Matt Jones' Random Acts of Verbiage

Or “Bellingham is out to get me.”
Or “How to get your stuff stolen.”
Or “God is telling me I should have moved back to Seattle.”
Or “Remember that 6 months I had an iPod?”

Or… Well, you get the idea. Today I took a walk down town to the post office and to pay rent then over to the aquatic center for a nice leisurely swim. You know how some places require to give them your ID when you rent a lock, well never complain about that. Sometime during my swim someone managed to remove my lock and take all my stuff except for my glasses (why they left those, but took my underwear and shoes, I have no idea). Now get this, there are TONS of lockers that don’t even have locks on them, yet they still went for my stuff. What I figure is that they (whoever “they” are) saw me with my iPod and just really wanted it. So, fine, but did they need to take my shoes? Or my towel? Or my keys (luckilly my car keys were at home)? Or my phone?

I spent the rest of the day doing all the things you have to do when your wallet is stolen (or purse as the case may be). I had to buy a new phone (which I don’t have money for). Had to pretend to think about getting a new iPod (haha, right, like I have money for that!). Cancelled my cards. Luckilly, in a bit of irony, my driver’s license was perfectly safe behind the desk being used to hold the lock that was cut off my locker. Nice. So to summarize: DVDs and change stolen out of my apartment last week (I got a dowel to make sure that window stays locked), lots of crap stolen today. Good times in Bellingham.

Yes, I know I still have not posted pictures from the beach yet. I will get to it, I promise.

Before I post pictures from my beach vacation I wanted to post our “Walk Through the Solar System” that we did out in front of the place we stayed. If anyone is interested in astronomy (and everyone should be), this is one thing you and your family should do. We did the 1000 yard model (similar to this one I am sure). In this model. This setup is designed to gain a sense of scale in the solar system, both in the size of the planets and in the distance between them. The sizes range from 8 inches for to Sun down to a small pinhead (1/100th of an inch) or bead for Pluto. The total distance is, shockingly, 1000 yards, or a bit over half a mile. Try it out! UPDATE: I have written two posts relating to relative sizes of the objects in our Solar System: Walk the Solar System and A Sense of Scale: The Bodies of the Solar System. Check them out!

Katie preparing the model with Rachel and Nathan looking on.

The group getting ready to pace the planets!

Come on, the Sun and the Sun, that is cool.

Mecury and the Sun

Off to walk the Solar System!

By the end we couldn’t even see the sun!

We had a lot of fun and everyone should do this sometime! (You can also see this as a Flickr set.)

Resources:
Build A Solar System: Pick the scale you want! This website allows you to imput different sizes/distances and it will let you know what all the others should be.
The 1000-Yard Model: or, the Earth as a Peppercorn: Similar to the model we used.
Wikipedia: Solar System Model: Various Solar System models.

I am back from my lovely vacation with the fam. I will, of course, get up some pics later. As I have been relaxing back at home I looked at my DVD collection. Around 30 titles are missing (give or take). Theft was the farthest thing from my mind because my laptop was sitting right next to them (as well as my desktop, tv, books, etc…). Who would steal dvds but not a laptop? Also, there was no indication that anyone had come into my apartment. This would lead me to believe that I did something with them. But, for the life of me, I cannot remember doing any such thing. I thought that maybe I took a bunch down for the vacation, but Crash is the only one I remember taking (and would I have brought Beverly Hill’s Cop on vacation? Doubtful). Then I thought that I put them somewhere while rearranging. But why would I have randomly selected some of my movies to move? Where are my movies? Did I happen to loan you some movies? Did you break into my apartment and steal my movies? Am I going MAD?

UPDATE: I am 99% sure that I was, indeed, robbed. It was just one of the more bizarre robberies ever. I think it must have been some kids. The only thing I can figure is that they were able to get my bedroom window open as that is the only one that didn’t have a pole in it to keep it shut. So lame. The reason I am pretty sure now is that I went to get some quarters for laundry and ALL my change was gone. Even the penny jar! So it seems they stole about $20 in change and a bunch of DVD (which really sucks!). I hope it wasn’t much else. What is really bizarre is what they didn’t steal: my laptop (which was plainly visible), all of my CDs (which were also somewhat visible), my SLR camera (visible), none of my books (apparently they are not readers), my desktop, MOST of my DVDs, my (granted it is old) Nintendo 64, and a wide variety of other idems. So now I am pissed. The two things that I am most pissed about are the Aliens DVD collection AND Band of Brothers! Argh. This sucks. Could have been worse I guess. I think I need to get to the hardware store to get something for my window. Lame.

… so to speak. I am headed out to vacation! “Vacation from what?” you might ask. Well, I really don’t know. But what ever it is, I am taking a vacation from it. First I will be headed to Wild Waves to chaperone seniors from Meridian High School on their senior skip day. Basically that means I get free entrance in and then I get to play and go on rides. Fun times. Then I will be headed down south to hang with family until we drive out to the beach for a week! I hope the weather is good! So until I get back, enjoy some great music or check out my MattJonesBlog.com Archive for all of my amazingly intelligent posts. As I still have not fully tested this new design, feedback is still greatly appreciated!

I leave you with this (also stolen from Pursuing Holiness), it is good times:

Have a great week and a half!

The 3000+ page trek through Steven King’s The Dark Tower series has come to an end. I am truly blown away by King’s ability to tell a story and draw the reader in. There have been some (many?) that were disappointed with King’s conclusion (King even eluded to this in his final comments) but I found it very fitting. King also said, “I wasn’t exactly crazy about the ending, either, if you want to know the truth, but it’s the right ending. The only ending, in fact.” Ka is a wheel, my friends.

Cam-a-cam-mal, Pria-toi, Gan delah.
White over red, thus Gan wills ever.
Good over evil, this is the will of God

Say thankya

The seven parts of Dark Tower will take you on a journey and the ka-tet of Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy will become part of your tet. Dark Tower VII is especially emotional because things are coming to a close and it is like losing your family. I think this speaks highly of King’s story telling abilities! I am not going to say anything about the story because I think you should read it. It is gruesome, intense, vulgar at times, and long - but an amazing voyage of relationship, love, and hope. Read it.

Roland of Gilead sat in front of the door, which already looked tired and unimportant. It would never open again. He put his face in his hands. It occured to him that if he had never loved them, he would never have felt so alone as this. Yet of all his many regrets, the re-opening of his heart was not among them, even now.

The most important location in this keystone world of ours is the vacant lot in New York City. Luckilly, some folks on this thing we call the internet have been there and taken a few pictures:

(Source) The vacant lot?

(Source) On the wall around that lot.

(Source) Dag Hammarskjold Place: the location of the Tet Corporation.

There are lots of “Turtle Bay” companies in the area (which some have believed to be Dark Tower references, this is not the case) which is the name of the area and something that King incorporates into the book. (More about Turtle Bay.) I also found images from the final book (the quality isn’t the best, but they are all I could find) that I really liked and that were perfect in adding to some of the very emotional moments (weeping like a school girl!). The art was done by Michael Whelan who also did the art for the first in the series (and the image of Roland and the Dark Tower at the head of the post). I recommend not looking at the images unless you have read the final book as they give plot info away. “He moved in between Jake and Eddie” - “… The place where Roland finally stopped felt more like a church than a clearing.” - “It would never open again…”

Long days and pleasant nights!

Resources:
Pursuing Holiness’ Open Trackback!
The Dark Tower - The official website.
TheDarkTower.net - Brought to you by North Central Positronics. Also includes a cool Dark Tower Wiki.
Wikipedia Articles - lots of good info:

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.” -Jake

I have been trying to figure out how to change my theme around a bit lately. When Laura at Pursuing Holiness pointed out her latest theme I, doing the most Christian thing I could think of, stole it. I now have running a modified version of blog.txt and like it so far. Although things aren’t running completely smoothly, it seems to work. Could anyone offer any suggestions / comments /tips / etc. either by emailing me or leaving a comment here. Did you even notice that there was a change? Are the drop-down menus in the right column still intuitive? Is there any way I could easily (and cleanly) make it obvious the clicking a menu will open it up?

EDIT: I changed the menu links from small caps to normal. What do you folks think about small caps for post titles?