Google This.

The moment I switched my search engine preferences was well after Google became a verb.  I heard it on a movie—Maid in Manhattan, I think it was: “You can Google it when you get to school.”  I hadn’t heard Google used like that before, and I loved it, so I made the decision to stop using Yahoo! and start using Google for my online researching needs.

Yes, this online-life change came about because the noun had become a verb.  But it’s not the whole “sounding like a hipster” appeal that attracted me; I just always like it when nouns become verbs.  I try and use a noun as a verb on a daily basis—like, “facebook” : “Facebook me tomorrow, Josh, because I’ll be at work.”   That one’s become pretty standard, so sometimes I like to come up with my own.  Take, for instance, the word “crockpot”: “You wanna come over for dinner tomorrow?  I’ll crockpot a chicken.”

The grammarian in me knows using a noun like a verb isn't the best decision (unless someone else is doing it online), but I can’t stop.  I love it.  Essentially, you’re taking power away from what was the noun and giving it to yourself.  It’s not the crockpot that’s doing to work; it’s you, because you’re the one crockpoting.  Same thing with “Googling.”  You don’t “Yahoo” or “Webcrawler,” and even though it contains a verb, “AskJeeves” just doesn’t have the same effect. 

So Google it was, and Google it has been for six years or so.

Thanks to Google, I've been able to slack off in online researching.  Not only will it search the site without me having to actually GO to the site, but it'll fill in the question for me. Now, I used to search by noun phrases, using AND or NOT and quotation marks to get really specific.  Now I just write out the question, as informal as possible, and wait for Google to fill in the rest.  For some reason, this is fascinating--I love typing stuff into the search bar to see if anyone else has asked the same thing.

After Sarah Palin made the comment about being able to see Russian from Alaska, I started wondering if it really WAS possible.  In my defense, it was late and I'm pretty sure I had had a few beers.  The sane and sober part of me knew it wasn't true, but the drunk part just wanted to check.  So I went to Google and typed in "Can you see Russia..." and it was immediately filled in with "...from Alaska."  I was thrilled.  Not only did I find out the answer (no, you can't), but it was satisfying to know that other people were wondering the same thing, that we were all out there Googling together.

Adulthood and stuff.

I was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for my lunch the other day--well, it would have been a PB&J if I had any jelly.  Which I did not.

I scavenged through my cupboards to find something to go with the PB and came up with a container of honey.  Mmmmm, peanut butter and honey...so I'm standing in my kitchen, , drizzling honey over the bread, and I start to wonder about how much sugar is in the honey.  Then I realize it's replacing jam--and not just any jam, this is jam my grandmother made herself, so you know it's nice and sugary.  But still, one of them had to be higher up on the chain of "unhealthy."

And that's when I realized I am an adult.  You can go for years getting degrees and jobs, and you can sign paperwork that gives some of your money to the government, and you can get health insurance and pay back loans and vote and donate money to public radio.  You can start running for health, you can buy whole-grain bread instead of white, and 1% milk instead of whole, and you can even start drinking light beer.  You can do all of this, and still retain some youth.

But the moment you think to yourself "I wonder if I'm getting too much sugar in my diet" is the moment you're an honest-to-god adult.

I think I heard my knees crack as I walked out of the kitchen.

Anyway.   Here's some stuff I wrote on Friday of last week (fall break):

Lines Written in a Subaru Car Dealership in Boone, NC.

Yesterday I almost got lost in Elizabethton.  Getting lost in Elizabethton, Tennessee, would’ve been the most embarrassing thing to happen to me in a while, and you have to keep in mind that the day before fall break, one of my classes decided they should “set me up” with one of their instructors (long story, but it came about during a student’s informational speech on the new golf coach.  Er, thanks, guys).

But what happened was, there’s a country road on the outskirts of Hampton that bypasses Elizabethton.  After somebody showed it to me a year or so ago, I started using it a lot any time I had to cut around the city (usually to get to Banner Elk so I could night-ski).  It’s a pretty effective time-saver, unless you realize that the road is closed.  But no worries—there was a detour sign.  So I turn down the road I’ve never been on, assuming it’ll eventually intersect with the original road, or at least get me back to the main highway.  But no.

The first problem is, there’s only one detour sign.  I realized after a minute or so, there should’ve been another sign or two, just letting me know I was going the right way.  I guess TDOT assumed anyone on that road actually knew their way around and wasn’t just, y’know, using a country road to avoid traffic.

Typically when you get that sense of “something’s not right,” you reassess the situation.  In this case, “reassessing the situation” means “turning around, getting back to the main road, biting the bullet, and driving through town”  But I’m persistent, and I kept thinking “there’s no way I can get too far off-track, and I’ve gone too far to turn around now.”  That’s a little mantra that I’m sure will one day get me arrested, killed, or married: “I’ve gone too far to turn around now.”

This day, it all worked out for the better, and it’s all thanks to the fact that last summer I wanted to earn some extra cash.  The road I was on eventually ended at a fork, and at this fork was a church.  The church looked familiar, and sure enough, I realized I’d been on this road before, just facing the opposite direction.  It’s the same road I took to get to my boss’ parents’ house, where I did some yard work last summer.  I checked beyond the church and sure enough, there were the laurels, and there was the park, and suddenly I knew my place in the world, if at least for thirty seconds.

Had I not driven out there a few times before, I would’ve been screwed.  It’s not a straight-shot back to town, and while it’s on the same side of town as the highway, it’s at a different angle.  That’s why I’d rather get lost in the city than t he country.  Finding your way in the middle of nowhere is frighteningly more difficult than it should be.  You almost have to revert to some basic method of navigation, like looking at the sun (or the stars, if you’re so unfortunate as to get lost at night).   When I get lost in the city, I just pick a really big building and drive towards it, because the most important thing in a big city is finding a place to park, and there’s usually decent parking around really big buildings

And yet again, another philosophy which might one day end badly...