You rock, Barack

I have a crush on Barack Obama. Don't worry, Brock knows this, and I think he's okay with it. Right now I'm watching The Daily Show from last Wednesday (hey, I know it's a little late, but that's what DVRs are for), on which Barack Obama showed once again why I have a crush on him. He's smart, he's funny, and he's darned cute. I haven't yet decided if I think he'd be a good president, but he's a lot more appealing than a whole lot of the other goofs who think they're running (you know, the ones who get to be in 47 debates now, and by next November no one will remember who they are, if anyone ever knew who they were in the first place). In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I have voted for Barack Obama before, so obviously I think the guy has some good things to say. The thing that scares me is that, in a country that could elect our current president twice, I have little faith (although a lot of hope) that somebody like Barack Obama can cut through the clutter and make people pay attention...and believe that the mess(es) we're in can get fixed.

By the way, I can't take credit for the title of this post. Some people in The Daily Show's audience yelled it when Barack took the stage, but it pretty much sums it all up. Rock on, Barack. Rock on.

Ack.

I decided to start graduate school this fall. The more accurate way to put that is that I thought I might want to go to grad school, and then my family thought it was a great idea and got really enthusiastic about it, and that kind of rubbed off on me, so now I'm going. Tonight was orientation at the university and it pretty much freaked me out. I'm simultaneously excited and terrified - remembering why I've always liked school but also totally afraid that with work, husband, kid, family, friends and my need for an inordinate amount of sleep, I may not be able to hack it.

I'll figure it out. I'll do okay. (I say this not to convince you, but to convince myself.) But it's been quite awhile since I had to worry about a syllabus or reading chapters and chapters and chapters of dry textbooks at a time. Of course, I was one of the weirdos in college who actually did ALL of the reading for every class, without fail, and then made color-coded notes. But school was pretty much my only major or difficult responsibility then, and things are different now. So I'm kind of freaking out.

In a related note, university libraries have come a long way since I graduated from Purdue in 2000. Then and there, you could only look up library materials using a computer IN a library, and then the book/journal/whatever that you wanted may not actually even be in the library you were in, but rather in any of the dozen or so other libraries on campus. Thus, you could spend entire weekend days running around campus, trying to get all the resources you wanted for a paper. Oh yeah, and then you had to pay four cents a page (using your Copy Card) to photocopy journal articles. Now apparently you just go to the library website, look up what you want, put in your student ID number and get online access to journal articles. If they don't have the book you want, but another library does, they'll just get it for you and tell you when it's in. Do you know how much of my life I wasted going in and out of campus libraries? I felt old when I learned about the library at orientation this evening. ("Back in my day, we had to actually walk across campus to the library and then PAY to photocopy pages!")

I'm still freaking out. I'll be okay.

"Oh sh*t!"...my storm story

Yesterday there was a gigunga storm at my office. A "major weather event," as it were. Two important things to note here:
1. I have a long-held, inconsolable fear of tornadoes.
2. I am not all that great in personal crisis situations. (I actually do okay with other people's crises...but the ones involving me are another story.)

What we had wasn't actually a tornado, but it was bad. Somebody said it was a "microburst." If you don't know what a microburst is, Wikipedia has some good, albeit very science-y, information. I was on the phone with my husband when the storm hit, and I inadvertently threw the phone when the electricity went out (this is right after someone screamed, "Run for the stairwell!" and right before my panic attack officially began). Apparently, although I thought the phone was dead, it wasn't...Brock got hold of me on my cell phone and informed me he was still listening to the storm through my dangling land line. (I also threw a piece of cake I'd just been eating because it was someone's last day at work...and found out later I had actually hit the trash can.)

So I spent the storm huddled in a stairwell with my work buddies, freaking out. On the other side of the stairwell wall, outside the building, was what you see in the photo above. Ack. There was a lot of damage in the surrounding area, and it was terrifying. We were just right in the middle of this very localized, straight path of destruction.

It's actually a really long story, but since it's a day later and I'm much calmer about the whole thing, here are simply some highlights and general observations:
1. I'm fine, and my family is fine, and all my friends are fine, and everyone I work with is fine.
2. I know at least two people whose cars were completely totaled by giant trees that used to be in the ground...and aren't anymore.
3. I never heard a weather siren, which kind of makes me mad.
4. I picked the wrong day to wear a skirt and sandals.
5. I actually saw a funnel cloud when a second wave of storms hit. It was way up in the sky and far away, but it was there. And I'm not the only one who saw it, so I know I didn't have a panic-induced hallucination.
6. My friends Jen and Doug, and our daycare provider, are all awesome people who came through in an emergency. The first two got me home safely while my car was being held hostage by a downed power line (car is fine, power line is not) and the last one made it so I didn't have to worry about my daughter at all during the whole thing.
7. I hope I'm never in a real tornado, because this not-really-a-tornado was enough to freak me out for maybe forever.
8. I saw wind literally blow in every possible direction at once. Big trees in the same parking lot fell in several different directions. It looked like a movie.
9. I will never, ever understand people who go outside when it's storming like that. THAT'S WHERE THE STORM IS, PEOPLE! STAY INSIDE LIKE YOUR MOTHER TOLD YOU! And for goodness' sake, don't go out there with your umbrella up, unless you want all your friends to start calling you "Rod," as in, "Lighting Rod."
10. I'm really glad it's all over.

Here's what's wrong with the Egg McMuffin

Are you listening, McDonald's?

I love Egg McMuffins. I specifically love the Sausage McMuffin with Egg, although I've never understood why they don't call it the Sausage and Egg McMuffin. It's a lot easier to say. But anyway...I hit the drive through this morning for a McMuffin because I didn't have time for breakfast at home, and it sounded good. (I could have bought breakfast at work, but that's complicated because then I'd have to remember to take my dirty dishes back to the cafeteria.) I know I shouldn't eat McMuffins, and I really, really try not to do it very often, but sometimes, a girl's just gotta have a McMuffin.

So here's what's wrong with them: it's the cheese. It's totally in the wrong place. I like cheese on my sandwich, breakfast or otherwise, to either be right under the top bun, or right on top of the meat, if there is meat in the sandwich. (Example: bun, pickles, CHEESE, hamburger, bun OR bun, CHEESE, turkey, bun.) A Sausage McMuffin with Egg goes like this: muffin, egg, sausage, cheese, muffin (or vice versa, but that's also totally wrong because everyone knows egg on the bottom in this situation is just weird). I think McDonald's has two options if they want to make this right: muffin, cheese, egg, sausage, muffin OR muffin, egg, cheese, sausage, muffin. I would prefer the latter - wouldn't the melty cheese just do the trick to hold the egg and sausage together? - but either would be better than the current configuration, in which the egg and sausage don't stick together and the sandwich layers slip, and then the buns don't match up anymore, and then it's really frustrating, especially when you're trying to eat it in the car.

So that's what I think about McMuffins. And you know how yesterday I said I'd try to post things that were remotely interesting to other people? Clearly I didn't mean that, or I wouldn't have just spent hundreds of words on a very fattening, terrible for you, yet utterly delicious breakfast sandwich.

I am not a psychic eggplant

I always said that Psychic Eggplant would be a great name for a punk band. Since I have finally come to terms with the fact that I will never have a punk band named Psychic Eggplant (except on Guitar Hero II), I decided to use the name for my blog instead.

I probably won't post consistently, or maybe even often. I will try to post things that are at least remotely interesting to other people. But the bottom line is that with a kid, a husband, two cats, a job, a house and however many other responsibilities, I just wanted somewhere to talk about whatever I feel like talking about.

Here's what I think is awesome about blogs: they completely encourage the narcissistic tendency to talk about yourself as much as you want. Real life is not like that. Awesome.