Attack!

Recently I ate some fast food. Some fast food with ketchup. Then I thought, "wait a second, I thought tomatoes are giving people salmonella..." Aren't they? Then what goop are we eating with our fries that no one seems alarmed about? How long do these liquid salt packets sit boxed up in warehouses? Months? From CNN.com:

"The reported advance in the investigation came as the toll mounted, with 552 people identified as having contracted the strain of Salmonella Saintpaul since April in 32 states and the District of Columbia."

I searched and searched, but I could not find the irritable scientist who decided to bacteria slap the Apostle. Even Wikipedia had nothing.

In case you do get sick, this lawyer seems like the guy to call.

2 Things

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Rethinking Richmond

This past weekend I went up to the capital of VA to see Rachel. She was one of 15 people accepted to do bio-med research at VCU for the summer. That's right. Genius.

The first time I walked aimlessly around Richmond was years ago (hey Chip and Lauren). This time Rachel and I walked at least eight miles, scoping out Carytown, coffee shops and the History Museum.

Carytown: Your local strip with countless galleries, restaurants, boutiques, and shops. It's like an artsy, worn-in Franklin St. For the first time I realized how flat parts of the city were. All the indy VCU kids rode modified beach cruisers everywhere. It made me want to dirty up my vans and get more tattoos. But I did have Chacos. The architecture around Carytown was really something. Two to three story Victorian pads with only 5-6 feet separating them. From what I could tell, almost all of them were filled with college students. It was like San Francisco with, well, no hills.

Science Museum: Used to be an old train station. We must have been the oldest, youngest kids there. It was your basic hands-on kids museum with exhibits ranging from space travel to binary code. The latter was pretty funny. They had a "mezzanine" floor with 1980s exhibits on binary code. You could take a sheet of paper filled with 1s and 0s and find the letters of the alphabet. The interactive computer modules reminded me of computer lab time in elementary school. There were even a couple machines on that floor that didn't even work. Loved it. There went the 80s.

Baseball game: The Richmond Braves, or Ducks, were playing the Charlotte Knights. I was the only person cheering for the NC team, as Rachel donned an old Atlanta Braves t-shirt to the game. A lot people were almost injured. The "protective" net behind home plate was inadequately small, and foul balls were zipping into the stands. It really is a great way to encourage concentration at a game. Rachel and I would be talking and hear a crack and just cower. You never knew if you were next.

The same day we also went to see M. Night Shaymalamianans "The Happening." Very attention-grabbing, yet not very satisfying in the end. Okay, spoiler alert: there actually is no ending. It's like he gave up on climatic twists. If you want a seven word description of the movie, I'd suggest: "Gasp! What? Gross! Gasp! Awe. Gasp! And..." I'd wait for the dollar-fifty release if I were you.

What Rachel is doing: Researching, ahm, artificial... Okay, she is taking silk, from silk worms, spinning it (?) and putting it in people's bodies. Repairing torn muscles/ligaments with synthetic, silky implants. And taking classes. Far away classes.

So there's a little slice of Richmond! If anyone has any parcels to send to Rachel, I'll be making the trip at least 6 more times this summer...

C'mon, Really? ...Really?

A good reason to be up after 1:31 AM

I, along with 3 other friends, signed a new 1 year lease on our house at Bloodworth. During the walk-through with the landlord, we discussed various problems with the security of the house, and asked that he fix them. Namely the broken locks on the windows, poor lighting outside, etc. Yesterday I sent in the lease, with a good amount of money. Come Thursday, my roommates said that some items of theirs were missing. Come sometime from 2-8:30pm today, the back door was kicked in.

After an hour with a local cop, Ed and I left Bloodworth to stay with friends/family for the night. Talk about an unnerving feeling. The officer said that there were so many break-ins and homicides the past few days, that there were literally only 2 cops at the station dispatching other cars. There are a few things fluttering through my mind right now.

One, I realize that we live in a sketchy part of town. We are no strangers to dealing with/ministering to vagabonds, drifters, drug addicts, etc. But it seems that the protection we felt, whether it be sincere or naive, was crushed with that back door.
Two, to expound, does one seek to break a lease, and accept this as an unintended consequence? Or simply accept it as a consequence for a larger picture of changing downtown Raleigh?
Three, I need to reconcile my actions with my convictions over the love of certain possessions. More than that, I need to know that my safety is not something I control.

It's not the first time I have had something stolen from me. But it is the first time that I have been locked into a legal agreement to occupy a place of residence that has recently proved itself dangerously volatile. Good night soon.

Hmm

I bet Mitt Romney is uber glad he dropped out of the race when he did.
After all this controversy surrounding the Mormon ranch in Texas.
Just thought of that. Political zinger of the day...

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