The qualitative properties of salt

Get on your bus and ride!

Let me tell ya, today must have been one of the best days of my graduate life. Since I have not fixed the 'ole Golden Ghetto Sled of Dreams of mine, I took the bus to work, over in the Hamilton Place area. Since UTC people who have a MOCS card can ride the bus for free, I took advantage of this service.

I have a really bad job. The job is completely shameful especially if you already have a B.S. (yes, even one in Psychology!) But somehow, riding the bus made my day wonderful. Let me walk you through it.

8:48 AM Thomas comes running madly down the Houston Street hill to get to the bus stop on MLK. If you are going to Hamilton Place from downtown, you need to allow about an hour to get there. Yes, the bus has to pick up other people too, it's not a taxi...Hmm... a taxi...

8:55 AM The bus is already a couple minutes late, but I'm still on good time. I then hop on and flash the bus driver my MOCS card. He looks at it strangely, and says, "Well, Okay." I quietly take my seat in the middle of the bus.

9:10 AM We're still on Brainerd Road, of course. A few more people jump on the bus. This is when I realized that I was the only white man on the bus, and it was naturally segregated, mostly by gender and age.

9:27 AM Time still good, but I just remembered that there is about a 4 minute layover at Eastgate mall. Somewhat reminds me of the 11 hour layover in Bombay's international air port. Now that'll try your patience.

9:31 AM Possibly the happiest woman in Chattanooga got on the bus here at Eastgate. She was laughing and having a good time joking around with the bus drivers. I will attribute most of her happiness with Chattanooga's excellent public transportation system.

9:39 AM I really believe that the drive from downtown to Hamilton Place is the most hectic and stressful drive this side of the Mississippi--try driving through St. Louis at 1:30 in the morning after driving 18 hrs straight or ask Dale Taylor about it. Going along for the ride to HP Mall is quite nice. You even get to see new things that you never would have seen if you were driving. (i.e. the small piano store behind the BIG piano store on Brainerd Rd.)

9:44 AM The bus finally arrives at my stop, Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart's not my destination, but alas, it's Wilkins Research a nice 15 minute walk. I know that my bus ride experience was great, but the walk was nirvana. The walk itself might have been what made it so nice. The telephone inteviewer job at Wilkens is very sedentary (by the way, lean women who work at sedentary jobs have a significant increase in the risk of getting breast cancer than those who are not quite so sedentary. Things I learned from being in UTC's PsychoOncology Research group and taking PsychoOncology.) So the walk got my blood pumping through my muscles.

10:01 AM - 2:27 PM Work at Wilkins was very short, still not very sweet, but I got paid, and that'll make almost any day. So I took my check and enjoyed my stroll back over to the mall to wait on the bus.

2:34 PM McDonald's on Wednesdays are a great thing. Cheeseburger and small fry, $1.09. According to Dale Taylor's economic theory of the none existant monetary value of change, and to the fact that I had a dime my pocket, I bought lunch for $1.00 on April 28, 2004. It's a great day to be alive.

2:52 PM The Lifeway Christian Store and as always, sucks me in. I didn't buy anything, as usual, but I got some nice browsing in.

3:40 PM No waiting on the bus whatsoever. I just walked throught the mall, correctly guessed what entrance the bus stop would be at and went for it as the bus just pulled up to take me back to downtown Chattanooga.

4:30 PM The way awesome bus brought me to my bank in good time I say! This convient stop allowed me to deposit my check without taking up much time.

4:35 PM I learned how to use the check deposit at my ATM. After 4 years of ATM'n, it was about time.

4:55 PM I came strolling up to the back of the Christian Student Center, everything needed to be done, done thanks to the Chattanooga Public Transit System. I arrived just in time to see Wendy Lea right as she came in from work, and that will make any day.

So the moral of the story is, if you are at a job that you absolutely hate. Quit it! It's great! However, if you have marital/family or financial obligations, don't quit if you do not have another job lined up. Instead, take the bus to work! It's great!

This wasn't the first time I rode the bus either. One fine day, I was at the Hamilton Place Mall with Pat Carr and some of our other "friends." (There is really no hard feelings, I just like the "".) For some reason our "friends" left Pat and I over there with no means to get back. Well, at least that's what they thought. We were fully equipped with our MOCS cards and had the most important thing of all, the knowledge of the free bus service. When we got back, our friends recieved a tongue lashing, all in fun.

An email to Ladon

I think I did something bad to my car, but only on a guy's advice from Auto Zone. You know that female connector for my relay cable that I tried to tape up? Well, I finally got sick and tired of it coming off, so I stopped in at a local Auto Zone to pick up another connector. The guy told me it was this certain one, and just gave me the part, and told me to put it on.

So I did.

Everything went on fine, and the relay cable was even just long enough to cut it and put on the new connector. When I finally plugged it in, it fit perfectly. I thought to myself, that's nice, it's really going to work now.

Enter sad part.

The weirdness happened when I cranked my car up, it sounded weird and so I quit. Well the car kept on firing when I wasn't, so I turned it off and pulled the key out and it kept firing. Weird. My memory is very fuzzy, but I believed that it quit trying to fire when I unplugged the relay connector with my pliers. I then made sure everything was snug and plugged it back in. No cranking. Great, I thought, maybe it will now work. So I went to crank it up, gave it some gas.

It worked.

I then drove my car from the front of the student center to park it in the parking lot. After I pulled it in and shut it off, I decided to see how my new connector would work. So I cranked it again.

It didn't.

It sounded like it did when the relay cable was unplugged. Just the click, __ click. I then popped the hood and checked on it, and it was plugged up! Baffling, I said. I reached over and unplugged the cable, turned my key to the starting position and then continued to bypass the relay by touching the relay wire to the battery post.

Again just the click, __ click.

It definitely sounds like the starter or the cylinoid, but all of that was just replaced two years ago. I seriously don't know what's going on.

Another chapter in the book of procrastination (yet to be published) part 2

For an unedited, raw, stressed out account from my last week in the semester, read this.

Okay so I confess, messing around with the blogger is not working on my papers, but it is a lot more fun. As for you Wendy, you can email me a picture and I can put it on here since your the one with the digital camera.

Nearing the end of my first semester of graduate school, I really don't see that much difference between being graduated, and being an undergraduate. You see, I am still taking a full course loud. I am still living with crazy Pat Carr, archer enthusiast Grant of Keown, and Aragorn wanna be Jacob Campbell at the Christian Student Center. I still don't have a job, ride around in my 1983 Chrysler Cordoba appropriatly dubbed "The Golden Ghetto Sled of Dreams", eating fried chicken with Ladon Campbell, and I am writing this blog on campus.

However, there are some noticeable differences. One, I have a college degree, still fresh in the envelope it came in, sitting with a whole bunch of other junk. Two, I've got more nicer clothes. (Since Wendy has a job she wants to make sure that her man is stylin. Thanks, I like to look good.) Three, between job hunting during the day and reading all hours of the night (now there is this blogger), I don't have as much time to hang out with my friends. Four, for some unexplainable reason, 8 AM does not seem that early anymore. Five, I don't have as many wild dreams or goals for my life. When I was an undergrad, I would think that when I graduated I could do anything. Now after graduating, I can't even get a job with the state. Six, when I was an undergrad my pay was $11/hr working with the county. Now after I have that wonderful degree, I make $6.50/hr working with a private research company.

With bills and 40+ hour work-weeks on the horizon, this semester has been a reallity check for me. Adjustment takes some time, but I am sure that I will find the joy of it soon.

Another chapter in the book of procrastination (yet to be published)

Today, right now to be exact, is when the data for the final course project is due in Qualitative Data Analysis. Of course, I did wait until 9 AM today to start my analysis on the question "What does it mean to be a psychology graduate student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga?" It's a question of phenomenology. The analysis is based on two group interviews that we had in class. In summary, "it's like top tier learning at bottom tier facilities."

UTC is known for its lack of resources and money, especially the psychology department. We can't even print anything. I think that the administration is expecting us to go back to chisel and stone. However, UTC is known for its coolness and the high quality of instruction from its faculty, as far as I know.

I finally now believe that procrastination is a definite character trait for me. I only remember one time in my academic career that I completed a project early. I received no gratification and I did not have the same sense of accomplishment that I receive when I dramatically rush to complete (actually do, from start to finish) a project just a few hours before it's due. The epinephrine rush in my endocrine and nervous systems is just great.

Hi, I'm Thomas Hamlet. And I am a procrastination junkie.

My first blog!

Cheesy title huh? It was the title of my first newspaper article that I wrote. I suppose that I should begin by telling why I started this blog. The best answer I have is that my friends are doing it, and so here am I. You might ask me if I would leave the country if they would, and I would answer, yes. Chris Willis went to India over a Christmas break, and I went with him. And since Dale and Lisa Taylor are in China maybe I should go too.

Doing this blog would have been a great idea four years ago, when I started college. Since I moved to Chattanooga and met some of its finest, I've been on many adventures, some hilarious, some soul searching, and many times both. But now I've graduated from college and am entering in the "real" world, well kind of. Graduate school is on my plate (I don't think that I will ever leave college). But the people I go to school with are different than in undergrad. My undergraduate friends are fun, spontaneous, and outrageously crazy. It seems as though once you graduate you lose some creativity and everyday you have to fight for child-like fun and laughter.

But anyway, I figure that I will document my new adventures of graduate life. Somehow there is fun and cool stuff among the 30 page research papers and annoying part-time jobs that make you want to hate your life. For instance, last year I've found what I would like to call Wendy Lea. She is by far the coolest woman I have ever been with, and can make almost any day into an adventure. So she will take the place of my irresponsible, care-free, undergraduate days.

I'm really looking forward to these up and coming adventures, so join me if you will and grab a bag of popcorn.