At this point I stopped listening, not because I was uninterested (which I was), but because I had knocked over my glass of water and had to clean up the mess. However, the message still stuck in my head, largely because I was at least partially interested in where else to find selenium.

But only partially; I’ve eaten enough breakfast cereals in my life to know that any mineral I need is included in the cereal. When I was younger, it seemed to me like cereals were in a competition to have the highest number next to the words “essential vitamins and minerals,” followed by a requisite exclamation mark.

Even “unhealthy” cereals are healthy by this measure: Cinnamon Toast Crunch (twelve) Cookie Crisp (twelve), Count Chocula (eight), Lucky Charms (twelve), Trix (twelve). The list goes on.

Of course, it seems to me that most of these (“essential”) minerals are things like Boron, Manganese, and Gallium. They don’t seem that essential to me, and the box always explains that the included one microgram is 6700% of your recommended daily value. One box of cereal I ate once had Gold listed, which I thought was awesome.

Anyway, apparently Selenium is good for you. So who knows? Soon, I’ll find out that the essential Manganese prevents spleen cancer! Now pardon me while I pour myself a bowl of cereal.

Invariably, our hero has tucked his or her legs up and is sitting or crouching on the toilet so that no legs are dangling below. The villain then spills the plot, and the hero has all the information necessary to foil it.

Recently, I realized just how ridiculous this action is. See, stalls only lock from the inside. So it doesn’t make sense to look under stalls, when instead the villains should just push open each stall door. If it’s locked, there’s someone inside. If it’s unlocked, there either isn’t, or you’ll find that person.

So, the next time you’re discussing a nefarious caper inside the bathroom, follow my advice: push open each stall door rather than craning your head to look for legs. You’ll thank me when your plans are not ruined by a pesky eavesdropper.

The concept of catching up with old friends is an interesting one. I can recall last year’s New Year’s party in which a lot of my high school friends appeared, many of whom I hadn’t seen since high school ended. Yet, and the same is true with Tani, it was as if we had never parted ways; it was simple to pick up conversation “where we left off” and continue the friendship.

This is no great breakthrough, it’s really just something that amazes me. Tani and I are in two completely different stages of our lives than we were when we last saw each other. We’ve also both completely changed our attitudes toward different things, yet I found that none of that mattered. First, there was the lucky streak that we’ve both changed in similar ways, but in addition to that, it was like catching up was more interesting because of it.

I used to be a little worried about “losing” friends, especially as my middle school friends and I drifted apart. Eventually I got over it, realizing that it’s simple to just make new friends in new places. Nonetheless, it’s really nice to recapture a friendship that was thought to have been “lost.”

The burger was delicious. My mom’s and mine got switched up, but nonetheless, we were both amazed with how delicious the half-pound juicy burger tasted. This was the kind of burger you dream of, the kind of burger that says “these people know what they’re doing.”

And the fries reinforced that case. They were fresh-cut (as is obvious by the taste and texture) and seasoned just right to be amazing. In combination, this burger and fries are a combination beyond belief and certainly delicious.

In addition, the Petrol Station has a bunch of taps filled with delicious craft brews. I had a Dogfish Head Theobroma and my mom had a Southern Star Buried Hatchet. Delicious. If you’re in Houston and you need a burger, fries, and a beer, the Petrol Station is worth the drive. You will not be disappointed.

Actually it wasn’t too bad, in that it only took two days. However, during the process, I learned that three of my files are corrupt. One, a meaningless word document, I don’t care much about. However, the other two, videos I made for high school, are a lot more meaningful and I’m disappointed that they are gone.

I’m working on getting replacements from the other members of the groups, but it remains to be seen whether I will be successful. The two videos are as follows:

• “Le Lit de Mort de Vie” – This was a two part film that Sarah and Nick and I made for French class. Part one, the trailer, is fine, but part two, the movie itself, is broken. It breaks 25 seconds from the end, though, so I’ve kept what I could get in case I can’t replace it. The film was billed as “Avant-Garde,” which really just meant we filmed a bunch of nonsense and dubbed over it in French.
• “QQQQ” – This was a film created for ToK, an IB-required class. Basically our group had to fill a film with logical fallacies to sell a product. Our product turned time backwards, and if I recall correctly, we made a lot of enemies among the more sensitive of the student body when we played the Zapruder footage in reverse.

Hopefully these videos will be saved. They were truly works of art.

There’s nothing wrong with the scenario I just presented. The Spanish part was pretty funny because it was such a non-Hispanic accent, but everything else about it was just fine. You may be thinking, “what could be wrong with any similar situation?” Or, if you’ve read the title of this post, you may have already determined what my complaint is.

The issue is when the automated voice tells me “For English, press one” and then waits for me to take the phone away from my ear, press the button, and only then will it continue with the options. This is highly inefficient and stupid.

There should always be a default option, and as long as I’m calling some place in America, where English is still the primary language, that default option should be English. Offer as many different languages as you want, but for one default, don’t make me press anything. If I were calling a phone in China, I would expect the same behavior: For English, press two. No mention of Chinese, in which case, one should just stay on the line.

Enough of this inefficiency. I suggest that everyone complain to the operator each time you reach a “for English, press one” prompt. Maybe with enough complaints, this will change.

I thought this was ridiculous, though John didn’t seem to mind. The concept, that there was a taco truck set up and doing business past midnight on a remote corner far from any discernable nightlife on a Tuesday, confused me. Yet there was this taco truck, operating in exactly those conditions.

In New York, I’m used to food carts being open late at night. Usually around bars or other places that the nightlife calls home, and usually only on weekends. These are the night-owl Halal carts of the city, dispensing Chicken over Rice and Lamb over Rice to the hungry drunken masses. They do a booming business, I’m sure.

If a taco truck were to open up in New York, it too would do booming business under such circumstances, and I would welcome it due to my love of tacos. However, I still can’t get over the idea that somewhere in a remote Houston neighborhood, someone’s Tuesday midnight taco desires can be quenched.

Part of this is the can-do attitude of Texans that is present in Galveston. It’s the attitude that says “we’ve been hit; let’s get back up again.” Perhaps the greatest display of this is the Galveston Tree Sculpture Tour.

Galveston has a lot of trees, much like the rest of the Gulf Coast, and when Ike hit, quite a few were uprooted, as would be expected in a hurricane. Many others were destroyed by the storm waters. Rather than panic and leave the trees in disarray, local and outside artists came and sculpted the destroyed trees into neat creations.

These sculptures are pelicans, a Dalmatian and fire hydrant (near the fire station), a hand clutching a diploma (near a child’s park), a geisha, various dogs, and many other creations. Pictured above is the Tin Man and Toto, in front of a house that was once the childhood home of King Vidor, one of The Wizard of Oz’s directors.

The sculptures are quite awesome and worth checking out if you’re in Galveston. It’s amazing how fast the rebuilding has taken place, and it’s even more amazing how much of a difference a little art can make in the effort.

We shot a .22 caliber rifle, three 9mm semi-automatics, some .44 revolvers, a derringer, and an awesomely powerful .45 from WWII. That’s right, I shot a gun used to kill Nazis.

In addition to completely destroying my target (this fake green guy won’t be coming back to haunt me), I spent a lot of time reciting Lil Wayne lyrics having to do with guns, and both John and I recited the Dirty Harry monologue regarding his .357 Magnum.

And, because Carmen is awesome, she encouraged us to have fun by firing off several rounds in rapid succession. I did this, and I did this holding the gun sideways, as if I was in a movie.

Firing a gun is awesome. Firing many guns is even more awesome. As Officer Michaels says in Superbad, “it’s like having two c**ks, if one of your c**ks could kill someone.”

This is a poor promotion, in my opinion, and it’s just added to a park that is gradually becoming filled with nonsense. See, I don’t really care if some random guy I don’t know wins a lot of cash. If I’m on the line, I guess that’s more exciting, but in a stadium of say 30,000 fans (or more like 3,000 these days), the odds are against me.

There is another promotion the Astros have, one that I much prefer, which provides the blueprint for a better Sixth Inning Slam promo: the Chick-Fil-A “Eat More Fowl” Foul Poles. See, if any Astros homerun hits the foul poles, everyone in the stadium gets a free Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwich.

That’s awesome. Everyone, one sandwich per person. Nobody hits the jackpot, but everyone is rewarded, in contrast to the sixth inning slam promo, in which only one person is rewarded. Imagine if instead, a sixth inning grand slam promised everyone in the crowd a Cherry Limeade or Strawberry Cream Slush.

Now that would be a heck of a promotion. And one for which I would cheer heartily in the case of a four-RBI four-bagger. As opposed to now, when I would likely cheer for the runs but not care much about the lucky jerk who just won while the rest of us advanced to nowhere.