Brian writes a letter

I knew this girl who was going away to camp all summer. She wouldn't have telephone or internet so she made me promise to write her. So I came through and wrote her a letter. But not just any letter. I wrote her a love letter. But not just any love letter. I wrote her a Civil War era love letter. I even had Peter write it out in cursive. Here it is in all of its hilarious glory.

It's best when read in the voice of a Civil War movie narrator.

My dearest Kelly,

Pardon the affectionate familiarity but you know its all in joyous fun. Your charming little epistle has just reached me, and I do myself the honor to answer it immediately, thus complying with your request to write soon. I do believe I am indebted to you by way of letter, and for your kindness to me I will write you a few lines.

I have written a good many letters to other girls. Letters of friendship, but those I write to you. I want you to receive them for more than mere friendship. For let me say that your memory is ever dear to me and if we never again meet on Earth I shall ever cherish the fond remembrance of thee, and think of the pleasant hours passed in your society, but let me indulge the hope that we may again meet ere long.

I fondly recall our initial courtship, the gentle breeze in the fairest of Ann Arbor's midsummer and the plesent imbibing of Frederick Miller's High Life. Whilst our time together barely grazed a fortnight, nary a single eve passes without my cogitation meandering back to those most wonderful of times. I dont know how much pleasure it affords you to go over these days of the past, but to me they will ever be remembered as days of felicity. And how happy the thought that days increase the affection & esteem we have for each other to love & be loved.

Yours endearingly,

Brian Russell

Things to think about whilst driving across the country

Usually when I drive on road trips I like to set goals for reaching certain destinations. My favorite one is trying to figure out when I will reach the next state. I'm usually within a couple of minutes. But when I was driving out to Seattle I started to notice that my estimates were far earlier than I actually got there. This started in North Dakota, and it was almost until I got to Idaho before I figured out why. Google maps and road mileage signs don't account for changes in elevation.

So think of going over a hill that would be one mile if a person was to travel straight through it to the other side.

If travelling up a 5% grade and then down a 5% grade the traveller would actually travel 1.015 miles. If done at 60 MPH it would take 61 seconds to travel the one mile, instead of the expected 60 seconds. The drivers speed in the x-direction would only be 59.77 MPH. While this doesn't seem like much, over the course of many miles it can cause the assumption of a flat earth to yield substantial errors.

So I kept my mileage from Ann Arbor to Seattle and then went into Google Maps to compare my car's mileage with the flat Earth mileage. Now I'm driving a new car and I believe the odometer to be pretty accurate. I added a handful of miles to the Google Maps mileage to cover the times I got off the highway. I found that the Google Estimate was 2,346 to my odometers 2,389 miles.

43 miles seems like a lot of elevation. In one shot it would take me well into the stratosphere and back down. But when you think of it as going over over 22 one mile high mountains it doesn't seem so that unfathomable.

But I think it wasn't just elevation that caused my odometer to be higher than the Google estimate. I started to think that if Google thinks the earth is flat, then it also isn't accounting for the curvature of the Earth. I wondered how much affect this had on the difference in mileage. I determined the radius of the earth at 45 degrees north to be about 2,805.8 miles. Ann Arbor is at 83 degrees west and Seattle is at 122 degrees west. This means that I traveled about 10.8% of the way across the world. Here is a diagram:



Google says it is 1883 miles, but actually it is 1903 miles with the curvature. That is just a straight line due west at the 45th parallel which is why it is much less than the actual route which twists and turns and goes north quite a ways. So I believe that 20 miles of the difference between my odometer and the Google estimate can be accounted for by the curvature of the Earth. This would also mean that I could account for some error due to the curvature of the Earth from south to north, but since I traveled less than 400 miles north I'm going to ignore that. That means for every 144.45 miles I drove, I had to drive an extra one to make up for the curve of the earth.

The final breakdown would be:
2389 actual miles
- 10 miles spent off of route
- 20 miles of curvature
- 2336 miles of Google route

Which leaves me with 23 miles of elevation changes. That is about the same as driving up and down the height of Mount Everest twice.

Brian makes someone named Gina laugh

Madison is an amazing college town. It is great. On a lake, with beautiful buildings and a great downtown. I was about to declare it one of the best college towns that I've been to (and I've been to lots) when I realized its fatal flaw. You can't buy booze in the city after 9pm. Can you imagine having a party and running out of beer but the only way to get more is to drive to the next town over? So that's a boo.

Anyways while I was wandering around Madison wondering why every liquor store I went to was closed I came across a cat. So I posted it on Craigslist.

Tonight I was wandering around Madison in an attempt to buy beer after 9PM. While I was disappointing with the realization that it is impossible to buy a 6 pack of High Life at a time when I actually want to drink, I was pleased to discover a feline friend. I'll try to describe her. She had hair. It was black in some parts and greyish/white in some parts it was kinda long. She looked like she had eaten her fair share of Friskies.

It was dark and she did not like it when I tried to read the phone number on her collar. But the collar was elastic and it had a single small bell and a tag. The tag had a name and a phone number that started 608-. I know, I know, I should have read the last 4 numbers or the name. On the other side of the tag was yellowish orange with a little catlike thing raised up on the metal.

So that could be you're lost cat. Or it could have just been an outdoor cat that lives in the house whose driveway I was suspiciously hanging out in. Either way, I'm sober and there is a cat at Allen and Van Hise.

Then while I was reading my GMail while driving through construction today I came across this email to me.

Hi

I just wanted to let you know that I loved how you worded you post. It made me laugh my ass off. Not many people can put there humor into words.

Gina

So I totally made Gina laugh.

Campus Legend

Stories I can only tell now that I'm no longer living in Ann Arbor/enrolled.

I've always insisted - to no opposing argument - that the Law Quad is the most romantic place on campus. If I were to ever write a screenplay, it would be a coming of age teen dramedy where the quintessential plot zenith would take place in the Law Quad. The main character would be walking the girl he was madly in love with through an empty law quad at night. It would be one of those winter nights where fat snowflakes fall heavily on an already thick layer of fresh snow and despite the snow falling it would feel strangely warm. As they quietly walk together in front of the doors to the Law Library he would stop her and turn her to face him. With the yellow glow of the two lights from Hutchens Hall illuminating the snow around them, he would tell her how he felt about her and without her having to say anything they would kiss underneath the falling snow. The kiss would be unsure at first until the warmth of each others lips let them know that it was meant to be. Then the camera would slowly lift above them and zoom out until the entire Law Quad was visible, and then the entire campus and then the entire city. The movie would probably go straight to DVD.

Anyways. About a month after I graduated I was walking home from the bar through the Law Quad when I realized that for all the beauty I had admired for the past 4 years, I had never actually been in the Law Quad. So I decided that I needed to break in. I was able to jimmy a window and sneak into the Law Quad. I found myself slightly inebriated and wandering around room to room. I finally made it to the top floor and found that one of the rooms had a window that let out to a roof overlooking Tappan Street. I leaned back with my body resting on the roof line enjoying the warm summer air and recalling some of the good times I've had at Michigan. As I was sitting up on the roof, I watched the drunks stumble home and I was just about to get down when I saw a familiar gait walking up Tappan. It was my buddy Craig. I called down to him and he looked up in a state of disbelief upon seeing that his friend was perched on the edge a building. I went down and let him in and we stood up on the roof talking about how it would be the perfect place to take a girl.

Two nights later I was at the bar with some my mates and one of the girls at our table happened to be a former GSI of mine. We must of hit it off because I found myself on the roof of the law quad making out with my old GSI.

How many other people can say they have done that?

I read a book

I read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I was told that it would change my life. It didn't.

I'm not a literary critic but my major complaint was Rand's neglect for certain parts of the story. Like when Lucious Heyer dies and leaves Peter Keating with $200,000 in the 1920's. That was a huge sum of money, but it is merely mentioned and then doesn't seem to affect any aspect of his life.

The other thing that pissed me off while reading the book is the storyline between Peter and Toohey's niece Catherine. She appears and then disappears for years at a time. Then they get engaged but then on page 262 Toohey encourages Peter to go after Dominique knowing that he was engaged to his niece. On page 329 Toohey again has to be reminded that Peter was engaged to his niece but this is like 2 years later and there has been no mention of Catherine in between. Then on page 376 Peter and Catherine decide to get married the next day. That night Dominique proposes to Peter and he says yes despite that he is supposed to get married to another girl the next day. WTF? Then she isn't mentioned again for years.

But if they were in love before Toohey drove Peter towards Dominique why did years go by without them seeing each other. Also, why didn't she do anything except sit at Toohey's house and wait for Peter to show up? It was like 'Oh hey, by the way Peter is still courting this girl even though he promised to marry her several times but then never did but we're not going to talk about that for another couple of years until it is convenient'.

Also, she didn't mention the fall of the stock market in 1929. It was briefly touched upon a few years later that no one was building. I would think that the Great Depression would have a bigger effect on an Architect in New York City.

Texts with a stranger Part 2

So my new friend Joel texted me again this morning and a great conversation ensued. Only this time Joel texted me from a different number, which I thought was weird but he explains why. Read on.

Joel: hey it joel again !$exy time!
Me: Hey Joel. I gotta know, did Morgan agree to go out with you?
Joel: Is this morgan or brian !$exy time!
Me: This is Brian
Joel: o sorry brian who !$exy time!
Me: I don't think we know each other. Anyways did you ever get a hold of Morgan?
Me: She sounded like a babe when you called her 'sexy pants'
Joel: ya she said yea so wot ur last name !$exy time!
Me: Why do you want to know my last name? And what's which the new phone number Joel?
Joel: idk cause i want to meet u and this is my friends fone so waz the other 1 !$exy time!
Me: Why do you want to meet me? I already told you that I just see you as a friend.
Joel: ik i'm not gay i jus wana know ur last name come on please !$exy time!
Me: Perhaps sometime in the future once we're better texting buddies. Anyways do you ever get blackout drunk and hit on ugly girls? Because that's what I did last night.
Joel: how old r u !$exy time!
Me: 22. How old are you Joel?
--20 minutes later--
Me: Where did you go? Are you taking a really smelly dump? Because I don't mind if you text while you take a crap. Just as long as you aren't jerking it to my responses.
Joel: wot? !$exy time!

Texts with a stranger

248: Hey morgan it b joel booth how r u
Me: Hi. This isn't Morgan. I think you might have the wrong number
248: O sorry
248: Wot ur name
Me: Brian. Don't worry about the wrong number.
248: Hey do u wanna go out sexy pants
Me: I'm sorry Joel. You seem like a really nice guy but I've always seen you as more of a friend
248: Is this morgan?
Me: No man. It's not Morgan. It's a dude. A dude who doesn't want to go out with you.