Epic Illustrated Vacation Blog Post

I wanted it to be my "re-bachelor party," but that never really came together. It was more like a test to see how bad I can abuse my body over a long weekend.

I spent a lot of time in the car, wearing my dorky middle-aged-lady shades that fit over my glasses:



I drove for 13 hours the first day, and visited my dad and his wife in their new house:


It's way too much house for two people, and they can't afford it, but to each his own overly extravagant, unnecessarily huge domicile.

Then I hopped back into Smuggy (with his new license plate)


and drove another 3 hours to the coast. On the way, I set a new record for the most miles on a tank of gas: 520. It was the first time I topped 500 miles. I did it again on the way home, getting 506. Overall, I averaged about 51 MPG for the trip. Much better than I expected from mostly highway driving.

I visited my old high school friend, Lee, who lives in Wilmington. Here's Smuggy posing in front of his place:


It's a nice old house that he's renovating. I got to stay in the "love shack", a room off the kitchen with red walls and a pink ceiling. (No picture available.) The Love Shack didn't live up to its name, however, since the only 'love' I got while I was there was when Lee's cat snuggled up next to me.

We spent every evening in a bar/music club listening to visiting bands play at a music festival. I drank way too much and was out till 5 am three nights in a row. (Picture not available.) For a librarian who goes to bed at 9:30 on school nights, this was quite a shock to my system. Here's me at 11:30 the next morning, hungover and on the way to breakfast/lunch, and Lee showing his concern for my condition:




The rest of the weekend was a blur. One interesting thing is that North Carolina, being a tobacco state, has not banned smoking in bars or even restaurants yet. It was the first time in years I walked into a restaurant and was asked, "Smoking or non-smoking?" In my everyday life, I am very much anti-smoking, but since I was on vacation I was able to suspend my intolerance, and even indulged myself. My average is about one cigarette every three years. I smoked two cigarettes this weekend, so I'm good for the next six years.

On Saturday night, Lee had to go to a wedding so I was on my own. I walked around downtown Wilmington for several hours, looking for a suitable bar that was relatively quiet where I could have a beer and watch the NBA playoffs. I finally found one, with four people in it, and I saddled up to the bar. I've heard stories of people who meet lots of friends in bars, but I never knew quite how that worked. Apparently, it's really easy. It took about two minutes for the guy two stools over to strike up a conversation with me, and soon we were talking about sports, different cities, movies, etc. Then two girls came in and wanted to play the bar's Wii. I had no idea you could play Wii in a bar, but here you could. I said I liked to play Wii, so the four of us played Wii bowling. At one point in the second game, one of the girls said she'd buy me a shot if I could get a 200. Thanks to the beer in my system, I got a 202. So we all did a shot called a Jaegerbomb, which got me really messed up right before I left to meet Lee back at the music fest.

At "Lee-thirty" (a time Lee invented that's something like 3:37 am), we went to a beach house where a party was supposed to be. When we got there, it was dark and people were sleeping on the floor in the living room. They yelled at us when we turned the lights on. I peed in the ocean (definitely no picture available) and then we left to go back to Lee's place. So my journey of 800 miles and 16 hours toward the ocean culminated with me peeing in it and then turning back. I guess it's true what they say about the journey being more important than the destination.

The next morning I decided I had to escape this lifestyle while I still had a functioning liver. So I went back to my dad's and the next day drove back to the Midwest.

In the mountains of West Virginia, I got gas, which reset my MPG gauge. The next 50 miles or so were mostly downhill, so I got some awesome mileage. I was so excited that I took out my camera and got some pictures (Do not try this at home, especially if you live in the curvy highway mountains of WV):





Holy shit, 73.6 miles per gallon! Look how happy I am:



By the grace of the highway gods, I made it home in one piece. Although coming home to an empty apartment was a little depressing, it was good to see the cats and be back in my own space. I plopped down on the couch and was immediately perched upon by Katya:

It's good to be loved.

Marital Settlement Agreement

Rebecca and I divided up the last of our 'assets' today. She will apply for a divorce in September, after we've been separated six months.

Sorry, I can't think of anything clever or funny to add to that. I'll return to being clever soon.

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Update: At least Blogger is excited to hear this news. When I clicked on the Publish Post button, Blogger said, "Your blog post published successfully!" It's nice to get that kind of enthusiastic affirmation.

The Wet Spot

You live with someone for seven years and you think you know them. But you don't. Not even if they have a simple, walnut-sized brain.

My primary cat, Katya, loves ice. I discovered this a few weeks ago when I was having a drink with ice in it and the phone rang. I got up to answer the phone, and when I came back, her nose was buried deep in the glass, her tongue flicking all over my ice.



She loves the ice so much that I've taken to putting ice cubes in her water bowl, which induces her to drink more. She needs to drink more because her kidneys are getting bad, and apparently water helps that. So it always pleases me to see her drinking. Rebecca and I used to call this "exercising her will to live." And if ice cubes can facilitate that, then I'm happy to use them.

When I had mean evil strangers (my mom and her husband) stay in the apartment for three days last weekend, Katya mostly hid under the bed and didn't do very much exercising of her will to live. So when they left on Monday, she finally came out from hiding and gorged on ice-chilled water.

Then she horked all of it back up, in four different spots, on the carpet. It got to the point that I was following her around with a rag, wiping up the cat puke as quickly as she produced it. At least it was mostly water, which made it clear or odorless. She had also left a "horkage event" on top of the bed spread, which I soaked up as best as I could.

When I pulled back the sheets to go to bed that night, I noticed that the watery vomit had soaked all the way through the bed spread to the sheets below. It was a relatively small wet spot, on the other side of the bed, so I was able to avoid it. But still, this is not the kind of "wet spot" that a swingin' bachelor expects to find in his bed.

Mistakes, Atlases, Umbrellas

Three short, unrelated work items in the life of an academic librarian:

A few weeks ago I noticed a young lady taking down all of the rods hanging on the walls in the library. The rods are used to hang up pictures and art whenever we have a show. I asked the young lady if she was taking down the pictures from the latest show? Yes, she was. Then I told her that, actually, the rods stay on the walls. If you're taking down a show, you take the pictures off the rods, not the entire rod off the wall. I was polite when I said this. She got really angry and said, "But I've already taken down all the rods already!" Indeed, she had. There was a huge pile of about 30 rods sitting on a table. "Who can put them back on the wall?" She asked.

This struck me as a strange question. I realize she was probably embarrassed and upset to learn that she'd just wasted a lot of time taking down the rods. Someone probably told her, "Go take down the pictures from the library" and she was just following directions. But still. Her question sounded a lot to me like, "Who's going to fix my mistake?" To which I would answer, "Well, you!" I didn't say this, however-- I just stared at her, nonplussed. I was hoping the solution would occur to her eventually. She left in a huff.

Not to sound like a crotchety old fart, but why would she expect someone else to clean up her mess?

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The atlas stand near my desk displays two map books: a world atlas that shows all the countries of the world and a North American road atlas that shows all the states, plus Canada & Mexico. Every few days I try to change which page the atlases are open to. I randomly open a page to a country or state that hasn't been displayed in a while. If I leave it alone, someone will invariably come along and change the pages back to the United States and Illinois, respectively.

It seems that the students of this East Central Illinois community college are only interested in looking at their own country and their own state. Perhaps there is a practical reason for this. Since they live here, those are the pages that they most often need to consult. But as a map lover, it's disheartening to see all the countries of the world, and all the states of the country, constantly reverting back to the US and IL.

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An APB was sent out to all departments last week because a student lost an umbrella "with sentimental value." The student really wants the umbrella back, so we're all being asked to look for it.

There are a lot of objects I can think of that could have sentimental value. A ring, a pen, a picture, a shirt, a button off the coat of your grandfather's civil war jacket, a cat, or even a rock. But an umbrella? I can't think of a more impractical thing to attach sentiment to. It's like being sentimentally attached to a tire on your car. Not all four-- just one of them.

Umbrellas are one of the most commonly lost items. Check any lost-and-found box, and you'll always find an umbrella or two. In fact, when I was a poor student and worked in the public library, I never owned an umbrella. Whenever I needed one, I would just take my pick from the many umbrellas left in the lost-and-found box.

There's a clear reason why umbrellas get lost so much. Umbrellas are not part of your everyday routine. It's not something that you have with you every day, so you tend to forget about it on the days that you have it.

Anyway, it seems to me that if you have an umbrella with sentimental value, you should leave it at home. If you want to take it out for a spin every now and then, use it in the shower.

Pins and Needles

Readers of the Timbecca blog may remember the dilemma I had when I attended the state high school wrestling tournament in February. I watched every round of the two-day tournament, but had to miss the grand finale, the championships, on Saturday night.

So I ordered a DVD of the final round and have been waiting patiently for the past 12 weeks for it to arrive in the mail. Meanwhile, I've been avoiding all the state wrestling websites because I didn't want to know what happened until I watched the DVD. I want to experience the competition in real time. In this, I have been successful, and I still don't know who the state champions are.

When I paid my $40 cash to the high school girl sitting at the table at the state tournament, she told me it would take "8 to 10 weeks" for me to receive my DVD. She also gave me a generic receipt and a card that had the name of the company responsible for the DVDs on it. So last week I emailed the guy at the company, and asked if I was still on the list of people to receive the DVD.

He responded that I was indeed on the list, but that production had been held up because of a lack of "sponsorship funding." I don't understand this. I paid $40 for a product. What does sponsorship funding have to do with it? And how long am I supposed to wait for this "sponsorship funding" to appear? What if it never comes? Will he refund my money? He ended by thanking me for my "patience and understand." [sic]

I would go to the IHSAA website (the people who run high school sports in the state) and complain, but I'm afraid to go to their wrestling page, because I know they always congratulate and list the state champions there. And I don't want to know who that is until I've watched the video.

The irony of all of this is that the reason I missed the finals to begin with was to go with Rebecca to a Valentine's-related event that she really wanted me to go to. It was a few weeks after she first told me she was thinking of leaving me ("ground zero," I like to call it) and I gave up going to the finals, an event I'd been waiting for all year, in order to try to save my marriage. It didn't work.

Evil Namesake

Every once in a while, when I'm alone, and I'm sure no one is watching, I'll go onto the internets, and, as surreptitiously as I can ... I ... I google myself.

Admit it-- you've done it, too.

There are many other Tim Schreibers out there, and believe it or not, they're much more active online than I am, so it's hard to find things that actually point back to me. There's a musician with my name, and he gets lots of online press. There's also a German kid with a website.

But today I discovered a new, dark member of my namesake club, an agent of sleeze who uses my good name for evil and destruction.

That's right: he's a right-wing Republican blogger. In the vein of Ann Coulter, he uses faulty logic, gratuitous insults, and cruel schadenfreude to rail against the liberals in congress, immigrants who can't speak English, hippies, hybrids, and the global warming scam. He also comes across as a real asshole in his business dealings with people. Apparently, every clerk who rings up the wrong price at the register is out to get him, and he likes to browbeat powerless employees at his health insurance company. He also rails against rich CEOs and greedy capitalists, which seems inconsistent to me, since his politics only support those kinds of people.

I usually like to avoid politics on my blog, since my brother does enough political blogging for the both of us. Plus, I'm too much of a "navel-gazer" (as my sister-in-law says) to write about things beyond myself. But it really bothers me that, merely by having my name and being himself, this other Tim is dragging my good name through the slime like that.

Eeegh, I need a shower.

How Many Passwords Must a Man Write Down?

Have you ever counted up all the different passwords you have in your life? I've been wondering what would happen to me if I ever get selective (or total) amnesia and forget all of my passwords. Would I be able to function at all?

I have passwords for my work email, work network login, two personal email accounts, two different blogs, three to six different social networking sites (depending on how you define them), three separate bank accounts, a work circulation system, four different listservs, and personal web accounts at the American Library Association, the USTA, Netflix, Ebay, Vonage, CA Security, TiVo, Chase, TurboTax, Papa Johns, Salon letters, and Flickr.

If you throw in my various PINs, such as two bank cards, work voicemail, home voicemail, cell phone voicemail, and two separate library card accounts, that amounts to 33 separate logins. And that's just the ones that I can remember off the top of my head.

Of course, I don't have 33 separate passwords. My most important accounts, like my email accounts and my work network login, have their own unique password. But my secondary-level passwords get multiple use. There's no reason, for example, why I can't use the same password for Netflix that I use for Vonage or TiVo. So I might have about 5 or 6 different passwords that I rotate around. I will often have one password for an entire category, so that, for example, all my social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, and Goodreads) have the same password.

The logins that I use everyday are easy to remember, but there are other ones that I will never, ever take the time to memorize. For example, my Papa John's password is one of those randomly assigned combination of letters and numbers that I can't change. So when I order a pizza, which I do every few months or so, I have to log into my email account and find the saved message from Papa John's that tells me what my password is. That's two logins (and about $20) for one pizza order. (I did once use the phrase "biteme" as a password for pizza site that wouldn't let me view their menu without logging in first. That's how I stick it to the man.)

I'm sure, if given enough time, I could think of some clever insight about passwords and life in the 21st century that wouldn't just make me sound like a whiny Luddite, but I've got nothing right now. All my creative energy has been taken up thinking up clever, secure passwords.