full holiday itinerary

Leave Arrive
Town Time Town Time Mode
Minneapolis 12/22/04 10:10pm

Zanesville 12/23/04, 7:55pm Greyhound
Zanesville 12/24/04 3:35pm London, KY 12/24/04 11:30pm Greyhound
London, KY 12/28/04 2:05pm Pittsburgh, PA 12/29/04 Greyhound
Pittsburgh, PA 1/1/05 10:30pm Chicago, IL 1/2/05 7:45am Amtrak
Chicago, IL 1/4/05 2:10pm St Paul, MN 1/4/05 10:25pm Amtrak

Contact has been made, or at least attempted with parties on various segments of this journey. =)

Additionally, I have registered for the TRB Annual Meeting in DC, and reserved a room in the Washington International Student Center hostel. James recommended that I go to this twenties group thing on friday evening, as a way to meet thoughtful homos of my age group. It sounds like something to try.

Also considering joining the twin cities gay men’s chorus, and re-visiting my attempts at starting a homo-oriented reading group (or two) around here.

To all non-minnesotans bitching about the cold

To all non-minnesotans bitching about the cold, I say this: suck on it.

Until you have to wear long underwear beneath your pants when going outside because pants alone aren’t enough to prevent frostbite on your thighs, don’t talk to me about cold.

I once again have the “butch because I live someplace cold” thing going on. Yay! =)

sharing from nytimes

When (an old friend of Simon’s, who works for PIRG and is therefore awesome, also my most likely candidate for roommate had I ended up living in chicago) posted a heartwarming christmas story from the nytimes opinion page, written by Maureen Dowd, I went browsing around for other items on the same page. I also found one talking about the “year of the passion”, an article discussing the current prominence of fundamentalist christianity.

And it reminded me of a couple of things over dinner. One, my recent “antagonism” towards christianity, which led to come out as a christian in his first post, and Two my plans for a transcontinental bikeride.

I would like to reiterate my religious beliefs and my attitudes towards believers. Which is that we’re all shooting in the dark on some questions: What is the nature of consciousness/self-awareness? Where did the world come from? What happens when we die? Is there a reality beyond the one that we perceive with our five senses? I further claim that the answers to these questions are unknowable. That is, I don’t doubt there is an answer to it. I strongly suspect that what we see is the only reality, that there is no god, that when we die our minds/awarenesses/consciousnesses end. Lights out, game over. And I really have no flippin’ clue where the universe came from. That doesn’t mean that I will accept the first plausible answer as absolute truth. I accept that it is theoretically possible that an omnipotent entity created the world, complete with fossils (carbon dated for extra humor value), oil, etc, and even that such an entity cares deeply about who I have sex with and exactly how I have sex with them. But I consider it functionally infinitesimally unlikely. Your guess is as good as mine no matter how certain you kid yourself into believing you are about it. And so long as you don’t go around proclaiming your superiority or my inferiority, we’ll get along fine. Also, if you insist on talking to me at length about your imaginary friend after I’ve indicated disinterest in the topic, well….

The other item was my transcontinental bikeride. The reputed conservative resurgence and triumph of intolerance throughout the country scared me. Poor atheist, homo like me gets caught somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, likely to get his head blown off by some bible-thumping fanatic trying to protect the community from my taint. It’d only take one, and I’d be spending alot of my planned three-months out in the middle of nowhere. Add that on to the risk of being run over by a semi or a soccer mom (or her partying teen kids) and it starts to look pretty daunting. But I could get run over by the semi, soccer mom, or drunkard teens here. And I think it’s important for me to meet people I wouldn’t normally. I don’t think there are as many homo-haters as the newspapers say. I think it’s also pretty important for people who normally would never run into anyone like me to meet me, and to see that I don’t bite. I still want to do the bike ride, and I ain’t gonna let this stop me. Hell, I didn’t freak out flying in late september of ’01, I ain’t gonna freak out over this one.

Thoughts on ambition

So, there seem to be many loose screws out there trying twenty billion different types of eco-tech-save-the-world-wonders. I want the job of being the screwdriver (okay, really, I just wanted to say that phrase). But I would like the job of coordinating, evaluating, and promoting (or not, for the unworthy) such efforts. I’d get to deal with hippy nerds all day, that’d be rockin’.

Surely there are people who do that out & about in the real world. Hmmmm.

TRB conference in DC in January

Minneapolis (MSP) Jan 06 5:10 pm to Washington (IAD) Jan 06 8:37 pm
Washington (IAD) Jan 13 6:18 pm to Minneapolis (MSP) Jan 13 8:14 pm

Heading out to DC for the Annual TRB Meeting. Making hostel reservations pronto, just to be sure. But if any kind dc souls would like to relieve my pocketbook for an evening or two, and bask in the joy of my presence on their couch, I’d be delighted to (be) accomodate(d). =) The conference doesn’t start until the 9th, so I’ll have some extra time to tool around before things start happening.

Currently planning on staying at the Washington International Student Center. It’s tres close to the Hilton that is one of the three hotels in the conference. Hopefully, there will also be a wireless-enabled coffeeshop somewhere around there. =)

Another myers-briggs-thing

So this one strikes me as pretty realistic. It calls me an INTP (and I think the balance does tip more T than F for me) but an ENFP wannabe. INFP for who I’d want to date, I’m a bit more skeptical on. I’ve noticed that I tend to go for the quiet ones, or sometimes the private ones. I also tend to prefer abstract thinkers. But I do so like rationals (even if we are occasionally a bit dull.) I also like people with a gentle organizing hand (the light J’s, as it were).

Enh. Yay for time-wasty-ness. =)

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