Foot mystery baffles Mounties

this has been open in a tab in my browser for like two weeks or something. i wanted to make sure nobody missed it. please do your part to help the mounties. they... they need all the help they can get. especially when things are like this.
i know i have been too long in posting when the wounds referred to in the earlier one have healed (took forever) and i have picked up a new stupid injury. i am no fan of overhead lighting, and so unless more light is required i just use the stand lamp most of the time. the thing is, the lamp is located on the far end of the room from the door, and so i have to walk through a pretty dark room. normally, this is not a problem, as i have lived here for a while and the layout of various shit is pretty set in my mind. well, it has been kind of windy and something must have happened to the pbr 40s i use to keep the door from blowing shut because the door hadn't completely closed but it did make it like a third of the way. the outcome of this was that i walked directly into the side of the door. with my face. i have like a half-inch cut above my right eyebrow now. i wasn't like running to go downstairs and go to bed or anything, but i hit that fucker hard.
i don't know why it has been so long. mostly laziness i guess. i have done a few things. i currently have a ps3 in the room where i would normally do this, and that is probably a factor. there is a public defender lady character in gta4, and someone who worked on the game must have gone to law school. because i know like thirty of those chicks. i haven't been playing the game much lately because i am stuck on a couple of missions that require me to drive a motorcycle, and i am about as good at that in-game as i imagine i would be in real life.
i went to pittsburgh last weekend to see the avett brothers. i had probably heard a couple dozen of their songs once or twice a piece, and enjoyed it, but the show really blew me away. i have never seen such an enthusiastic crowd at a venue that wasn't selling booze. it was at some arts fest thing that runs a few weeks, but a couple thousand people were at the stage for the show. there was a beer tent type thing way off on the outskirts of the event, but you couldn't take your beer out of a cordoned-off hundred square foot or so area. not ideal. but i didn't need to waste money on overpriced crappy beer anyway. they played for quite a long time, and all night it kept threatening to storm. we felt a few drops and saw some lightning and heard some thunder, but it never happened. right when we got back to the parking garage, though, the floodgates opened. pretty impressive timing. in any event, those guys brought it in a big way. i wasn't sure how well it would translate live, but it couldn't have been any better. i would say it is the best show ive seen all year, but tlg last month still takes the cake for me personally.
i also enjoyed pittsburgh itself. they apparently do not like to be considered a midwestern city, but they totally are. it is a pretty big city though. not like philly big or chicago big, but big. it had a good feel to it though. and a shit-ton of bridges. and like no normal bridges for smaller rivers; they were all suspension bridges. it was kind of strange to see short bridges like that. they were all also painted an ugly shade of yellow. i think most shades of yellow are kind of ugly, though. went down to the point, which is where all three of the rivers come together. there was a really kick-ass fountain, and an historic fort. most of the park was closed off though, for no apparent reason. lots of inexplicable fencing. it is not like we did extensive sight-seeing or anything, but from my limited impression of the city, i liked it.
the drive between here and there was another thing too. central pennsylvania is pretty damn beautiful if you ask me. it has a real novel feel for me since everything back home is so damn flat by comparison. the route we took kept us closer to the poconos, and so things were kind of mountainous. forests always look nice, but they look even sweeter when you get to see them presented on a slant where you can really appreciate the sheer number of trees and then the sheer number of leaves. the roadkill was different too. couple of porcupines, and way more deer than i ever saw back home. we hit some pretty huge bugs that left like silver-dollar size splatters on the windshield. there were so many cicadas at some points that you could hear them clearly buzzing even with the windows down and the music up at 70 mph. it is a really fucking long state though, just keeps going and going. when i go on long rides i always wonder what all those people who live in the sticks do for a living.
on the course of the drive i also had my first full-fledged sheetz experience. a sheetz is kind of like a wawa but they all have gas and the food is better. for those unfamiliar with both sheetz and wawa, allow me to elaborate. they are kind of like really good gas stations, you know the ones that have been redone in the last ten years and are always super well-lit and and way too much selection of everything. but they also have like a made-to-order deli. but it is not just like sandwiches; they have like a grill and a fryer too. so the food is actually better than fast food and way cheaper. overall, a pretty good package. i just can't believe that this concept hasn't caught on nationwide. i mean it is a proven business plan, and it is super simple. the ordering is all touch screen and stuff. just seems like a great idea to me. hell, in other locations they could probably even have beer. that would be about as much as one could reasonably expect from a convenience establishment.
other than that journey, i don't know. i've been working some. it is tough when you don't have to go anywhere and accountablility is not what it might be. i might even get paid sometime. looking forward to that for sure; it has been a long time coming. i did go out for lunch with the prof and the other research assistant, who just happens to be the girl from my class that i have complained about on here a few times. she was actually super decent in this context. the food was pretty good; mexican cuisine here is not at its best. i had chicken enchiladas with mole sauce. not like mole the animal, like moe-lay. they were pretty good but the sauce was a little much; just kind of overpowering. nice change of pace though. the appetizers were kick-ass, like these little mexican flatbread things with black beans, guacamole, and some sour cream. delish. they brought out the worst tortilla chips ever though. these were the shittiest (not marked, awesome) tortilla chips of all time.
that actually reminds me, i should mention for anyone who cares and doesn't know, i am going home soon, on like the second. i am looking forward to people most, but el matador tortilla chips are not far down on the list. it has been too long. they are gonna rock. this will be kind of different, because i am riding both ways and not flying at all. the trip is always shorter than i expect though, and i am not driving at all on the way there so it should blow by pretty quickly. riding back out also means i can haul my brewing equipment, and i am looking forward to that in a big way. i was originally going to go to rothbury, but i am too broke. i still expect to have a thoroughly decent time.
i learned the best word/phrase in the french language today: loup garou. this is french for werewolf. this amuses me to no end, i am not even sure why, but ever since i found out it keeps popping back into my mind. this is okay, because i usually chuckle. this is but one of the many delights dinosaur comics has brought me. if i wasn't so lazy, i would probably change my links so that qwantz was under funniest. if you've never taken the chance to check it out, you probably should. a girl from my class asked me about it once because she had separately noticed me and a couple people i know reading it at various low points in classes. i enthusiastically tried to sum it up: "it's great! philosophy, language, religion, all sorts of stuff! all with talking dinosaurs! the fact that the art never significantly changes makes it even better!" yeah, she just kind of gave me one of those 'okay, you're weird' looks. well whatever. dinosaur comics is the shit, and don't you forget it.
back to this going home thing for a moment. i will of course, miss my pretty kitties. but i think it would just be too much trouble to take them along, even if i am riding and not flying. i don't think they'd really like it. my sister and her boyfriend will be able to take care of them though since it is not like christmas when everyone leaves. the cats and and those two get along pretty famously though, so all should be well. it has stayed fairly hot and so i haven't seen a lot of the cats as they stay in the cooler areas downstairs. they just followed me up though, and i was kind of confused about it. i think i figured it out though. i shook a plastic dry roasted peanuts container, and they used to have treats we would shake that sounded like that. i should get these guys some treats again, i do love them so. on the other hand, their food is also damn expensive enough as it is. my food budget for a month is not so far from what it is for them. however, they do not require tobacco or alcohol or laundry or anything. or if they do this at least some of the stuff for them i do not have to pay for.
glad i could bring a few people up to speed. but most importantly, consider the foot mystery and those poor baffled mounties. they need you. most times, people like to say something about not being a hero. most times being bank robberies, that is. but now, i am here, telling you to be a hero. help the mounties crack the case.