their phones and internet/emails tapped, it’s being done to “protect our freedoms from terrorists”!  How long are people going to just lie down and allow that to be the excuse for every single messed up thing our president decides to do?  It’s absolutely infuriating.

You know who else I think is messed up?  John McCain.  I used to really like the guy and really hoped he would beat out GWB for the republican nomination two elections ago.  I still think he would have been a better choice, but he has changed so much since those days.  His pandering towards the right is sickening.  He used to do what he felt was the right thing to do which is what I liked about him.  Now, he’s willing to say or do whatever it takes to get votes.  Back in 2005, he worked to ban torture.   Being that the man endured torture as a POW in Vietnam, this made total sense.  Now, though, McCain has completely shifted his stance on torture.  And that’s not the only thing he’s changed his stance on.  McCain deserves to be beat by whomever gets the democratic nod come November.  And he’ll have no one to blame but himself.

One of the things I was looking forward to doing once I decided to stay in KC full-time was join a intermural league.  They all sounded like a fun way to meet some cool people and get some exercise in the process.  Well, I guess I’ll have to wait for my next intermural league to do that because my first league is devoid of either of those two things.  I decided to join a bowling league with some friends recently.  It’s funny to think that I, a person who bowls an average of two times an entire year, if that, signed up for league that lasts four months.  That’s a long commitment.  Oh yeah, and we bowl three games each session.  I’ve NEVER bowled three games in a row in my life.  It’s always been two tops.  And it shows.

I’ve had work conflicts that have prevented me from participating in the first few weeks of hot bowling action, but I made my debut two weeks ago.  I am not exaggerating one bit when I say that, by the end of the night, multiple lanes of people were laughing at me.  I tried to take a picture of the averages last week but couldn’t get a clear picture from it.  Had the picture turned out, it would have shown that my average was an 83 going into last week, making me by far the worst bowler in the entire league.  In fact, there wasn’t anyone else even under 100.

The good news, though, is that the league scores off of handicap which means my lack of skill could possibly work in our favor because I really don’t think I have anywhere to go but up.  I learned last week that I bowl much better when I don’t bring the ball back so much.  When I do that, I lose control on my follow through.  I ended up getting over 100 twice last week so I think I may have gotten my stroke down.  I bowl again tomorrow night against whom I believe are the best team in the league.  All humility aside, I do think that our success hinges on me bringing my A-game because of the handicap thing.  My fingers will be crossed…but only on my left hand.

I took my first trip to Wichita for work yesterday.  I was with coworkers on a whirlwind trip that had us leaving at 7 in the morning and returning by late afternoon.  It was a pretty exhausting day, but I made a point to stop by my local voting spot to do my public duty and vote for whom I would like to have nominated.  After making two stops because of poor sign placement, I finally found the entrance to where I was to vote, and I was in and out in five minutes tops.  I was somewhat surprised to see that every Democrat that ran was listed as a choice.  Yes, even crazy, senile, old Mike Gravel was listed as an option.  I went ahead and selected the candidate I preferred (Obama — not even the second batch of Hillary’s crocodile tears could sway my vote) thinking everyone would clearly vote either Obama or Hillary if voting for the Democratic Party.

Luckily, Barack squeaked by and barely beat Hillary in Missouri.  In fact, the results showed that Missouri was the tightest race between the two.  It’s good to know that my vote helped make some sort of difference in the outcome.  What absolutely shocked me, though, is that 20,000 people voted for John Edwards.  Twenty thousand!!!  Granted, I am talking about the same state that once voted for a dead guy but still, Edwards dropped out of the race and isn’t even in contention.  There have to only be two types of people who voted for Edwards: 1) those that wanted to “make a point” and support him anyway so that maybe he’d be VP and 2) those who didn’t know he dropped out.  Obviously, both groups are complete idiots.  Edwards has said he isn’t interested in being VP but would rather be Attorney General. 

If the Democratic Party ran things the way Republicans did then this wouldn’t even be an issue because Republicans go by how many states you’ve won.  Democrats, though, go off of the total number of votes.  Clinton won 50.2% of the vote from 7,347,971 and Obama got 49.8% from 7,294,851. The margin between the two is incredibly small.  Here’s the thing, though: had the idiots here in Missouri who voted for Edwards voted for Obama (the person he seemed to have sided with throughout his campaign) the difference between the two candidates nationally would have almost been cut in half!  People, if you’re given the opportunity to vote in our free country, don’t waste your vote.