I was stopped, and the car behind me was stopped, but a couple of cars back, someone didn't stop. Chain reaction! I was in the front, and the car behind me didn't hit me too hard. My car wasn't damaged, and I wasn't hurt, but I pulled over anyhow. The person who started the accident took off, as did the car that damaged the car that was two cars behind me.

After I made sure that nobody was hurt and my car wasn't damaged, I left. The woman two cars behind me was really shaken up, mostly because her airbag had deployed. Her car wasn't badly damaged, but she was hit pretty hard.

Otherwise, it hasn't exactly been a thrilling day. I ate lunch with my family. I'm doing laundry. I'm going to vacuum once Jeopardy is over. Big fun.

Someone over at the Fake Matador Bulletin Board posted the URL to the Indie Rock Girl's Guide to Dating Classic Rock Boys. That piece is going to keep rearing its head until the day I die. Not that I mind--I actually like it a lot. Especially when people get indignant about it. I can't believe there's people who think I'm being serious there.

I've started assembling the recipients list for Signed, Sealed, Delivered, and I've got the first month's worth of recipients all set up. That's 31 down, 334 to go--so there's still plenty of spots open. You know you want a letter.

Oh well. I'm off to the library.

One of these days, people are going to stop putting their greasy fingers on this monitor. I suspect it will be the day after I leave this job.

Now is the time on Amplified when we talk about weblogs!

Kempa.com was one of the first weblogs I ever read. (Actually, I read it before it was kempa.com, but that was ages ago.) His Barnes & Noble stories are a favorite of mine, and in his most recent update (June 29), he's got a couple of good ones. Be sure to check out his arcade machine page. It isn't as uninteresting as he seems to think--I thought it was pretty cool, and I'm no electrical engineer.

I think Us Against Them is losing its edge. They were so vicious and incisive last summer, and now they update to make excuses for not updating and tell us all about free Jimmy Eat World magnets. Not to mention the use of the way-too-cutesy-for-Us-Against-Them "~*~". What's up with that? At least Eric has finally changed his "albums I'm listening to" list. He'd been listening to that New Year album for something like six months.

Kate has redesigned Tawdry. She has an amazing eye for color, and her graphics kick ass as always. And Katie has given Jejune a bright, cheery, fun summer redesign.

This is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time. (Warning: This page contains pictures of a very hairy man in tattered, assless leather chaps. I'm not kidding. I wouldn't joke about such things.) While you're over there, take a look around and some of the other stuff. I don't know why I haven't been reading Shelleyness all along.

I hope it's macaroni and cheese day in the cafeteria. The food choices haven't exactly kicked ass lately. I can't handle another day of greasy, undercooked cheese pizza. Seriously. For some reason, they haven't figured out how to cook pizza appropriately around here. It's either burnt beyond recognition or practically raw in the center.

I know I've mentioned the 24-Hour Blogathon before, but I'm going to discuss it again--this time, at length. Last year, Cat Connor blogged every fifteen minutes for 24 straight hours. (This was back in the days of the Power Bloggers list--remember that? I miss it. Anyhow...) This year, she decided to repeat her blog-a-thon, adding a new twist: she'd blog for charity. She invited other webloggers to join her, and the rest is history. So from 10 AM on Saturday, July 28 until 10 AM on Sunday, July 29, I'll post once every half-hour for twenty-four hours. I plan to keep AIM and the webcam on during most of the blog-a-thon so you can keep me awake and entertain me. I start to get a little weird around twenty hours without sleep.

It took me a while to decide on what charity I was going to support. I wanted something small and local--something where I could see the money I raised being put to use. Not that there's anything wrong with international mega-charities--they do lots of good work--but I wanted to give something back to the area where I grew up. After some thinking, I came up with the perfect solution: the Ford Heights Public Library.

Ford Heights is the town right next to my hometown. It's one of the poorest communities in Illinois, and they haven't had a library in years. Over the last year or two, a woman named Queen Rogers has been trying to start a library in Ford Heights. Though they've been able to get some support from the local library system, it hasn't been nearly enough. Starting a library these days costs a lot of money. Books and other materials are expensive, as are the computers needed to run a circulation system. Without a computerized circulation system, a library can't join the local library system. If the library isn't part of the system, its patrons cannot take advantage of such benefits as interlibrary loan and reciprocal borrowing--benefits that are extremely helpful for patrons in a community with a small, underfunded library.

It's been said so many times that it sounds hackneyed, but literacy really is power. Libraries provide valuable literacy opportunities for children and adults. Studies have shown that elementary school-age children who read during the summertime retain their literacy skills better than children who do not read. Adults who are looking to improve their job skills can find books, materials, and other information at their local libraries. The residents of Ford Heights need a library.

If you'd like to sponsor me, go here. Once the Blog-a-thon is over, I'll contact you to let you know where to send the money. Any donations will go towards the purchase of books and other library materials and supplies. You don't need to be extravagant--every little bit counts in a case like this one. If I can get 50 people to send me $5 each, I'll be thrilled.

It's strange, the way I have stories for the southernmost parts of the drive. I go past Carlinville and I think of the time when Robin, Matty and I went down to pick up Matt's friend Kory from Blackburn College. About halfway into the drive, a sickening smell started wafting through the car. At some point, we were able to isolate it as coming from somewhere in the back seat, which wasn't surprising. Robin's car was known as a fruit fly breeding ground, among other things. When we got to Carlinville and piled out of the car, Matty went up to the dorms to get Kory and Robin and I investigated the source of the smell. It turned out to be some rotting fruit that had been sealed in a Tupperware container...until Matty stepped on it and broke the seal.

I think Robin said "oh, that's the pineapple that I was eating when I came up to visit you last July." And I think this happened in early November.

I was surprised when I drove past Litchfield. The area around the expressway is a mass of strip malls, fast food places, and chain stores. There was none of that when Robin ran out of gas half a mile south of that exit in the middle of the night. Her gas gauge didn't work, so she kept track of the amount of gas in the gas tank using her trip meter. When she forgot to reset the trip meter, there was the chance that we'd run out of gas. Fortunately, her parents were living in Litchfield at the time, so she called them and asked for help. They were wonderful about it--her dad got us some gas for the car, and her mom fed us. I think they gave her some money to fix the gas gauge, too.

As we approached the city, I really wished I was listening to Copper Blue by Sugar. That album reminds me of the days when Robin and I were spending a lot of time in St. Louis. "Hoover Dam" always reminds me of driving over the Mississippi.

That hill to the side of Mississippi Nights on Laclede's Landing still reminds me of the night we went to see Bad Religion and Robin parked downhill and I left something in the car and had to run down and get it after the show. I had problems making it back up the hill because it was so icy and my shoes were not exactly sensible. My friends had managed to corner Greg Graffin outside the club and they made him wait for me to drag my ass up the hill. I caught a lot of shit for that.

Oh, I should probably talk about my weekend. Hmmm.

Tim and I drove down on Friday night instead of Saturday morning, as originally planned. We didn't make it to the hotel (which was actually in the western suburbs of St. Louis) until around 1:30 AM. We were both pretty damn exhausted, but we managed to stay up long enough to make some plans for the next day. I had gone ahead and purchased tickets online for the Gateway Arch tour, so we knew we had to be down at the Landing around 3:30. Otherwise, the day was ours.

We woke up late and went down to Denny's for breakfast. (Tim had an unnatural craving for eggs. This happens.) We decided that it would be easiest to take public transportation to the Arch, partially because it was such a long drive, and partially because there was some sort of fair going on around the Arch. The nearest Park and Ride for the Metrolink was about ten miles away, so we drove out there, parked, and hopped on the train. I think St. Louis's train system is fairly new, and it's extremely quiet and clean. Or maybe I'm just used to the noisy squalor of the Chicago el trains. I remember being similarly impressed by the BART out in the Bay Area.

The train ride out to the Arch took about 45 minutes, and the car got extremely crowded by the time we hit downtown. I got to listen to the woman standing above me bitch to her boyfriend/husband about some problems she was having with her car. She basically repeated the same three complaints over and over again, and I began to think that maybe she deserved all these car problems for complaining so stinking much. Seriously. Your car doesn't work? Go get it fixed. Complaining insessantly isn't going to fix it.

It was for the best that we took public transportation, because the Landing was a zoo. The Fair Saint Louis was this weekend, and most of the streets were blocked off for the festivities. It wasn't too crowded when we got there, probably because it was still early and because there were storm clouds looming ominously on the horizon, but I suspect that the streets were packed in the evenings. We walked past countless bars selling alcohol outside, prompting Tim to state that the festival was "all about getting drunk outside." Not that there's anything wrong with that.

We made our way down to the Arch, picked up our tickets, and killed some time in the gift shops. At around 3:40, we were herded into a little "waiting area" to wait for our tram. We looked at the exhibits (all about the building of the Arch) and stood around. I was completely fascinated by the "punk rock" guy in front of me. He was going out of his way to be snot-nosed and obnoxious, and he even described himself as "a punk" to the two middle-aged women he was entertaining with his "I'm so alternative" antics. However, I question any punk, teenage or otherwise, who is wearing an Abercrombie and Fitch long-sleeved t-shirt. I know that he could have been doing it to thumb his nose at the system, but somehow I doubt that was the case. You'll have to excuse me, I'm still having a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that punk is now trendy.

I was relieved when Tim and I didn't end up stuck in a tram with him, although I'd like to think I could have provided him with a primer on what punk really is (was?) all about back in the day.

To get to the top of the Arch, you take these little space-pod-esque trams that were designed specifically as a transport system for the Arch. They're really tiny and stuffy (each pod seats five) and they look like something out of a 1950s sci-fi movie. It's exciting at first, but after about two minutes inside, you really start to want out. The ride up only takes around four minutes, so it's not insufferable, but I don't recommend it for anyone with claustrophobia.

I was kind of disappointed with the top of the Arch. After my experience with the Statue of Liberty, you'd think I would have learned by now that those windows at the top aren't that huge. For some reason, I was expecting monstrous floor-to-ceiling windows and a stunning view of the city skyline. The view was great, but the windows were tiny. We took the necessary "I was at the top of the Gateway Arch" photos and took the tram back down.

It started to storm when we were at the top of the Arch. The storm wasn't directly over us, but it was close enough that we could see the lightning and rain. Tim insists that the Arch was swaying in the wind, but he might have just been trying to freak me out.

We ended up walking back to the train station in a rainstorm. It wasn't too bad, and it wasn't a long walk, so it was no big deal. We got back on the train and went back to the hotel to make reservations at a fancy restaurant for dinner. We had both brought dressy clothes for the occasion.

Well, the fancy restaurant we wanted to go to was booked, and they weren't taking any walk-in customers, so we decided to just take the train out to University City to do some shopping. Of course, I saw a bunch of stuff that I wanted but couldn't afford, and it drove me crazy. I did pick up a couple of CDs at Vintage Vinyl, though. We thought about eating at one of the restaurants along Delmar Blvd., but none of them seemed very appealing, so we went back to the hotel and ordered pizza from Imo's and watched the Six Feet Under marathon on HBO. Imo's pizza is even better than I had remembered, and Six Feet Under is even better the second time.

We spent Sunday at the zoo. Damn, was it hot and humid...I thought I was going to pass out. I am such a wuss when it comes to dealing with heat. I swear, I wilt like a flower when it's hot outside.

One of the high points of the zoo trip was the butterfly room--a huge dome full of plants and exotic butterflies. It's just way too cool to have butterflies swooping around you while you look at flowers. What amazes me is the ways in which butterflies have adapted their colors to fit in with their surroundings. That, and the "fake eye" markings on their wings. I also got up close and personal with a spiny walking stick (or something like that) that one of the docents had taken from its terrarium. At first, I was kind of startled by it, but the more I learned about it, the less it bothered me. I still wouldn't want to find one in my living room, but it's nothing to be scared of.

The drive home seemed to go by quickly, even though it's one of the most boring drives known to humanity. (Central Illinois isn't exactly interesting--it's mostly cornfields. And more cornfields.) It seemed to go by fairly quickly because we spent most of the time talking. I think it's pretty cool that I spent the entire weekend around Tim without getting irritated or irritating. Usually, after a couple of days of being continuously around someone, either they're driving me nuts or I'm driving them nuts. That wasn't the case here, and I thought that was great. It's practice for the Phoenix trip in a couple of weeks, at least.

If you got an invitation to my birthday party and you haven't RSVP'd yet, please do so as soon as you can. I'm putting together party favor bags over the next couple of days, and I want to make sure there's something for everyone. I'll make a couple of extras just in case, but I don't want to run out. If you didn't get an invitation but you'd like to be there, email me and I'll add you to the list. I'm sure I've forgotten a few people along the way--when I sent out those invitations, I wasn't at home and I didn't have access to my address book.