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swamps of jersey Spending the day with Donna yesterday was so different than being with Ann. Whenever Ann and I are with each other we can relax and have some fun. Donna however almost always seems to be in professional mode, which is very much in character for her but slightly awkward for me. Under these conditions the conversation doesn't flow as well and the pauses are much more frequent. Since the two of them are so different from one another, I make a point of not mentioning one to the other. ... Earlier this morning I was paging through the latest issue of National Geographic and found it amusing to see an article on Mars. It was interesting to compare the movie that I just watched with what science has given us. The other piece that I read right away was the one about New Jersey. On Sunday morning, Ann was talking about places where she would like to live and New Jersey was at the top of her list. Sometime in her past she had made some trips to New Jersey from a friend's place in Philadelphia and she couldn't get over the beauty. Hearing all of this really surprised me. My mental image of New Jersey is garbage dumps lying in the shadow of New York with people like Bruce Springsteen trying to escape. The only other things that come to mind would be Atlantic City, Bon Jovi and the Meadowlands. The rest of the state is a blank for me. Of course since I've never been there I can't say whether or not this is true. Maybe I've just fallen prey to the stereotypes and bad jokes that I hear so often. To be fair if I believed the cliches about Wisconsin, I'd have a beer in one hand while driving my tractor through fields of corn. I'd also wear overalls every day and alternate between a foam cheese wedge and Skoal cap to cover my greasy hair. The National Geographic article did say that there used to be numerous garbage dumps in New Jersey, but that they have been slowly trying to restore that land so it seems that some of the jokes were true. Then a search on the web led me to the Delware Water Gap, which seems to fit the description that Ann gave me. I guess that I never thought of New Jersey as a travel destination. ... Staying on a first shift schedule these past two days has been really hard on me. Now when I say a first shift schedule, I don't mean a nine to five one. That isn't what I have been doing. On both Monday and today I was awake at two in the morning and fell asleep within hours of getting home from class.
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