The Battle for Kitchen 177

       In Econ 110 this year, I learned a new concept called the “public good problem”. In essence, the concept is that when nobody has direct responsibility for some object, and yet everyone can get a benefit out of it, than it won’t get done. For example, everyone can enjoy a clean public park—it’s a public good. Just because I can enjoy the park doesn’t mean that you can’t. Yet neither of us would be willing to spend long hours every Saturday trimming the lawn and picking up trash. The idea is that it is for these kinds of things that governments are good for, because they will pay for people to maintain them, and then charge everyone equally (through taxes) for that service.

                Anyways, this isn’t an econ lesson, but that is important background because of another public good that we used as an example in class: a clean kitchen. Our teacher claimed that dishes in a shared college apartment never get done because nobody wants to take responsibility for them. I for one thought he was a little arrogant, and so I determined to prove him wrong. I started doing the dishes non-stop.

                Then I realized that I liked a clean kitchen.

                Then I realized that doing the dishes wasn’t quite as bad as everyone claims.

                And then I had a habit.

Now, I clean the kitchen for almost an hour every day (minus the weekends, when I usually delay them until Sunday morning.) On cleaning check days, I can whip up the kitchen into a pristine state, all by my lonesome, in just under two hours.

                All of this is background leading up to the story from the past two days. A couple days ago, Dylan cooked up some bratwursts for us while Sam made some of his famous “bacon turtles”. It was delicious, and was truly appreciated by everyone except my arteries, which are still trying to recover. Unfortunately, not all of the brats got eaten, and they were left on the table for two days, creating quite an exotic aroma. Yesterday I finally decided that nobody was going to eat them, and chucked them in the trash. I left a note on our whiteboard, and apparently that was enough to start the Battle for Kitchen 177:

My original note:

This is my fair warning. I reserve the right to throw away anything left on the table overnight.

Dylan:

Vetoed! You have no right to reserve any rights.

Aaron:

Good point. If stuff mysteriously gets into the trash, it wasn’t me.

Dylan:

Yeah but now we will just assume that it was you and we will declare war on a galactic scale.

Aaron:

Fine. If you wanted to take it to this level, we will take it to this level. I hereby declare myself Lord of the Cleanliness of the Kitchen. I will challenge anyone to a week-long competition to see who can do more dishes. Oppose me, I dare you!

Sam:

Loud Noises!

Aaron:

Back that up. The bacon pans are still open!

(and beneath)

Hours Aaron has put into maintaining the kitchen since Tuesday morning: .33

Usurper: 0

Jared:

You guys are WEIRD!

   

Ahh the joys of living away from home!

Viva Las Vegas!

Everyone has their own reasons for blogging. Whether that reason is marketing, online journaling, or a class, they all lead to the blog sphere. I personally do not have mine to show off the things of my life, but rather a blog is a chance for me to think, and to write creatively about things that I want to, topics that are not dictated by a teacher. I figure as far as ways to unwind at the end of a day go, blogging is fairly productive.

The reason that I mention this now is that last weekend I went to Las Vegas with some friends, and the norm for a blog post on a trip would be to show off some pictures and maybe share a funny story or two. If any readers were expecting this, I’m sorry. But I’ll try my best to incorporate some of those elements into this post…

            I drove away from this weekend with a distinct impression of downtown Las Vegas. One, that place is a filthy mess. Despite the fact that I did feel physically safe walking the streets at night, which I would not feel in my native Portland, the moral corruptness of Vegas was eye-closing to me. (And yes that is supposed to be a clever spin off of “eye-opening”. I will point that out since I thought it was witty.) The complete lack of morality in that city was astounding. Booze was flowing like a river, and the amazing part was that it wasn’t even any kind of special occasion, other than just a typical weekend on Las Vegas Boulevard. It’s safe to say that I have no current plans, or desire to have plans to go back to that place again. The Strip and I are very content with living in separate worlds, very, very far apart.

            Secondly, I came away realizing that 18 is definitely the age to be. The most fun part of the trip for me was the awesome box seats we had to watch BYU play San Francisco, hands-down. That was just awesome. But in a close second place was the adventure that Lacey, Ian and I embarked on Saturday night. The whole thing from start to finish sounds likes a kid’s tale. We walked into a hotel, saw a huge escalator, and decided to ride it up to see where it went. Then at the top there was another one—needless to say, up we rode. There we found an entirely deserted hallway with signs saying exotic things like “Caesar’s Ballroom”. With the giddiness of a seven-year-old on Christmas we began running in and out of every single door we could find, oohing and ahhing at the size of some of the rooms. Then the next thing you know, we find another escalator, separate from the rest of the Eight Pack (the name of our friend-group), and are exploring all of that hotel. Then the next hotel, then the mall after that, and then the hotel after the mall. And then after all of our exploring, we ended up hopelessly lost in some back alleys, searching for our car in a parking lot a block and a half away from where it actually ones.

            Some pictures from the adventure:

Repping the ol' 5-0-3, only the best area code!

Some contemplative moments

Running through the mall

Obviously we had to stop at the Nike Store

The sweet courtyard in Caesar's Palace

            My point here, is that only in the transition stage between child and adult could this adventure happen: we needed the rights/experience of an adult to be left alone in the middle of a foreign metropolis and be perfectly safe, yet we needed the adventurous spirit of a kid in order to do things like sneak past security or sidestep “Do Not Enter” signs, and enjoy the entire experience. While hopefully I never lose my childish spirit, it’s really only socially acceptable to publicly show that when one is still a young adult, and so 18 is the age for me!!