12 September 2007

Political Correctness and a life update

For the record, I find political correctness to be really annoying and pretentious. The newest example of why it is pointless that I have stumbled across was on a handout for a high school Spanish class. It was about what to expect from a 'world language' learning process. Now what was wrong with the phrase 'foreign language?' When you learn a language that is not your own, does the word 'foreign' not apply? What does changing that word to 'world' do for us? It gives us a vague, meaningless phrase. As if someone could learn a non-worldly language?

Now, I understand that there are lots of people that have serious xenophobic issues and I have little doubt that all of us have our stereotyping racist/sexist/classist/etc. tendencies. But changing the terminology is not going to magically change our prejudices. In fact, I think it allows them to continue to exist, because we use this meaningless language, instead of recognizing that when we see something foreign we have a strong tendency to label it as bad. Why not instead continue calling foreign languages foreign, but make a serious campaign to realize that something can be foreign and very enjoyable. And even if it's foreign and we don't enjoy it, we don't have to label it as bad. We can just recognize that it is not for us. Perhaps, I'm asking too much, but too much or not, I just don't see how changing the terminology because we are afraid of certain people's prejudices associated with that word, is going to help the situation.

In personal notes, Sunday night, I felt really comfortable at Chipotle for the first time. It just seemed like I knew a lot better what I was doing and didn't have to think as hard to remember stuff. I'm sure I'll feel more and more loose as the stuff becomes habit. I think it's a bit of a social shock, too, that I'm getting used to. I'm right back in the middle of college culture working there. It's really fun in a lot of ways. Sometimes it can be frustrating, though, because, my schedule and life don't really fit a lot of 'college life' anymore. I closed last night, which also went well. I'm closing again tonite and Thursday night. I'm going to be tired by the end of this.

To cap it all off, lori and I are leaving at 5am on Friday morning to go hike around on South Manitou Island. Fortunately, lori will be able to go to bed early on Thursday night, and she'll drive most of the 4 hours up to Leland. I'll basically just crawl out of bed at 4:55 am, throw something resembling clothing on and then crawl into the back of the Vibe to sleep for at least a good part of the trip.

I'm actually really excited about SMI. We're going to be hiking about 2 miles from where we get dropped off by the ferry, then setting up camp and day hiking. That means, we don't have to try to pack super light and we can cover a lot of ground in a day, and hike later, since camp will be already set up and waiting for us. From all appearances, it looks like the island is amazingly beautiful. Look for pictures on my Picasa site (picasaweb.google.com/bioethicsman) sometime early next week.

06 September 2007

Things have been a little crazy

Rumor has it that my life has been crazy for the last week or two. I am here to confirm that yes, it truly has been. I’ve begun a second job at Chipotle Mexican Grill in East Lansing, so I’m now working 40-50 hours a week. Last week was especially crazy. I closed Monday and Tuesday at Chipotle, and Tuesday was a free burrito day. Monday night was crazy because we were busy, since it was the first day of classes, and the place was crazy since all kinds of prep had to be done for the free burrito day. Free burrito day itself is inherently crazy. I think it was about an average of a burrito every 8-9 seconds. Worst of all, I got to do dishes most of the time I was there (2:30-11:45), with an hour break in the evening and helping close up front and in the lobby after 10:45.

Then I went to Fenton Wednesday afternoon, after work, in order to give some attention to some family craziness. Five well spent hours, but spent hours nonetheless.

I then had some time Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon to finish preparing for a backpacking trip to Pictured Rocks. I picked lori up at work at 3pm on Thursday. We managed to get on the road by 3:30, but then managed to get in a really dumb fight, which made the ride up north a little bitter tasting. After driving in the dark down some glorified two-tracks, we arrived at the Twelve Mile Beach trailhead parking lot. We slept in the back of the car for a few hours, got up at 5:30am and jumped on our shuttle at 7am. Finally, after a bit of a runaround to get our backcountry passes we were on the trail.

Hiking was amazing. Pictured Rocks is beautiful, incredible really. If you want to see pictures, check out our album at www.picasaweb.google.com/bioethicsman. The trail is really easy to hike and the weather was incredible: warm, but not too warm, no rain, cool at night. Our trip was perfectly paced. We got to have nice long lunches at the beaches and arrived to our camps by late afternoon or early evening.

Of course, all of this was too good to last. On the second morning out, after breaking camp, on the way down to have breakfast at the beach, I fell in a stream and knocked my head on the stone bottom. I didn’t crack it open, but I was pretty woozy, wet, and my head hurt. So, I’m dizzy and soggy, and it turns out the the biting stable flies hunker down overnight in the sand, because it is warm from the sunlight, which means I’m trying to make breakfast while being bit by these nasty little flies. I was still dizzy an hour later when we finished breakfast and had our packs ready to go, and we decided it would be best to head out to the nearest parking lot, instead of heading further in and ending up stranded if my head wasn’t ok. So we took several hours to hike out 3 miles. By the end of it, I was pretty glad we had called it quits. Though my head only hurt for that day, it was really pounding pretty good by the time we got to the parking lot. Fortunately, we were able to have me hitch a ride to our car and lori and I started a round about drive home. We stopped at Taqhuamenon Falls, and then made it over the bridge by 9:30 Monday night, which was good since the 50th anniversary bridge walk was the next morning. Since every hotel within an hour drive of the bridge was said to be full, we parked at a county park lot west of the bridge 10 miles and slept in the car again. We drove the Tunnel of Trees scenic drive down to Harbor Springs, then through Charlevoix and back to I-75, then 127, which took us home.

It was nice to have Tuesday off for lori and I to unpack, clean up and relax at home together before returning to the grind. We got most of our unpacking work done and I was able to crash for most of the afternoon to recover from all the craziness of the week.

Well, that’s how things have been. I’m closing again at Chipotle tonite, meaning I’ll miss the last soccer game of the season ☹. I couldn’t find someone to switch the shift with me. Fortunately, I’m off Friday and Saturday night, so I’ll get to relax a lot this weekend. I’m looking forward to it . . .