Schooooool's OUT! FOR! SUMMER!

Ah, Alice Cooper.

So, I'm on summer vacation. Well, sort of. I mean, technically, it has begun, but it doesn't really feel like it yet. I'm home for a week, and then I leave for ten days in Australia, and then when I get home, I'll feel like summer break has truly begun. Australia, though it will be awesome in many ways, won't really feel like a vacation, I'm thinking, because it's a student leadership summit-type-thing, which involves a lot of meetings and presentations and "professional attire." Interesting and educational, I'll wager, but not exactly vacation.

Anyway, I have to note a few things upon returning home.

1. Z-94.1 turned into NPR?! WTF mate?! The radio situation in Fort Wayne is swiftly declining. First, there's the whole "WMEE/WAJI format switching/both starting to suck royally" thing (long story, don't get me started). Then, one of the only decent alternative rock stations gets taken over by a Spanish-language station (which would actually be really cool, except the music they play is awful). Then, just when I think things couldn't get worse, WBNI takes over one of my favorite classic rock stations and turns it into NPR! Now, I actually like NPR for news and stories and talk stuff. It's really interesting, and informative, and all such jazziness. But they already have an NPR station in the area. There's no call for another! Especially not at the expense of "Fort Wayne's only classic rock morning show," i.e. the classic rock station that actually plays music in the morning, not the Bob & Tom Show. Don't get me wrong, Bob & Tom are often quite amusing in their crude and offensive way, but sometimes you need MUSIC, especially when you're trying to drive somewhere in the morning without falling asleep. And anyway, it was nice having an alternative when 92.3 got boring. But no longer.

2. Lake Clare is disgusting. This has been true for awhile now, but it's getting even truer. It used to be a really nice place to swim: spring fed quarry water, cool and clean. That was back in the day. Awhile back now (before my scope of memory, anyway), they closed the deeper part of the lake to swimmers, eliminating the raft and high dive. In more recent years, they started draining the field across the road into the lake. N-A-S-T-Y. And then the birds came. I'm not 100% sure on the reasons behind this (my mom says it's because their usual haunts are being destroyed, which sounds quite plausible), but whatever the cause, ducks, geese, and all other manner of waterfowl have taken over a huge portion of the area around the lake, to the point where you really don't want to walk around on the sand for fear of stepping in something unpleasant. And the unpleasantness is obviously not limited to the sand. My dad said he heard that they're not even opening the swimming area this year, because (a) they don't want to mess with cleaning it up, and (b) lately they've been having to add water to keep the levels up, and this messes with the water table and ends up putting water in nearby basements. So, no more Lake Clare. Not that I'd swim there anymore anyway. What a sad, sad mess.

3. As I said at winter break, two-ply toilet paper is amazing. End of story.