Oh, the shame...

You may wonder why this is going on a blog that my parents are going to read.

Perhaps this is a bad idea.
Oh well.

So I was pulled over by a policeman for the first time ever last night. But let me defend myself! It's 3:30 AM, we've just been to (another) gay club and (another, more friendly!) diner with Rachel's friend, and we're headed back to Northfield on a totally straight and mostly deserted stretch of highway. I am going 71 mph - which anyone who has driven on 35W knows is not fast at all. A gigantic trunk gets on the on-ramp just to my right, and it looks like he's about to change into my lane, so I swerve a bit and go around him. No danger, everything's fine. A little while later, I am being pulled over for going 71 in a 55 mph zone.

So here's the theory - cop sees out-of-state car full of college students swerving around a truck at 3 in the morning, and thinks they might be drunk. This makes sense based on his actions, too. As much as I'd like to demonize all police officers, this guy was perfectly civil, and basically asked me a bunch of questions to determine (I think) whether I could answer coherently. And I guess since I had no prior DWI's or anything, and I was super calm the whole time (if a little reluctant to share that we'd just come from a club - I left out the fact that it was a gay club) he let me off with a warning. (And might I add, he pulled me over literally 50 feet before the speed limit changed to 65.)

So, no harm done, no fines, no strikes on my license, and I maintain that I did nothing particularly wrong, just... damn. There's something kind of shameful about getting pulled over. Like, you see the lights in your rearview mirror and it's like you're five, and your hand is in the cookie jar, and you can hear your mother's footsteps coming down the hall, and even if you get your hand out in time, it's just - too - late - to wipe the crumbs off your fingers. And even if she doesn't notice, or doesn't care, you knew you could've gotten in trouble for something totally dumb, and that's just embarrassing.

Not like anything like that has ever happened to me.

An Ethical Dilemma and an Eventful Weekend

The first part first. Say an hypothetical employer is supposed to give a hypothetical employee 20 hours a week of work. But said employee is perhaps a fast worker, and for the past couple of weeks she has had to make work for herself to feel productive. Even giving herself extra work, she still has not filled the 20 hours. Said employer has not made comments on employee's work, or given her any specific directions in a long, long time. Since it's the employer's responsibility to assign the employee 20 hours worth of work, and this hasn't happened, is it ethical for the employee to lie on a timesheet and get paid for the 20 hours anyway? Thoughts?

This weekend was exciting and fun. A friend had friends in from out of town, so we hit the town last night. First, we discovered the gem of the Twin Cities, the best movie theater I've ever seen. It's called the Riverside Theater, it's in the middle of a totally random residential part of Minneapolis, but it is absolutely beautiful - it looks like a concert hall - and it charges $3 a ticket. 3 dollars. 3.

Also, the movie we saw there, "Thank You for Smoking," was amazing. It's about a tobacco lobbyist - so, not the funniest person you can think of. But this movie is hilarious. I don't often laugh out loud in movies, but in this one, I did. A lot. Go see it now.

So then we went to the Gay 90's, which used to be the gay hotspot in the Midwest and, perhaps, anywhere outside New York or San Francisco, but is now full of women looking for a safe place to dance and have fun - and the sketchy, sketchy straight men who have realized that women go to gay clubs. But they confine themselves to the hip-hop room, and all the gay guys are upstairs in the retro room or at the drag show (which, by the way, is so impressive - some of these women are hot), so it's still loads of fun.

Then followed a very ill-fated dining excursion. First, we had a lot of trouble finding the highway after the club, so we ended up making a big circular detour. But that was OK, because on the detour we saw a sign for Perkins (which, if you East Coasters don't know, is an all-night diner chain which is usually quite respectable). Given this inspiration, we got off a few miles later at a Perkins in Burnsville. A Perkins which has a rather inept staff, apparently, because they a) took two trips back and forth just to figure out what pies they had left; b) put our order after the order of a nearby table of eight who actually ordered after us, thereby making us wait FOREVER for our food; c) put ham in my egg & cheese & veggie wrap after I specifically asked them not to; d) when I pointed this out, were not particularly apologetic and took away my plate (more specifically, my plate full of very tasty hash browns - grrr); e) put my meal on the bill, even though obviously I shouldn't have had to pay for it. Well it turned out OK, the replacement wrap was really good, and when we asked them to, they took my meal off the bill (yay free food), but still. All that and we didn't get home til 4:15 am. Which was a drag.

Today was fun too though, as I spent the day at Valleyfair, an amusement park & water park, for free because I volunteered to buddy up with a local middle schooler and ride the rides with her. Well she was nice, her two friends were superfun, which was cool, and I hadn't been to an amusement park in ages. I had lost faith in kids after last summer's ecology camp experience, but really, one-on-one, they're pretty cool. Being ten is awesome.

And now after all this wild updating it is time I think for me to crash. Lots of sun today, and all that.

Oh and in case you were interested I hit back breakfall #610 today. only 390 more to go! hell yeah.