Reunion trip part 2

(long self-indulgent story alert)

If you're really going to subject yourself to this, at least make sure you read part 1 below first.

The main part of the story is basically over. This post will be mostly about my impressions on being back in WV and how it's changed my perspective on life (no, seriously). But I'll wrap up the events as we go along.

I left you off when RCR and I were scooting out the backdoor of the nicest hotel in P-ville. We went back to JB's, I tried to go back to sleep, and RCR went back to DC.

JB had his gf to hang out with, and I spent the next couple days hanging out with Smitten Girl. I don't really want to discuss her up here though, even though this is fairly anonymous. Long story short, she has a bf and wasn't going to cheat on him. This was the right thing to do, and I was a perfect gentleman. If you want to know more, call me and I'll talk about it.

So that takes care of Monday and Tuesday. Remember my good buddy Artificial Chicken? I never got a chance to see him enough, so I drove down to his place on Wednesday to stay the night.

I told his wife I'd be there by 5pm, but I intended on getting there earlier. I woke up in JB's basement -- did I mention that it's ridiculously off the hook swank now? -- and figured I had a few more hours to sleep. Just to be safe I checked the time. 1:58PM. Oh my.

Driving straight there without a shower or anything, I got there at 4:30PM reeking of booze. We ate dinner and then I went with AC to his church band practice. I wondered if they would let me in, being an unbeliever and all. Of course they did and they were all very nice, except the guy who tried to convert me. He was kind of a putz. Religious people, seriously, don't try to convert me unless you want to annoy me. If I want to be religious, I'll just start being religious. Just sayin'.

Which brings up an interesting point. We had a very cool discussion on the drive over and AC insisted that he rejects the term "religious" for himself. He says he's Christian, and that there's a difference.

I hope I don't butcher the reasoning here, but basically it boils down to that Catholics and their ilk are religious and Christian, but churches like his are simply Christian. To him "religious" means you feel guilty all the time and you can just buy your salvation through the priest (he obviously has a beef with the Catholic church). He said being Christian means you recognize you have problems in your life and that you need God's help, and it's that pursuit of God through Jesus that brings Christians like his church together.

It seems like a semantic trick, and I suppose maybe it is, but what I think matters most here is that he sees a distinction between just buying your salvation and truly earning it. How he names it is arbitrary.

I'm reading a really good book, The Elegant Universe, about super string theory, the supposed Theory of Everything, which could explain the entire universe someday. Religious people never like this subject (using the term loosely) and he naturally bristled at it. I agree that the thought of teeny tiny dimensions curled up all over space-time is kind of far fetched, but so were Einstein's theories of relativity when they were first proposed. And it does unify gravity with quantum physics, so all four forces are accounted for.

There are problems with it of course. Super string theory suggests the existence of lots of particles that we don't observe, and some of them would require a collider on the scale of the circumference of the Earth to test for. So it's no slam dunk by any means. But it does the best job of explaining the universe at this time.

Then I suggested he read Angels and Demons, the precursor book to The Da Vinci Code. In it there is a character who discovers a way to create matter and anti-matter using huge amounts of energy. Every particle of matter has to be created with a corresponding anti-particle. If they come into contact, they would annihilate each other and give off a tremendous amount of energy, the same amount needed to create them.

The implications of this, as one of the characters sees it, is that it shows that a being could have created the universe, because it's possible to create matter out of nothing. All it would need is energy and the ability to separate the matter and anti-matter. Keep in mind this is fiction, and as far as I know no one has ever created matter and anti-matter before. Still, it's an interesting philosophy.

Religion and particle physics aside, there was one really awesome aspect of AC's church: they have an electronic drumkit. When they were done, AC asked me to come up and jam with him. I haven't picked up a drumstick in at least 10 years. I was shaky at first, but it came right back.

We had an awesome 20 minute jam. I haven't felt like that since I was in highschool, when we used to jam all the time. I forgot how rewarding it was. I had dopamine coursing throughout my body and I didn't even drink any alcohol to get it there! Amazing!

This was more major of an event than you might think. I'm going out looking for one of those things tomorrow. I can turn it up on the amp if I want, or just use headphones and not annoy the neighbors. This is earth shattering for me. I have been without a musical intrument that I wanted to play for years and years.

And yeah, a real one would be much better, but I can't have one of those in an apartment building. Still, an electronic drumkit takes some getting used to. I hit the crash and it was sustaining too long, so I reached up to muffle it. That doesn't work on an electronic kit. I also tried to hit a few rimshots. Nope, not working either. [editors note: those functions work on higher end models]

There are a whole bunch of presets and I was playing with them. There's one that has voices on all but the essential drums, so you can keep a beat going and toss in an "Aaaaaaallllllright!" or an "Oh YEAH baby!" Awesome.

We picked up beer and vodka on the way home from church. Fun for the whole family! Yes, more drinking. Hey, that's what AC and his wife wanted to do. It would have been rude not to drink. I definitely wasn't up to my usual ways that night, but that wasn't the point. I was there to hang out with AC and his wife and that's what we did.

It felt so good to just chill on the back porch with him and drink beers and bullshit about the dual wave/particle nature of light and whatnot. I just don't have friends like him out here (I think I will be seeing more of JB after this). He went to bed around 1:30AM and I stayed up until like 5AM, trying my best to polish off that bottle of Vladimir. My heart wasn't in it, but I wasn't going to bed. [editors note: RCR used to dance around my basement in highschool with a bottle of Vladimir saying "Aye Vladi!" Good times]

Sometime around 3 or 4 I realized that I didn't want to be a lawyer. I'm not going to say I didn't want to be a lawyer anymore, because that would imply that I wanted that to begin with. I have no idea why I thought this was a good idea.

Luckily for me, I figured out what I do want. I'm not positive about the job, though I have some ideas. But I know where I want to be. I want a smallish but nice house on top of a hill, kind of secluded, with two dogs and a tesla coil. And why not a jacob's ladder while I'm at it? That would be effin' sweet! Hey, at least I have a dream, silly though it may be.

One of the dogs will be named Geddy. I also like Willy, but that name is currently taken by JB's cat. I called him that once and JB liked it enough to rename his cat. Cool.

This is the second epiphany I had over this trip. Those together would be that I need an electronic drumkit, and I know what my medium term goal is. But it doesn't stop there.

People always say that west coasters are rude. At least that's what they think of us in WV. I always disputed this, but now I think they may have a point. Everything in WV is a joke. Everyone is bullshitting with each other and making fun of themselves or each other, and it's a hoot.

If the lady at the grocery store misses the scanner on an item, you can say, "Having trouble with the scanner?" and she'll laugh and say, "Ahh-ve been doin' this fer 5 yeeeaars and I steel cahn't do the eggs on the first try!" and then it's a 5 minute conversation about nothing or everything. 5 minutes doesn't seem like a long time, but you notice it when it's gone.

And if you say "I'm tarred" everyone knows exactly what you mean and will probably go get you a beer. See, being "tarred" means feeling exhausted physically. Being "tired" means sleepy. This is what I was talking about in the beginning of the last post. Aren't you glad you held onto that little nugget until now?

I was at a bar last night here in Seattle and was being made fun of for drinking Miller High Life. I can handle that. Hey, cheap beer. I'm not paying 7 bucks for a mixed drink when there are 3 dollar beers. Happy hour here is still more expensive than normal prices in WV, but that's beside the point.

The guy next to me ordered one at the same time and I said, "Livin' the high life too, huh?" all friendly like. He just said, "yeah" and abruptly walked away. That would have been a 10 minute conversation in WV. I mean, the possibilities for self deprecation were endless.

Maybe it's just big cities in general, and maybe it's just by comparison, but I definitely notice the coldness here now. I can't help shaking the feeling that outside of JB, I don't have any truly close personal friends anywhere nearby (not counting my brother and his family).

That's epiphany three, how much I value a warm human spirit. I need to try harder to surround myself with as many warm and genuine people as I can find. I'm not really sure where these feelings came from, but I just want to shower goodness on someone, to thank someone for being who they are, but there's no one here who deserves it. Granted, I haven't been trying very hard to find them.

I don't give a shit if you think I'm lame or not, butthead (you know who you are).

There's an epiphany four, but I'm keeping that one to myself.

I'm making sure to go back to P-ville more often. I feel like a new person. It completely grounded me and opened my eyes to at least 4 fundamental things about my life. It may seem trivial to you, I don't know. But I didn't expect to find these things at all, and I certainly never thought I'd find it in WV. I am definitely visiting there more often.

Thursday I got up and flew home. The flight was uneventful, except that a good friend kept me entertained with text messages during my layover. And I don't understand why anyone would choose a seat other than the window.

So yeah. Sorry this one wasn't all about the boozin' and the cussin'. Every yin has a yang, etc. I'm just a little overwhelmed with all this new information to process. But I'm glad I'm feeling this way. I haven't felt emotions this strongly or seen such a clear picture of what I want in a long time. I forgot what it was like.