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I don't know if everybody watched my review on the Friends polybag set Penguin's Playground... because they should. But instead of potentially having to deal with music that Youtube claims has some sort of copyright to it (did you know that some random band apparently owns some of the mnolg music, because when I put that in red flags went up) I decided to cover the build section with some interesting facts about penguins. Because everybody needs to know more about penguins. Unfortunately, I had too many facts and not a long enough build, so some of them had to be cut. Instead, I'll provide the rest of them here for you to enjoy. All penguins are found in the southern hemosphere, but not all of them hang out in Antarctica. The Galapagos Penguins hang out around the Galapagos Islands, which is near the equator and in a much warmer climate. Of course, this is only possible because of a cold water current around the islands, but still they're adapted to the tropical climate. In general, the penguins who live in colder climates (read Antarctica) are larger in size than those that live in warmer climates. This is apparently Bergmann's rule, but although it applies today, in the past there were giant penguins living in warmer places, so who knows what they were up to back then. Not Bergmann, that's for sure! Penguins can drink salt water! They have a glad that pretty much removed the extra salt from their blood and drips it out their nose/beak. I bet people from the dry coastal areas of California wish they had that ability! Penguins have really good hearing, and a mother can locate her chick in a crowded colony based on its chirps. Although that hasn't stopped some mother penguins from trying to steal other chicks if they lose their own. Spoiler alert: penguins cannot fly. Bet that surprised you!! But they can swim; their wings and bodies are now more adapted for moving in the water. Sometimes penguins will gather on the shoreline and randomly knock one of their members into the water. This isn't some sort of prank, but rather to see if there's a predator beneath the waves waiting for them. If their comrade survives, it's safe. If he doesn't... well, they know not to go swimming there! The movie "March of the Penguins" was not actually about a penguin marching band. This is due to the penguin's inability to play woodwind instruments, among other things. Only about six species of penguins actually breed in Antarctica, with the Emperor penguins being the only ones to do it during the winter! After the female Emperor penguin lays her egg, she returns to the sea to eat and re-nourish herself. The male penguins then keep the egg insolated on their feet. And, remember, these silly birds are doing this during the winter, so it's reeeeeeally cold when they're attempting this. Lots of penguins practice tobogganing, but so far none have been able to obtain a medal at the Winter Olympics. In the game Zoo Tycoon, if a penguin and an elephant got in a fight, the penguin would win due to its predator instincts. True fact! Penguins are cool. Nuff said. This has been facts about penguins!

So not more than 5 minutes ago my cat, gir, was laying on the edge of my bed sleeping peacefully. Apparently he decides to wake up and stretch while rolling over. Long story short he managed to roll right over the edge, though there was a brief moment where he clung to the sheet with wide eyes before falling to the ground... I have never laughed so hard at my cat. Then when he gets back up he still has this dazed kind of look on his face. Mind you this the first time he has ever been that clumsy in four years

Early this morning, my dad went and got the car looked at. The steering was funny when he drove in, with some terrible sounds emanating from the steering vicinity. Sure enough, the power steering system had a few leaks in it, necessitating a full overhaul. As a courtesy vehicle, the dealership loaned us practically the only car they had available for the purpose - an ancient Saab which didn't have back lights, had trouble turning over, made funny noises, and sounded especially bad if you tried to go anything over 30 miles an hour. By the time we'd straightened all of these things out - including a futile attempt at canceling our Boston reservations - we were ready to get lunch, which is where my mom and I had our first experience in the infamous Saab. We ended up at the same place we had dinner at last night. I had the same thing - lobster ravioli - except this time I had a clam chowder all to myself. My dad copied my order and my mom opted for a salad and a bowl of lobster bisque. After lunch, we got back to our rooms, where my parents took naps. I could tell they were tired, as they kept finding the most mundane things inordinately funny - "Cape Scrod" was one of the things that kept my mom rolling. Eventually they fell asleep, and were out for about an hour and a half. Upon their return to normal consciousness, we all felt a little hungry, so we debated where to go. None of us really wanted to get into that dang Saab any more than was absolutely necessary, so we went to the small hotel restaurant. I'd heard good things about their clam chowder, and it didn't disappoint - it was more peppery than the award-winning chowder I'd sampled previously, but I'd have to rate them pretty much equals. After dinner, we went out for a bit of exploring. In hindsight, this was a particularly ill-advised decision, although we did not know it was at the time. We didn't have the right light or the right car to go any farther eastward down Cape Cod, where it's said that the beaches are the best in the country, so we just decided to go south to see what we could of the sea. En route to the sea, we saw a store called a Christmas Tree Shop. I'd seen a few of these elsewhere on the Cape, and I thought that it was sort of a strange thing to base a year-round chain on. As it turns out, Christmas Tree Shops don't have Christmas trees ... or anything Christmas-themed ... or any trees. It's essentially the Cape Cod equivalent of a Dollar Tree, as we found out when we looked around to see if we could find an ornament for my mom's Collection. With that out of the way, we found the sea. With the sun rapidly setting, the temperature at 55 degrees and dropping, and the wind billowing in at a steady 30 MPH, we bolted out to the beach, got a few pictures, and bolted back to the safety of the Saab. We wondered if the car would fall apart upon our return journey, but it made it back, despite many desperate squeals from the engine region. (Side note: it turns out that there is a strong Brazilian community here near Hyannis. Brazilian markets, churches, and pizzerias abound along one particular area of our route between hotel and beach. We asked the lady at the front desk about it, and she said that, though many nationalities visit, the Brazilians have made a permanent home in Cape Cod.) We're now winding down, enjoying what's left of this off day before we get back on the road tomorrow. We'll be going through Boston as opposed to staying in Boston, as there are literally zero available rooms anywhere in the greater Boston area. I don't know what's going on there, but our plan is just to see history and move on through to New Hampshire.

From Wikipedia He doesn't have strange migration patterns, he's just lost. That feel...

I have been here for seven years

I just realized that thanks to my sis I am actually into a rather current series (Sherlock) and can actually discuss it with people (okay, on the internet, but hey, that's still a lot better than nothing). Wow. Quite unusual. ~ Currently at the third doctor*, btw. I think he's actually my favourite so far, although I've liked all of them up until now. :3 *really the third one... Pertwee, I think?

You know that person who, despite all of your flaws, just doesn't care? You know, the person who looks past your faults and motivates you to do better. That person is so not me. I mean, sometimes I might act that way towards other people. I honestly don't care about someone's orientation or beliefs or whatever. But that's not because I'm a nice person. No, the reason I don't care is because I am genuinely apathetic. The reason I don't care is because I am so self absorbed that I am too busy dealing with my own stuff to care about other people. Whenever I goof up, my mind goes into "self hate" mode. One time when i messed up at work, I was yelled at and the only way I could live with myself was to bash my head into a wall just to feel pain. Another time when I messed up at work (I burned a tray of cookies), I chanted "I hate myself, I hate myself..." around five times... in front of my boss. I guess that's how I work. I sweat the small stuff enough that I'm overcome with so much guilt that I either have to bring myself to physical harm, or, more likely, be a bully with self-slander. This is why I am not that kind of person that I mentioned earlier. I do not motivate myself to do better. I do not see past my own faults. I stress out so much that I become emotionally exhausted which makes me apathetic. It's how I live with myself. I hate it. My anxiety and depression probably didn't help me in this respect. Like at all. Not even a little bit. And even though I've gone through treatment and I'm feeling pretty fantastic, I'm still not over it entirely. It also doesn't help that my family has a low tolerance for my being a ditz. And don't get me wrong here, I love my family. They've supported me, raised me, and loved me. And they're awesome. Wonderful. Fantastic. Buuut they could also be a driving force for my want of self destruction (so I take them with a grain of salt. But hey, what family is perfect, right?) Case in point: Yesterday my family and I went over a family friend's house to celebrate the holiday (which is the most depressing holiday of the year). While I was there, I did something. Something horrible. Something major. Something that could have potentially forced an evacuation of the entire planet to Mars. I broke a glass. Once I did, my family (whom I love! Really, I do!) moaned my name in that tone that just says "Oh god, he did it again, why do we put up with him?" You know the one, right? That one quiet, subtle tone that screams shame and humiliation which is so loud it can be heard in any room of the house. Now, it was at this point that my family dropped everything and came over to where I was. Not helping, mind you, but just standing there to watch the freak of nature in his natural habitat. Now, my method for cleaning broken glass is as such: Carefully try to piece the shards back together to make sure nothing is still lingering around. "You know you can't just glue it back together (moron)." (I added in the moron because they do think I am this stupid). So, recap. I screwed up. I am now overwhelmed with the agony of twenty tortured souls because that's just how my brain works. I snapped. "Shut up. You are not helping me. Shut up. I have this under control. Shut up. I already hate myself enough for literally every other human being on the planet. Just. Shut. Up." (Okay, so I didn't actually say all of that. I just said "Shut up" Whenever I'm losing my mind, I speak in between the lines). So, shortly after this, our lovely hostess walks in and asks what's going on. Once she learns about the broken glass, her first question, her first instinct is "Are you alright?" I said I was fine. I mean, no shards of glass had cut my skin or anything, but I was lying. I wasn't alright. I was giving myself way too much guilt over something insignificant. I was being harassed with one snyde comment and that was enough to make me flip out at my family. Above all, though, I was almost moved to tears because I was so unused to anyone asking me if I was alright that that one small gesture of kindness actually felt significant to me. You know what, I would love to be normal. I would love it if I could just not sweat the small stuff. Alas, the damage is done, and right now I am that guy who thinks something so small as breaking a glass is important enough to write this entire entry about. Ugh... I don't care anymore. ... I guess that's apathy for you...

We got on the road a few minutes after 11:00. Our hotel breakfast - at least for my parents - consisted of sliced sausages called "pork ham." This is, of course, repetitive, so we thought that it was probably something we could chalk up to some local custom. A brief Google search tells me that it isn't. My faith in the overall intelligence level in human society took another hit. Before noon, we found ourselves in New London, home of the US Coast Guard Academy. It's a lot different in look and feel to other service academies - its layout and architecture are much more like a small college than the austere gothic structures one associates with service academy. We were warned by the security guard that some of the cadets were about to begin a 21-gun salute for Memorial Day. With that in the back of our heads, we drove around. Mom, in the backseat, rolled down her window for a picture, when *BLAM* the first three shots of the salute, fired simultaneously, thundered out across the grounds and rebounded six seconds later off of the other side of the Thames River (in keeping with the London theme). My dad knew what to expect with regards to decibel level, but my mom and I got seriously spooked by that first volley. We picked up a Christmas tree ornament for my mom's collection and then rolled out, our eyes on a restaurant in Narragansett, Rhode Island, called Crazy Burger. We made good time getting out of Connecticut and into Rhode Island. Rhode Island is, of course, the smallest of the fifty states. It still took about fifty minutes to get from the border to Narragansett, where one of the Atlantic's many inlets takes over. We found Crazy Burger, and getting in was, as they say, crazy. To say that Crazy Burger is a hole in the wall is to complement its size. The building was what appeared to be a converted house, with four booths arranged in a square in its center, a bar-like area on one side, three more booths on the other side, and four more tables squeezed in wherever they could fit. Even that wasn't enough, even more seating was available on the patio, which we did not see. It took thirty minutes for us to get in, and then about that long from getting in to actually eating. In the meantime, my mom and I went down the street a little ways to look at a local art gallery, ranging from thought-provoking paintings of native Alaskans and bear trapped in a vacuum-sealed bag to surrealist photography to splashes and splotches reminiscent of Jackson Pollock. In the end, Crazy Burger delivered, and, as it turns out, their burgers all had some kind of twist to them. My parents got burgers that came in a wrap, with some interesting side dishes such as "Bangkok slaw." My burger was a blue cheese burger ... but the blue cheese (and caramelized onions) were inside the meat. The bun was a homemade English muffin, and even more gorgonzola came alongside. They were definitely interesting. They were delicious, but I'm not sure they were quite worth the wait. In my list of Top Burgers, I'd rate it the fourth-best. It was filling - at the time. It didn't quite stick to our ribs, as we found out about an hour later. We crossed over onto Conanicut Island, then off of it onto Rhode Island - the actual island for which the state was named. We turned south to Newport, famous for its many mansions. The traffic was horrendous getting through downtown, and everyone seemed to be parading a dog around as a status symbol. I got a sinking feeling that most of these dogs, if they were not named "Fifi," were named something pretty close to it. One guy was on a bike, towing a little trailer with one of these stupid-looking dogs in it. If that's all you need to know about the ritzy nature of the place ... too bad, because I'm going to keep talking about it. We finally got out of the traffic jam - a jam that extended through six consecutive stoplights - and out into more of the countryside. We located the mansions - some still private, some bought by the local preservation society and open to any member of the public willing to pay through the nose to ogle at their gaudy interiors. After driving around on roads with a surprising number of pot holes, especially considering the money inherent in the region. Most of the mansions were obscured by carefully manicured hedges and only visible through fanciful wrought-iron gates, and then only for a second or so. The only mansion we got a real good look at was The Breakers - a summer cottage originally built by a member of the Vanderbilt family for his growing number of extended relatives. (His father, the original Cornelius Vanderbilt, built the Biltmore Estate outside of Asheville, NC.) It was like the Biltmore crossed with the White House, with an impressive and detailed exterior. We circumnavigated the mansion and then went into the gift shop on the lowest floor. The gift shop was quite thorough and extended over about five rooms of the basement. I'm pretty sure that we could have snuck into the rest of the house without anyone caring - in the same manner of how we got into the stadium in Scranton - but we didn't particularly want to. We got back on the road, skirted Newport, and traveled up until we took a bridge off Rhode Island (the island) and then exited Rhode Island (the state), entering Massachusetts a little after 5:00. (Side note: throughout the day, on major thoroughfares, have - with the exception of Newport - had incredible luck with our timing. As traffic gets backed up for tens of miles going the opposite direction, we make good time heading into the places coming out of the Memorial Day rush. If we'd left earlier, we'd still be stuck in Connecticut.) A half-hour later we entered Cape Cod - at least, according to the sign; we'd not yet crossed over the Cape Cod Canal. As we did so, we saw the most incredible traffic buildup of the day - thousands of cars headed west on Route 6 out of Cape Cod. Around us, on the eastbound side, there was one other car in our sight for the longest time. We got to Hyannis and checked in a little after 6:00, and got some restaurant advice from the front desk. They recommended two places downtown almost right across from each other. We parked in a nearby lot and chose the one that looked more interesting. There was no disappointment in the quality of the food. I got lobster ravioli, served in one of those bowls that looks like it doesn't have much food in it until you get about a third of the way through the meal, when you realize just how much food there is in the bowl. My mom got a seafood sampler, and my dad got some pan-roasted scallops. We all sampled some of each other's food, and we came to the conclusion than mine was definitely the best. My mom got some of the place's award-winning clam chowder. We all tried it, and we all loved it. It was the first time I've ever had clam chowder (or even clam, for that matter), so I guess it was a good place to start. Our waitress was very pleasant and even posed for a picture with that perennial trip mascot, the one and only Yoder the Duck. It was a sight to behold ... especially for the confused patrons sitting around us. We also learned that the insane build-up of traffic isn't just a Memorial Day thing - it's like that on every weekend. We got some ice cream comes and walked out around the dock area before getting in the car and heading back to the hotel. But getting back, the car made noises between scratching and squeaking with every turn. These sounds got progressively worse en route to the hotel. With the drive between Hyannis and Boston only about an hour, Dad will have a chance to get the car looked at in Hyannis next morning and still get to Boston on schedule.