This Lopez hasn't been getting behind the ol' blog much lately, but the rest of the family certainly is. Miguel with his tech advice, Barbara with her future-pondering, and Luis with his...political analysis? Hmm. That's unexpected.

Not a lot has been going on with me. Jake and Heather became husband and wife on Saturday, which was awesome. I had the opportunity to try my hand at being a Best Man. I didn't do too badly. If I were to grade myself, I'd be waving around a solid B-.

Speaking of B-'s, I passed my English 102 class. I guess the fourth time really is a charm. I received my grade in the mail, which I promptly sent to the Educational Assistance people at work so that I could be fully reimbursed. Not a bad gig, really.

The wedding was good, though. I'm proud of both of them. I had to give a toast during the reception. I had known about it but I had still been caught off guard when the lady shoved a microphone at me.

I had been trying to prepare something to say since I had arrived at the church that afternoon. I had my little notebook out and was scribbling away, crossing it all out, and then scribbling some more. By the time the wedding started, I had a handful of ideas I was very uncertain about and one good idea that I planned to close with.

I had been forced to use my closing much sooner than I hoped.

It worked out in the end, though. After floundering through the first half of my impromptu speech, the ending sounded that much better. I think it's called juxtaposition; following something bad with something good to make it seem better.

What else, what else? Oh, I got pulled over by the police twice last night on my way home from school. That was fun.

One of my headlights was out. The police officer gave me a paper to fill out and mail in once I repaired it (which I can fix myself) and then sent me on my way.

Less than a minute later, I see red and blue flashing lights in my rearview mirror. I pulled over again and sighed as I tried to count how many times I had found myself on the shoulder of the highway in the past month.

It was the same cop. "Hey, I forgot to give you back your license," he said. "Sorry about that."

I thanked him politely. As he walked back to his car, I pulled back onto the road and cut across three lanes of traffic and a Gore point so that I wouldn't get stuck on the highway to East Mesa. The police officer didn't follow.

I've been tired lately. Today at work, I crawled under a desk, buried my head under the jacket Nicole had lent me, and went to sleep.

It's too hot to sleep in my car without risking heat stroke.

School is going well. In my biology class, we're reviewing all the chemistry I never learned. I was almost completely lost during the lecture and it didn't help that I was hallucinating from my lack of sleep.

Today I had the lab portion of my class, so after lecture I trudged along after my professor. He broke out little models of molecules. They were like Legos; I put them together and pulled them apart and had a great time. I was able to grasp the concepts much better than from listening to the lecture. By the end, I was even able to make my own molecules and simulate reactions. It was like a molecular puppet show. I even made a pretty sweet alcohol molecule. I was very proud of it.

So there's a lot of learning going on. So far, so good. However, at the end of next week, my online literature class kicks in. My workload right now is about what I think I can handle, but I'm trying to be optimistic. How hard can the class be? It combines two things I love: Literature and the Internet.

Now I'm off to find a class that will give me credit for sleeping.

"Deeds, not words shall speak me."

-John Fletcher

(Sounds much more profound than just saying "I'm too tired/busy to write," eh?)

Ah, the magic of office e-mails.  I received this question from Beth (who was also working very hard in another part of the city) after I mentioned the delightful menu offered by our own company cafeteria.

"my coworker bryan, being as clever as he is, wants to know if the crap sandwiches should actually be called crapwiches??"

Dear Bryan,

There is no rule requiring a sandwich to alter it's name to reflect the properties of said sandwich.  Having said that, there is precedent:  Note the "Spamwich" (the name indicating the sandwich contains Spam, or contains some other filling and Spam has been substituted for bread) or the "Manwich," (another trademarked foodstuff that has become colloquial, usually in more urban settings.)

Both of these examples display the tendency of proper nouns and common food names to amalgamate.  Foodstuffs in a sandwiches that are not proper nouns do not display this property.  A ham sandwich does not become a "hamwich," an egg sandwich does not become and "eggwich," nor does adding cheese to a Spamwich and grilling it result in a "GrillcheeSpamwich."

Also, the word "sandwich" is an arbitrary name.  It is incapable of being broken down into a root word, suffix, or prefix (which is unfortunate for you medical types.)

Finally, there is precedent for my choice of "crap sandwich."  A closely-related term still in popular usage is "shit sandwich," and in cleaning up the language I have chosen not to meddle with the phrase any further.  

But hey, what's in a name?  A Spamwich by any other name will still make your bowels clench tighter than Oprah's hand on a turkey drumstick.  

Or would that be a "turkstick?"

Love,

Guillermo

P.S.  Hey, why don't we capitalize the phrase "proper nouns?"

When winter nears she'll sit and ponder
Why absence makes the heart grow fonder
Are days more short or nights more longer?
How long 'til she stops getting stronger?
Is there just this world to wander?
The answers seem a step beyond her


(Just wanted to remind everybody that they're not missing anything.)