See you next FALL!!!

My original plan was to tide you over with my “Filler” entry and then make everyone wait until next week for my big special awesome entry. While I will still be releasing the super fantastic entry next week, I have decided to pull out some of my old drawings and tell a story of pain, fortitude and ridiculousness. All in one story!!!!

So here is an interesting fact about me. I am a little afraid to say it because it may jinx me, but I have broken a bone or suffered a major traumatic injury. There was the straw in the eye incident of 10th grade as well as several stomach related emergencies, but nothing that would really qualify as extreme.

Despite my lack of truly awe-inspiring trauma, I do have one story up my sleeve that ends in a trip to the emergency room, crutches and an awesome foot fashion accessory.

In my junior year of college, I lived in an upperclassman dormitory with my awesome roommate, Joy. We had the best room on the floor – it was spacious, had high ceilings and two huge windows that looked out onto the quad. The only downside was that our neighbors were a threesome of extremely loud ladies, but that is another story.

Although my undergraduate alma mater was and is a pretty conservative place, they did allow for an occasional “open floor” on select evenings when genders could intermingle in their dorm rooms. I am sure that a wide range of activities abounded for these special allowances, but my favorite by far was Diddy Kong Racing.

I suppose that I should clarify the previous statement. Diddy Kong Racing is a video game for the Nintendo N64 game system, and it is similar to Mario Kart. While Joy and I did not possess an N64, our good friends who lived on the floor above us did. The only obstacle to our unlimited enjoyment of this game was that our friends were male.

Anyway, one fine fall weekend, I found myself with an evening full of nothing. My roommate had plans with a club or some other friends to see a movie that I wasn’t interested in seeing. Luckily, it was open floor night, so I made my way up to my friends’ room to play some N64.

Unfortunately, my gaming friends also had plans later that night. I believe one had a date and the other had studying or work that took him out of the room. They allowed me to stay on my own as long as I wanted, but after several awkward drop-ins from other guys on the floor who were extremely confused as to why two guys would allow a non-girlfriend un-chaperoned access to their dorm room, I opted to return to my own domain.

For some reason, I had gone to their room bearing an armful of objects, mainly consisting of a coat and a bag. After closing up their room, I exited through the stairwell door that led directly back to my floor. It was a short walk; just two short flights of stairs to go. I could not have imagined that it would have been difficult to navigate, but sadly on this occasion I was wrong.

It started out just fine. I was carrying my armful of extra objects which partially blocked my vision of the ground, but I had been descending staircases for so many years without incident that I was perhaps a bit overconfident in my abilities.



As I neared the final step, my mind was already whirring with potential evening activities to do now that all my nearest and dearest friends had apparently deserted me. This momentary loss of focus may explain what happened next.

Instead of stepping down onto the final step of the staircase, I misjudged my location and stepped outward as if expecting to encounter the broader floor. You can imagine the result.



All of the items in my arms went flying upward and outward. I landed with a sickening CRUNCH on my foot and collapsed on the ground. As it was not likely a very graceful fall, I was happy that there were no witnesses. Not having any experience with serious injury, I assumed that I would be able to gather my items and resume my journey homeward with my dignity still intact.

As soon as I attempted to stand, I realized with an extremely painful reminder that this was not to be. Stubbornly, I attempted this a few more times before resigning myself to sit on the floor and evaluate my options. This was before the days of cell phones (at least for me) so I could not call anyone.

All of my friends were out having fun and wouldn’t be wondering where I was anytime soon, which made me feel even worse. I believe I even started to cry.



It was at this point that someone came down the stairs. I recognized him as an RA for the 4th floor. It was the duty of the RA’s to patrol the open floors on weekends to look out for trouble. While I was not closely acquainted with this particular RA, I figured he could recognize distress when he saw it.




For some reason, my tear-stained face and seated position must have caused panic in his male brain, because he looked at me and then walked past me and out the door. Now, I’m sure you’re wondering why I didn’t shout out to him to make him stop and help me. I wish I had a strong explanation.

All that I can say is that I was crying and embarrassed and was expecting at least a basic inquiry into my well-being. A simple “Are you OK?” would have sufficed. Nope.

After wallowing in my despair for a few more minutes, I realized that I would have to try a new approach. I therefore piled my carried items on my back and crawled the rest of the way to my room. In my harrowing journey of pain and shame, I encountered no one.



Once in my room, I pulled myself up onto my bed (mentally thanking myself for choosing not to loft it), reached for my phone and started calling. Not surprisingly, no one answered. I was left with no choice but to call my parents. Obviously they were two hours away and could be of very little assistance at 10 p.m. on a weekend night, but I needed someone to hear my plea and feel sorry for me.

Always the voices of reason, my parents suggested that I try to call the dorm director. I sniffed that I didn’t really want attention from anyone I didn’t know, I just wanted one of my friends or my roommate to come and take care of me.

Fortunately, I actually had more than three friends in college. After about half an hour of bed-ridden self-pity, I had a knock on the door. It was a guy friend coming to see if wanted any pizza. When he saw my predicament, he immediately sprang into action. Unbeknownst to me, my friend had some EMT training and was quickly able to assess my situation.

After testing my ankle, my rescuer determined that I should really get an x-ray. As neither he nor I had a car on campus at the time, he suggested that we hobble down to the RA lounge and find a responsible dorm officer to take me to the ER.

Upon our arrival at the RA lounge, I quickly spotted the male RA who had ignored me in the stairwell. He had the decency to look suitably regretful, especially after it was revealed that he had passed me by in my time of need. His excuse was that he had encountered another crying girl in the stairwell two floors up who was mourning her very recent break-up. He had made the mistake of asking her what was wrong with disastrous results. When he found me in a very similar state, he decided not to make that mistake again.

Eventually, one of the RA’s was chosen to drive and we departed for a six hour experience with the local ER. In the end, it was determined that I had a sprained ligament and would need to wear a special blue Velcro shoe and use crutches as needed for at least two weeks.



After two days of attempting to limp around campus, I decided that I was not up to the task and ditched my medical accessories. In time, my foot healed. When my friends learned of the consequences of their failure to pay attention to me, they became slightly more responsive to their cell phones. I played up the guilt-trip as much as I could, but in the end, I didn’t really suffer any long term problems, aside from the damage to my ego.

Smoking in the Guest Room

Now that I am 30 years old, there is no avoiding the fact that I must call myself an adult. While this label may be permanent, my behavior does not always match up with the requirements of the title.

Part of being an adult for many people is having your own home. As regards this benchmark, I can safely say that I have accomplished it. For six years, I have owned my townhouse. I still think it is a wonderful place, although I’ve grown weary of living in an outer suburb when it comes to driving.

I have many stories of the challenges and rewards of home ownership, and I shall perhaps share more in the future, but I was reminded this weekend of an episode from approximately one year ago that definitely merits a blog entry.

In my opinion, one of the requirements of being a responsible homeowner is a basic understanding of fire safety. In elementary school I was taught the time honored tradition of “Stop, Drop and Roll” as well as the usefulness of touching door handles before opening them and knowing your escape routes. One of the other facets of my training was in the language of smoke alarms and smoke detectors. In my opinion, these two names are interchangeable, so please do not get all picky on me if I mix them up throughout this entry.

One of the key pieces of information relayed to me in fire safety was to always check the batteries on your smoke detectors. When my house was built, the smoke detectors were hard-wired into the electrical of the house with battery back-up. Over the course of six years, I have had to replace a couple of the batteries. The common procedure for these devices is to produce a short but loud “CHIRP” whenever the battery is getting low. Unfortunately, something in the programming makes sure that this starts around 3 or 4 a.m. each and every time.

If you would have asked me a year ago how many smoke alarm/detectors I had in my home, I would have confidently answered “THREE.” One in my kitchen, one in my bedroom and one in the upstairs hallway.

In mid-August of 2009, I was awoken at 4 a.m. (on a work night) to the loud and unavoidable sound of the low-battery chirp. From past experience, I knew that it could be temporarily disabled by removing the battery and pushing the big button.

The only barrier to this solution is typically figuring out which of the devices is actually in need of attention. You would think this is an easy task, but it is not. Typically, the only device that can immediately be eliminated from the choices is the one in my bedroom as it is the closest in proximity. As for the other two, the openness of my hallway/loft/stairway creates an odd echo that makes the decision a bit more challenging.

At 4 a.m., my mind is not operating on all cylinders. On this morning, I decided that the chirping was coming from the upstairs hallway unit. I performed my usual treatment for the symptom and returned to bed, vowing to remember to pick up new batteries at the store later in the day.



Strangely, the chirping did not cease after I addressed the problem, but I dealt with it my turning up the velocity on my fan to drown out the noise and went back to sleep.

When I returned home from work that evening with a new battery in hand, I figured that my problems were over. There was no chirping as I entered the house, so I went up to the device in question, replaced the battery, and figured I was done.



Imagine my surprise when once again around 4 a.m. the chirping commenced. I groggily muttered some obscenities to myself and concluded that I must have misheard the noise before and that it was the kitchen device instead that needed replacement. Luckily, I had the foresight to purchase a two-pack of batteries, so I simply replaced that one immediately.

My frustration was not to be relieved by this act. Even after replacing the battery in the kitchen, the chirping continued. Again I cursed that I must have purchased faulty batteries and decided to purchase new ones later that day.

The next 24 hours should be somewhat predictable by now. I came home with new batteries and again replaced them in both detectors to no avail. I then turned to the Internet for assistance. Some in-depth Google searching and manufacturer inquiries later, I concluded that perhaps the units themselves were worn out and needed to be replaced. I consulted my Facebook friend resource as well, only to hear confirmations of this notion.

Perhaps a normal person would have immediately gone out and purchased new smoke detectors. For some reason, I did not do this, at least not right away. Instead, I went to Target and purchased a larger and noisier fan.

Now I shall try and explain my logic for this choice. I considered the fact that it could indeed be the actual smoke detectors that were wearing out, but I was afraid that the real solution would be far worse. It is possible that the constant ringing in my ears was affecting my sanity, but I feared that something had gone haywire in the actual wiring of my house. If this was true, it would require the expertise of an electrician. I had no idea what that would cost, but I was definitely not up to spending serious cash on the problem… yet.

So instead, I opted to simply drown out the noise, much in the same way that my father avoids strange sounds coming from his car by turning up the volume on his radio.



While this proved a decent solution for sleeping, it did not help much for general living time. I had just started grad school last fall, and concentrating on homework assignments was proving difficult.



Again, instead of addressing the problem, I elected to spend more time during the week at my parents’ house.

After about a month or so of avoiding the issue, I decided to be an adult and take action. I ventured forth to my local home improvement store and purchased two detectors from the same manufacturer as my originals. Before I did this, I also verified with my association manager to make sure that I definitely had to have my devices hard-wired into the house. She said yes, so I purchased the proper type and came home to contemplate my next move.

I knew that installation would probably be a bit tricky and I didn’t want to take any chances. All of the instructions stressed the importance of making sure that the power to the wires was completely shut off. To do this, I had to perform a process of elimination procedure using my circuit break box and a flashlight. Once I knew how to cut off the power, I cautiously set to work on the installation. It was a bit of a messy and nerve-wracking job, but after making a total mess of myself, I turned everything back on, and the indicator lights lit up.

At this point, I sincerely believed that my problems were over. I had acted like an adult and tackled my own problems all by myself. Honestly, I thought I deserved an award.

Unfortunately, the universe did not agree with my sentiments because almost immediately after this whole bag of shenanigans was complete, the chirping resumed. I swear, my head nearly started spinning. I sat down on the floor, nearly in tears. I was defeated.



In my despair, I decided again to wait a while before calling in the professionals. I retreated back into my fan-noise blasting room and vowed to never leave except for bathroom emergencies. Actually, I just spent a lot more time out of my house for the next month.

About two or three months after this whole hullabaloo started, I was looking for some Christmas decorations that I knew were in my guest room closet. Once I located the item I needed, I packed up my boxes again and made for the door of the bedroom when I happened to glance up. If you haven’t already guessed where this is going, here is the big climax: there was another smoke detector on the ceiling. Chirping.

In case you cannot follow this turn of events, here it is in a nutshell: I am an idiot. Contrary to my original belief, I have FOUR smoke detectors instead of three. From the beginning, it was always my guest room device going off. I needlessly replaced two other smoke detectors and purchased way too many batteries. And a large room fan.

I suppose that I could look on the bright side and say that I learned some new things and now know that I can do basic wiring, but it still feels like small consolation. Essentially, I created this problem through my own faulty assumption. And we all know what happens when you assume things, right? (I’ll let you answer that question on your own.)

Silent But Deadly

Guess what everyone? Sometimes I snort when I laugh. Occasionally I will even snort-laugh in public. Today I even did it in front of two co-workers. Did I deny the snort after it happened? Did I try to pass it off as nothing? No! When Brian asked if I had just snorted, he expected me to do these things, and instead, I owned up! I mean, for crying out loud, it’s just a sound! Everyone can make it!

This brings me to my general beef with natural human noises. Rather, my beef with people who find natural human noises to be UN-natural. For my specific example, I shall refer to a boy that I dated several years ago. I could use a code name for him, but his real name is so ridiculous, I might as well use it: Niles.

In the opinion of Niles, girls were not supposed to be human. Well, they were to be human in that they were nice to look at and fun to canoodle with, but as far as natural bodily functions beyond eating and breathing, they were robots. I am not kidding.

Fairly soon into our short-lived relationship, he informed me that he never wanted me to allude to my “time of the month,” which I guess could be a reasonable request. It’s not something I generally discuss with men, so I agreed. When he stepped it up to include urination and defecation, I again didn’t see much of a problem, but I was a bit confused as to whether or not I could ever use a restroom while we were out together.

However, when he took it to the level of gaseous emissions, I started to have real concerns. Now, not burping or farting in front of someone really is just a manner of good manners in most cases. Plus there is the smell factor. I understand this concept. However, Niles’s logic went a step beyond proper etiquette when he added that he wished to believe that GIRLS simply didn’t do any of those things.

At this point, I had to say something. In his weak defense, he grew up in a household with no sisters, which likely left him ill prepared to deal with the biological truths of the feminine mystique. That said, I was certainly not going to allow his ridiculous notion to persist in my tenure as girlfriend. This is not to say that I started burping in his face, but I had to challenge his double standard.

You see, not only did he wish for me to hold in all manner of gases in his presence and refrain from discussing said gases, but he wanted me to accept and allow that HE could engage in the acts freely and at any time. I’m certainly not a radical feminist, but I know bullsh*t when I hear it.

Yes, I could have just let it all slide and humor his stupidity. However, I have a low tolerance for moronic ideas, and I will certainly not stand for someone I date to spew forth such ludicrous nonsense. In retrospect, this should have been thing that tipped me off that we weren’t going to go the distance, but I think I felt it was my mission to educate him for future girlfriends. Actually, he is now married (I believe), so perhaps I did play a role in his overall enlightenment. Or he is married to a Fem-Bot.

The moral of the story is this: We are all human beings, and human beings have to release things from their systems. Sometimes these things are gas, sometimes they are liquid, and sometimes they are solid. On rare occasions, they can even be a combination. It may not be polite to discuss the details of these things in all types of company, but if you try to deny that they happen to you, you’re inevitably going to end up deeply embarrassed at some point in your life and feel that you’ve somehow failed miserably at life. It’s best to own up to your biological truths and accept them as they happen.

Into the Wild

In the midst of the dog days of August (truly) I find myself thinking about what I was doing one year ago today. Normally I cannot recall this sort of thing, but in this case, I was on vacation in Alaska.

I could go into detail about how I came to be in Alaska for my vacation, but I’ve decided that this entry is going to take a different direction. Long story short, I have a very good college friend who is now a doctor in Alaska. He grew up there as well and his parents own and used to run a fly-in hunting fishing lodge in a National Park Preserve. I’ve always had a standing invitation, but the vacation stars didn’t completely align until last year when we both had some time off during summer season.

Even though I knew I was going to visit my friend, I really had no idea as to the details of what we would be doing on this trip. In my mind, I pictured us hanging out around Anchorage and maybe driving out to hike some trails or photograph some moose. Upon arrival, I was surprised to learn that he had arranged for us to be flown out to his parents’ lodge for most of the week.

This change in events was welcome to me as I had always been curious about the place he called home. It was always described as so different from everyone else’s hometown, and I can honestly say that even his sweeping descriptions did not do it justice. It is very close to heaven on earth, I can honestly say.

I could go on about the pristine beauty of this place, but that wouldn’t really be my style at all. Instead, I am going to share with you the story of the closest I came to nature and also death in the whole trip. If you’re thinking that it was while flying in the four-seater float plane, think again. That was awesome. If you think it might be the wilderness raft trip with an 8 year old rowing, you’d be wrong.

It started out simple enough. My friend asked if I’d like to take the boat out on the lake and find a place to hike up to a waterfall that he knew about. Since he knew the area and had led hikes with his parents’ paying guests, I assumed that he would take me somewhere safe. In hindsight, I should have known better.

We boarded the large motorized watercraft known as the “Dusty Rose” and departed from his parents dock in the early afternoon. It was a relaxing and lovely ride out into the lake. As a side note, this lake is very large – several miles long, in fact.

After boating for 15 minutes or so, we started to slow down and eventually landed on a wooded and rocky shore. Once the boat was secured to a boulder, we turned to face the woods. My guide began to walk along the shore, apparently looking for a trail. In the process, he acquired a large stick which he used to whack at the long bushes and grass that grew up under the trees.

Our boat, safely secured on the beach:



I was a bit confused at this point. I had been under the impression that we would be using a well established trail that had been used several times before. From the looks of his weed-whacking, this was not necessarily the case. In the course of his searches, he came across an interesting discovery. Bear scat. Fresh bear scat.

On one hand, this was interesting. I had never encountered bear droppings in the wild. On the other hand, this was terrifying. Obviously, whatever bear had left this waste had been near the shoreline recently. My guide assured me that most bears were not coming down to the lake – it was too early for that. Coming from the same guide who had led me to believe that there would be a trail, this was little comfort.

Eventually, my guide made up his mind as to an entry point and handed me the walking stick. He informed me that I would need it for the climb, especially to test the ground as there would be some areas where I would not be able to see it through the brush. Apparently there were lots of holes as well.

According to my guide, we were in luck. The pooping bear had left a trail of trampled brush to lead us on our way. Super. We were going to follow the footsteps of a bear of unknown size. I felt a moment of extreme fear, especially as we were not armed with any defensive weapons. There were two choices in front of me. I could cry like a baby and look like a wimp in front of my mountain man friend, or I could suck it up and pretend that I did things like this everyday. In my sleep. Backwards.

I chose to climb. Lucky for me, I chose to wear long pants, although my guide had not offered me any wardrobe suggestions when leaving for the excursion. Not only were the bugs ravenous, but there were some very sharp prickly plants all over the place. My guide did his best to push them out of the way for me, but they were unavoidable.

At first, things weren’t too bad. My guide was an experienced trail-maker, and was very patient with my lack of climbing or even general coordination skills. Also, he was wise to suggest the use of the stick. I would likely not be alive today without that stick.

The higher we climbed, the less brush we encountered. It wasn’t too steep, but there were branches and trees everywhere to work around. Before long, we came to a small stream. When I say small, it was actually just shallow. It was about 3-5 feet in width at most places, and it quickly became obvious that we would have to cross it. Numerous times.

I am not afraid of water. I am not afraid of cold water. I simply do not like to have cold and soggy feet, especially when wearing shoes. My guide had noticed my footwear and assumed that it was waterproof. Again, no guidance had been offered ahead of time, and it would have been helpful. Turns out that my awesome hiking shoes are largely mesh on top, although they appear to be solid. Instead of offering at least a little water protection, they acted largely as a sieve to keep out large stones while allowing all matter of fluid to run straight to my socks.

Again, I could have raised a fuss and insisted that we turn back or that he build me some sort of bridge to cross the stream with dry feet, but instead I took a deep breath and allowed my feet to be cold, wet and clammy for the sake of wimpy girls everywhere.

We continued on this route for what felt like hours. Occasionally we had to stop and bang two sticks together and yell “HEY BEAR!!!” This was to warn any bears in our vicinity that we were coming. It sort of reminded me of the camping scene from “The Parent Trap.” I remembered that the twin characters told someone to bang sticks together to keep away mountain lions. I also remembered that it was a trick that didn’t really work, it just made the person look stupid.

After hiking onward and upward and crossing the stream at least a dozen times (I swear he did it somewhat needlessly on purpose to make me suffer), we arrived at a view of the waterfall. We were very close to the top, and I thought that we were close enough. My guide disagreed.

In front of us was a very steep hill composed solely of loose medium-sized rocks. Essentially, a rock slide. My guide insisted that we climb this slide to get a closer and better view of the falls. This, dear reader, is where I drew the line. I had no doubt that I may be able to ascend the mountain of rocks. I also had no doubt that I would absolutely not be able to descend the mountain without facing certain death.

My guide tried in vain to convince me otherwise, but I remained firm. After a few moments consideration, he decided to find an “alternate” route that did not involve the rock slide. This is where it really gets insane.

I don’t remember much detail of the climb up from here because I was so certain that I was going to die. In fact, I told my guide at one point, that he had better make sure that I was buried with my walking stick because I wanted it with me in the afterlife to use for my retaliatory attack on him someday. He wisely kept a safe distance ahead of me for this portion of the climb.

Eventually, we reached the top where were rested and took many pictures. My guide decided to show off and walk up to the waterfall. It was not a large or dangerous falls, but any time there is running water over rocks, caution is always necessary. While I know he was careful, he did manage to take a pretty decent fall and cut his hand. I nearly had a meltdown worrying that he would cut his head open as well and I would be forced to find my way down the mountain alone to find help.

Actual pictures:

The waterfall



Looking back down the mountain from the falls



Me and my walking stick. Notice the photographer is standing out of reach of said walking stick.



Luckily, he was OK enough to lead the hike back down to the boat. As a good trail maker, he had the foresight to leave markers along our path of broken branches and trampled brush. Unfortunately, he was not so adept at finding and following his markers. We most definitely did not follow the same path downwards as we did upwards, but this did not create a problem until we reached the bottom and found ourselves looking down at the beach from the top of a 10-15 foot cliff drop.

My guide jokingly (I assume) suggested that we jump off to the beach. I was not in a laughing mood, as I pictured a bear waiting in a cave beneath the cliff waiting for idiot hikers to attempt the jump and break their legs, rendering them helpless from attack. No, this would not work. See illustration:



Once again, my guide was resourceful and found an “alternate” route. When we finally made it back to the beach, I felt like I had defeated a dragon or climbed Mount Everest. We sat for a while on the beach, or at least until my “fearless” guide got too freaked out by the tiny spiders that live all over in the beach rocks. We attempted a rock-skipping contest, but by then, my physical strength was gone.

Finally, we boarded the boat and returned to the lodge. I know I slept very well that night in my private cabin. The next day, we made another waterfall hike, but before I agreed, I made my friend promise on my burial walking stick that it was on an actual path and that I would not need waterproof shoes.

Old man look at my life; I'm a lot more well behaved than you.

As I have already mentioned in my blog intro, I am 30 years old. Personally, I feel like severity of this number depends on the age of the observer. For instance, to an 18 year-old, I probably seem ancient, but to a 60 year-old, I’m still a spring chicken. Regardless of outward appearances, I discovered an alarming trait that has arisen that I can only attribute to the onset of old(er) age.

Last night, I attended concert for Neil Young with my parents and one of their college friends. It was an “intimate” performance in a smaller venue (relative to a stadium) and Neil performed all songs solo. I’ve never been a huge fan myself, but he is by far my father’s favorite performing artist, and I will admit that he is a bit of a rock legend, so I felt compelled to see him at least once in my (or his) lifetime.

Surprisingly I found his performance very entertaining. I don’t know how many people could get up by themselves in front of a crowd and calmly and proficiently perform a whole set of songs on various instruments with no backup musicians. There was not a lot of narrative between songs, which I personally appreciate, and the acoustics were great. This unexpected enjoyment is not, however, the source of my old age revelation.

The majority of the audience was closer to my parents’ age than mine, and given the relative intimacy of the venue and the lack of a big backup band, I mistakenly assumed that there would not be much by way of obnoxious crowd noise. I was sadly mistaken. Upon taking our seats before the concert, I was pleased to note that most of the people in our immediate vicinity appeared to be calm and subdued concert-goers who were there to really enjoy the music. Unfortunately, as the performance time crept closer, more people arrived, and the row of people behind us filled in with some loud and ridiculous fans.

Ridiculous Fan #1 was a gentleman from Pennsylvania who may be stalking Neil Young. Not only was he following Neil on several concert tour stops, but he had “found” Neil’s ranch/home in California that is apparently “very hard to find” as well as the name and location of the school Neil's children attend. I know this because he loudly befriended Ridiculous Fans #2-4 seated in his row. I would like to chalk up their willingness to accept and discuss this man’s strange obsession to pre-concert drinking, but further observation indicated that they were likely quite sober. The remaining three Ridiculous fans were apparently from MN, and they felt compelled not only to sing along on several songs, but to attempt to “harmonize” with Neil.

Other than the weird-o fans in my immediate seating area, there were several loud “shouters” throughout the entire show. While I can see how this may be acceptable at a sporting event or even a loud and raucous rock performance, why anyone would think that it was cool to scream commentary for a one-man show in a classy auditorium is a bit beyond my comprehension. I must therefore again attribute it to “liquid courage.”

All of this information is to support my subsequent “old lady” reaction. Before you get too excited, no, I did not stand up and go on a bloody rampage or even a heated tirade against these people. I merely did what I normally do: I stewed. I thought to myself, “My parents bought these tickets to hear Neil Young, not random women harmonizing over his voice and freaks shouting song requests and stupid commentary.” Keep in mind also that these “fans” were not drunk or rowdy college kids, these were certified baby-boomer adults. I’m not sure if they were attempting to re-live what they remembered as their glory/rocker days of yore. If so, and this is truly the behavior of Neil Young hippie/rockstar fans of the past, things really haven’t changed that much. I am here to tell you that young rock fans today are no more or less obnoxious than they were 30-40 years ago.

Thank you for listening to my rant. I would also like to add that my parents were not behaving like these noise-polluters. They were quiet and attentive despite the fact that it was as hot as the jungle inside. It is highly possible that the heat of the room may have contributed to my desire to have all offenders (including the morons who took flash photography during the show, even after being specifically told not to do so) thrown out onto the cold concrete steps of Northrup Auditorium. I feel much better after ventilating my thoughts. Please forgive me if I have offended anyone’s friends or family members who may behave in this manner on a regular basis. But honestly, if you are related to or are friends with anyone like these people, you probably secretly wish you could punch them too.

The moral of this story is this: you can keep on "rocking in the free world" all you want, just don't be obnoxious and piss me off. I am old and crabby and have no time for your shenanigans.