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'You called me beautiful once...' 'Babe, you got real ugly.' -Evil Dead, the Musical
Two weeks ago, my Macbook had reached its limit. My baby had a cracked screen, a 20-minute battery life and a six-month expired warranty. Sorry hon. It was a good three years, but this relationship is over.
 
 
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Creepy hallway #1: Photo by Jeff Gunderson
Thursday, early August. 9 p.m.
The first thing I see when I enter the Parkside Homes is a note scotch taped to the banister of the ancient staircase.It reads: 

"MATT. You're the only one here tonight. I'll try to get weekend renters. MARION."

This is bad. This is really, really bad.

Let me remind you that the 100-year old Parkside Homes began its life as a hospital, complete with a maternity ward (a creepy pink room with a crib awkwardly placed in a closet) and and operating chamber. Some of the construction workers in Tower, who have lived in the Parkside numerous times while working nearby, said they heard a woman scream violently on two occasions and never found the source. Were they hearing a woman's final few seconds of life during childbirth? An operation gone horribly awry?

But the history of the Parkside gets even more colorful. When the hospital ceased operation, it was transformed into an assisted living facility for mental care patients. Or, as Ken so delicately puts it, a nuthouse.

Speaking of Ken, I found a second note upon entering my room that informed me that he was now the former manager of the Parkside, without explaining in the slightest why he was removed.

To summarize: I'm forced to spend a weekend alone in a century-old haunted mental hospital while the former manager is somewhere out there with a potential axe to grind on my face.

I sprang into action, quickly updating my facebook status.
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People began to issue tearful goodbyes.
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Where ghosts are concerned, I have plenty of experience. Last year, I went hunting with a legit group of ghosthunters in Hibbing. I've also seen Paranormal Activity. This pretty much makes me a pro. Basically, all you gotta do is not piss the ghosts off.

You should also turn on lights. It's a well established fact that ghosts only get frisky after hours. I kept the hall light, the one next to the creepy attic door, fully lit.

I decided to phone a friend, because almost no one in horror movies is killed while on the phone. The conversation was going fine... until it became very apparent that I wasn't alone in the Parkside.

Me: Hey bud, how's it going?
Buddy: Aight, I'm just hanging and—
Me: THERE IS A BAT IN HERE.

It swooped down, actually grazing the top of my head with its mandibles while I dived down and recouped, attempting to find a broom to chase or kill it with. It disappeared, something that was also reflected in my facebook.
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Around 11, I stumbled on the perfect way to survive a night in a haunted mental hospital: watch Elf. I lived. End of post. Go check your twitter or something.
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Creepy attic door right outside my room: Photo by Jeff Gunderson
 
 
I'm in the middle of working hard on my FIRST FREELANCE ARTICLE EVER. There is some pressure associated with this, as I've never written for this paper before and it could (cross my fingers hope to die stick a needle in my eye) potentially lead to more stories. So of course I'm wasting way too much time. I happened to come across this video, and it made my night.
 
 
9. " What's in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet."
            - Shakespeare
To keep track of the multitudes of Speechians, hosting high schools will assign each student a code. These numbers are carefully arranged in rows on pieces of paper underneath other numbers that correspond to the room of competition. At the start of the meet, students are assigned a number (usually by a beleaguered coach who got up waaaaay too early for this) and pick up their corresponding form, then go about their day.

After three rounds of knuckle-biting competition,final rounds were the shiznit, especially at the big meets. It was amazing to see your name up on the board — that was the only time they ever really gave you a name in speech. A member of the Hibbing team became enthralled when he saw his name on the finals board — J. Anderson — for the Humorous category at Denfeld, one of the largest meets. Because hardly anyone had made it into the finals (yours truly included — I wasn't always the charming, witty and charismatic individual I am now) a sizable chunk of the team decided to go watch J. compete.

The first few speakers were excellent. We began to get eager to see J., knowing that there was no way he couldn't get up their and annihilate the competition. Finally, the judge called it out —

"J. Anderson."

— and the team burst into wildly enthusiastic applause as J. proudly walked up the left aisle, strutting confidently to his battlefield, where he nearly ran face-first into a much more attractive brunette, who had simultaneously walked up the right side of the room while her team clapped and cheered.

The applause died in mid-clap, the room froze with tension. J. Anderson and the wench stared at each other, mouths open, like an unexpected and awkward meeting between Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt.

The girl — Joelle Anderson — broke the silence, tipping her head toward the judge. "What code?" she meekly asked.

The judge looked down, and read it off — alas, our J. Anderson turned and came back the way he had walked, with his head high. Finally, with a smile, Hibbing's J. Anderson began a slow clap, which exploded into a cacophonous eruption of applause and laughter, the entire room joining in the moment.

Speech is just like real life in the sense that you have to get used to the idea of people constantly judging you on how you look, how you act and what you say. And, like real life, it always pays to look beyond a name.
 
 
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The HHS Speech Team, circa 2006
Man, I was such a dork in high school.

For five years of my life, I gave up every Saturday between February and April to board a schoolbus at the crack of dawn, a vehicle that was usually UN-heated and driven by a maniac who hit every damn pothole in the road. By the time we arrived, we were usually strung out on coffee and hoping to God that SOMEBODY had black paper. We went into the school wrinkled, bleary-eyed and smelling faintly of bus; two hours later, we were the best looking kids in the school, complete with sharp suits, crisp blouses and the cool face of competition. It was Speech, and it was wonderful.
 
 
Back in the day, I ruled the Hibbing High School Speech Team with an iron fist. Speech was a tough commitment. You had to get up really early every Saturday in the winter and ride off to some mysterious Iron Range High School for competition. 
 
 
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Let's face it, sometimes it sucks Babe the Blue Ox balls to live in Northern Minnesota. The winters are cold, lutefisk is disgusting, and you're forever mocked by people whose only experience with the better state half involves films with class-action law suits and wood chippers.
 
 
Summer Job of Awesome is over for six days. Thank God. You know those commercials where the fat little green slimeballs of mucus are playing pool in someone's nose? Yeah, well, they've been in my head for the past week for some Brobdingnagian booger convention, where they enjoy bubbling up and down my sinus cavities every time I take that 2,341 foot journey into the Underground Lair and forcing me to give a tour with crappy hearing. You know how embarrassing it is to be 20 years old and having to ask people to repeat their questions four times before you can answer them? VERY. I'm starting to wish my parents had taught me sign language when I was a baby, "Meet the Fockers" style.

Everything, for the most part, is going well. Last week, I had a Physics Ph.Douche. He wanted to ask many questions, such as:

P.h.Douche: So is the neutrino interaction based on (Insert LONG and INTENSE and COMPLICATED scientific reasoning into this space that you can't hear because of the fact he speaks in a quiet voice and your eardrums are attempting to implode) ?

Me: Yes.

P.h.Douche: So then the (yet another collection of BIG SCIENTIFIC WORDS I DON'T KNOW) is caused by the (more words, every other which I can hear and every other other I actually know the definition of) ?

Me: Yes. Yes it is.

P.h.Douche: Excellent. I can clearly see you know exactly what you are talking about.

Actually, he was pretty cool. After the tour, some girls aged high school and middle school started asking me some surprisingly in-depth questions on anti-matter. Physics. P.h.Douche was nearby, and I took the chance to pull him into the conversation, which he seemed to really enjoy. We were an odd little group, talking about the mysteries of the universe in the tiny gift shop while other tourists awkwardly sidled around us, but it was, well, fun. There's something very cool about being able to talk in a group of wildly different people about a subject that no one fully understands; the kids kept pushing us, the old man and I kept bouncing off each other. Afterwards, he told me that I had done an exceptional job making the subject material relatable for visitors. At least I think that's what he said. My ears were still pretty effed up. 

It was incredibly, I don't know, satisfying. Kind of affirms what I'm hoping to do in life.

Physics joke of the day:

Your head is so thick a neutrino would have a 0.5 percent chance of hitting it today.

BURN.
 
 
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A dated photo of my workplace, located a half-mile underground
(Facebook friend): OMG Matt Nelson! How are you??!! What are you doing this summer?? Lolololol

Me: Nice to hear from you! I'm actually working a half-mile underground in a cutting-edge physics lab located at the bottom of a century-old iron ore mine where I'm trying to teach bored tourists about a mysterious little particle called a neutrino as well as dark matter. What are you up to?

(Facebook friend): omfg whATT?!

I've had this conversation at least five times since the start of the summer, regarding Awesome Summer Job.

I had applied for Awesome Summer Job in April, but I never expected to get it. Then I got the phone call while I was literally on my way to take my Modern Physics final.

Future Boss: Congrats Matt! We want to hire you to work in the Soudan Underground Mine! We're going to pay you well, give you free housing, and incredibly flexible schedule and a chance to flex your physics teaching muscles while working with bonafide high school physics teachers.

Me: (trying to speak while drooling out my mouth and simultaneously jizzing in my pants) THAT'S SO #$@%!!#% AWESOME! But my final is in ten minutes canicallyoubackplz?!

The lateness of the summer job threw my summer plans completely out the window. I had been intending to take a morning class from the U in Duluth that I could no longer take. I had to drop out of that while at the same time begging and pleading professors back at Drake to let me into their equivalent classes in the fall.

My workplace sort of resembles the lair of a demented Bond villain. Located 2,341 feet underground, it can only be reached by taking a cage down a small mine shaft. On one side, mine tunnels extend a mile into the surrounding rock, which visitors can travel on a historic tour. On the other side is my occupational space, where a 6,000 contraption of steel and plastic carefully monitors a pivotal particle that humanity knows almost nothing about. Every time I walk in there, the little kid in me goes apeshit at the sight of miles of cords, blinking lights and terribly complicated monitoring boxes. I get giddy when I go in there.

 My job is chiefly physics outreach. The Soudan Underground Mine has been home to physics experiments for 30 years, but only the most recent one has been open to the public for tours. I bring visitors down the cage, into the lab and explain to them that they are being shot by millions of particles smaller than atoms every second by a beam from Fermilab in Illinois. Did your eyes glaze over when you read that? My tourists' eyes do too.

I'll also be doing some design/writing work hopefully soon — wait, what?! You mean I'm going to be combining physics and journalism, two of the areas I've had extensive training in? THAT'S EVEN POSSIBLE?

Starting to see what this Summer Job is full of Awesome?

It's harder work than you'd think. I haven't nailed it all down yet, and I live in terrible fear of of the Physics P.h. Douche from MIT who will inevitably appear on my tour and stump the hell out of me. Still, I'm teaching, I'm learning, I'm thinking about a subject I'm fascinated with. 

The only real concern I have is if the Zombie Apocalypse breaks out while I'm underground. You might think the seemingly inaccessible location of the mine would be a plus... but you're wrong. Assuming Z.A. occurred within a short span of time, it would be impossible to stock the caverns with enough canned food to last until the infestation was overcome. We would have to resort to either cannibalism or bats. Ugh.

Also, the only way in or out of the mine is the mine shaft, and if the hoistman is bitten or scratched by an enraged zombie tourist, we'd be stuck down there; the only way up is a ladder that goes up the entire 2,341 feet, hitting 50 or so other platforms as it does so. Zombies would almost CERTAINLY be attracted by our zesty human flesh and throw themselves down the shaft, meaning we would have to fight off a Scad of them at every platform. Unless we could use our physics skills to invent some kind of super Zombie Zapper, we'd never see the sun again.

...but other than that, it's great!
 
 
I had to spend about twenty minutes with a weed whacker on this blog before I could write to get rid of all those ugly dandelions that sprang up since the last time I posted. I mean day-um, it's been a while! Summer is in full swing, complete with mine pits, mosquitoes and killer tornados. I landed the Summer Job of Awesome and am taking an online course from Duluth that's supposed to be teaching me how not to be racist.

I could talk about all these things, but instead, I'm going to discuss love today (*cue the Isaac Hayes*). My parents recently celebrated their 34th homicide-free year of marriage.

I don't know how they're still together. My mom is an attorney and my dad is a lumberjack, for crying out loud. She's logical, practical and always earthbound. He's creative, emotional and an endless generator of bad puns. He teared up when I went to college and told me I was at the start of my greatest adventure; my mom shoved me out the door and threatened to drive down and rip me a new one if I hadn't vacuumed my bedroom floor so she could use it.

When they married, she was a non-practicing Baptist who I suspect was a lot more feminist than she now says she was. He was from a family of Catholics baptized almost as soon as they popped out of the womb.


They met on the first day of college and were married the day after, so it would be easier for their families to attend both ceremonies. That was in 1976. I once asked my mom why they waited until 1989 to have me, and she told me she didn't know if the marriage was going to last. My mom, a regular Nostradamus, that one.

My parents did some other things that don't make sense. They traveled to California shortly after they were married, intending to shirk the Minnesota winters forever. They got to the Golden Gate bridge and inexplicably turned around and came back, without ever really explaining why. Until I was 15, I thought they named me after St. Matthew; it turns out they really, really liked Gunsmoke. I'm not kidding.

Initially, they celebrated their anniversary with more expensive gifts, I imagine, but as the years went by that habit somehow faded to my dad picking up flowers from Walmart on his way home from work, or ordering a Choppy's pizza. This past week, my mom only gave my dad a card depicting a truck sitting in the top of a tree. Inside, she had only written, "Why?"

My dad planned on getting his normal Walmart flowers gift, but the flowers were wilted this year. Goddamn economy. He had to improvise, buying her a card with two frogs on it, with a message inside saying, "I'll love you till I croak." His other gift? A gigantic bucket of cheese balls. Yes, the cheeto-like, cholesterol inducing orange spheres.

My mom showed me the gift later that rather — rather, showed off the gift. Upon delivery, my dad apparently said, "I figured, 'What do you get the woman who has everything?' Cheese balls."

These cheese balls are off limits to me. I've already been accused once of pilfering from her stock. They frequently discuss the exact specifications of the cheese balls, such as how much cheesy dust would be left over if you ground it all down (I'm guessing half an inch, although the debate rages on) and how much random crap the plastic container will hold once the sweet supply has been swallowed. She enjoys sitting in the chair, he on the couch, while they both watch the Twins (not the World Cup; she's always hated soccer, she revealed to me this week. Only sport I ever played, thanks mom). 

Somehow, it's all good.

How? I have no idea.  I just hope that someday I find a love that's just as perfect as it is bizarre.

Mom and dad, happy anniversary.
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