The One With Dad's New Office

My last post drew a smaller variety of responses than I expected. I suppose people are getting a life and not spending as much time on the internet. This is probably a good thing. A continued thank you to those of you who do tune in. Knowing people actually read this thing makes it more fun to write.

I never really thought of myself as a writer. I took honours english all through high school and did just fine. According to my teachers I wrote some pretty good essays in my day although I never really enjoyed the experience. When I got to grade twelve english I wrote like I always did and was rewarded with sub-par marks for my effort. I learned to write the "english 12 way," took my "A," and went off to university.

My first year english prof. told me to forget everything I learned about writing in high school. OK. So I went back to writing naturally, as I had done up to grade twelve, and I did just fine in my year of 100-english. I mean I definitely wasn't Shakespeare-esque (I'm not nearly enough of a womanzer, nor bad enough with my money), but I kept my average up. It never was the writing I didn't like, it was the material. I think finding something you like to write about is the challenge.

Coming up with good ideas is hard, too. The mechanics of writing I don't find that hard; in fact, I almost enjoy spinning others' ideas into words on a page. Of course I don't exactly know a lot of grammar rules off of the top of my head. You see that semicolon about two sentences back? I don't know if that really belongs there. It just kind of feels right. That's like how I speak japanese half the time. I don't know if what I'm saying is correct, but it just kind of feels right. If I wasn't afraid of feeling like I had wasted three years of my life on a science degree I would explore this whole writing thing. Maybe I could write articles for National Geographic on scientific material. That could be interesting. Philip Yancey writes about how, to him, writing is a means of opening doors for his readers through his words; he tries to display someone else's reality through his work. Maybe opening scientific doors for non-scientists is something worth exploring.

I went downtown a couple of days ago (I've taken calling downtown "DT" because it's Laura Slang, and in the Stephan Lab there's no way to escape it) and took a cab home sometime in the early morning. Cabbie says, "where to?"
"Home"
"Where's that?"
"About three doors down and across the street from the crack house." Let's just say a completely sober person would probably have just given the poor cab driver the address. Good thing I tipped him 100%. Poor cab drivers. They must have to deal with a lot of garbage from individuals much more vile than myself.

So if I've never told you, I live three doors down and across the street from a crack house. Well, actually it's a halfway house that's more like a none-of-the-way house. I don't know what state the people were in before arriving but they can't possibly have made much progress prior to moving in. There's usually an observable domestic dispute at least once every three days. I'm pretty sure they've got 911 on speed dial. If I'm on my porch and I can hear profanity coming from down the street chances are someone's is either voluntarily leaving, or being kicked out of, the crack house. Either way some barely clothed individual ends up walking past our porch either swearing at us or someone else. We can't always tell the difference. In any event, people from the lab who come over always want to see the crack house. I should start giving tours and selling tickets.

My parents currently are on a cruise to Alaska. My sister now: a)is driving, b)has a job c)has more friends than I do. Well, let's be honest, Claire's always had more friends than me. It's amazing what happens when you leave for four months. Thorsten's younger sister back in Germany recently had a birthday party at which his friends were in attendance. At least my friends aren't hanging out with my sister. Wait, that's not true, either. My only point being that even though four months doesn't seem that long, a lot can happen while you're gone. Next thing I know I'll show up at home and all my stuff will be sitting in boxes in the driveway while my dad magically has a new office. Or my mom will have a new sewing room. No, Dad will have a new office and the organ will still be in the playroom covered in dust.