Anaheim Day 1

Little late in the day, but today is National HIV Testing Day. Also, you can continue to donate to my run for another 2 weeks before they yell at me. I need somewhere between 300-400 dollars more. Go here to do so and see the other winner sponsors.

I'm in Anaheim and I think my hotel room is pretty decent but the air is stale and of course you can't open a window. I thought the Anaheim convention/disneyland area was a lot more compact than it is. Turns out I'm 1.9 miles away from the convention center. Its not a bad walk, but I'm taking the shuttle buses to cut down on knee pressure before my 12 mile run tomorrow. The weather is nice. I forgot that humidity is nill in California. The run should be good as a result. Restaurants here are worthless. I cannot find a non-chain or non-hotel restaurant for the life of me. This bugs me because I'm going to need to eat decently to make up for that mega-run.

My plane here was pretty annoying. Librarians are the slowest people of all time to board. All time. They stand in the aisle, dig through papers before putting shit in the overhead bins, and shuffle their abnormally bulbous butts into their seats. All while talking about stupid library crap. Just put your shit up there and let people through! As a result we were DELAYED because of these dorks. Then the lavatory had an external leak and "water" was falling out of the plane! So more delay. To make matters worse, I had a raging awful sinus headache. I still do. So four hours of sinus pain and listening to librarians say things like "25-37 year olds don't use the library. They don't even come in to download!" "tsk tsk" Uhhh, download? What? Didn't a study come out a few months ago saying my age group is a major growing population of library use? Whatever ladies. They also criticized netflix. "My son uses netflix for rentals and not the library." Ok lady. The in-flight movie was Penelope, that Christina Ricci movie where she's got a pig nose. Horrible.

I guess it sounds like I hate librarians, and I sort of do. But there are some super awesome ones out there - my old USF workers, many of my current coworkers, Daina, Alycia, Tim, Anne Marie, Lisa, rad reffers, and a select few other gems. Interestingly, they all work for colleges or for fancy DC ALA offices. No public or school librarians...

I'm supposed to meet up with Daina later for dinner, but I'm still feeling grody and crabby so I don't know if it'll happen. I should just suck it up and go because when else am I going to see her? I have to get up early and really just want to veg out with a DVD I brought with me from NETFLIX.

Landed in DC

I just got into my hotel room in DC, and am happy to learn it has free wireless. My job's paying for the trip so I may go wild and order room service later too! Scary.

The people in the seats next to me on the plane were pretty amazing. One was from Switzerland, under 18, and one was in college at some school in southern Illinois that is small. The Swiss guy kept talking about how the US made him feel like a baby with all the rules and restrictions on age. The girl told him all about her sorority and how all the girls live in a house together, and all the boys in frats live in houses together. Swiss man said "what is wrong with the US? Why so segregated? Why can't you have alcohol in your house? I don't understand why the men can and you can't!" Co-ed giggles and is like "i dunno those are just the rules, beats me." So here you have this Swiss guy who has been saying that Americans are mostly dumb and here you have a real life dumb American in her natural habitat. But the absolute best part of the conversation was when she told him:

"I can tell when people are Italian because they have darker skin and hair. I can also tell Polish people and Jewish people too. I can just tell in their faces if they are Polish or Jewish."

Uhh...I really wanted to ask her what she thought I was but refrained because she then said to the guy, "you look Jewish, are you?"

Guy: "No. I'm atheist"

Co-ed: "Huh? What? You don't believe in God? Weird."

Guy: "Nobody is really religious in Switzerland, its much more an American thing to be very religious."

Co-ed: "Whoa"

Me: (returns to reading the God Delusion)
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So here I am, checking the free weekly here for food ideas for tonight and the cover story is about women being harassed by cat-callers on the street. The author can't believe it happens to some women more than once a day, so he follows this woman around who gets it nonstop. Best quote:

“It depends on what she looks like,” adds Daniel Smallwood, a 16-year-old in a red polo shirt and a visor turned backward. “If she’s a slut, you have to treat her like a slut. If she’s not, I say, ‘How you doing young lady?’ Everybody says ‘baby’ or ‘shorty.’ I say ‘young lady.’

Off to sneak in a quick nap then find dinner.