Pa Pa l'Americano

I wrote a couple entries during our travels, but lacked the time to complete them and the internets to post them. So now after a whirlwind of activity on our return from Europe I have had a chance to get them online. Here is a semi complete post I wrote on the way from Barcelona to Paris.

10/6/10, tenth month. October is the tenth month. Gotta get that through my head. For the past few months I have been writing the wrong number for the month, like all of the backup batteries throughout the entire boardwalk key scan system have the wrong month on them, I signed numerous checks, various forms and papers with the wrong month, and I also booked a flight from Barcelona to Paris with the wrong month. Good thing flights are so cheap here, it was a $20 flight and we rebooked for the same price, but seriously, how stupid. It has been a while since I updated, Kari and I have been going nonstop since she flew in last Sunday. We left the day after Kari got there so we had to cram in the munich experience as well as we could. It was basically straight from the airport to Oktoberfest, beer, went to Hofbrauhaus, beer, saw the glockenspeil, beer, delicious rotissery chicken, sleep. Great day. It really is a gross display of drunkeness at oktoberfest, as we walked down the hill before even entering the grounds we were greeted by a little brawl being broken up by cops treating the kids in ways that would make national news in the US, and after we walked by they took off right by us to stop another totally unrelated fight that started just 50 feet in front of us. Navigating the tents was the next challenge, you have to be at a table to get beer, and if you get there any time after 11am there are no tables, so after scouring 3 tents for an empty spot I devised a strategy, just look for a beer maid going down a row, stand next to a table in the row, and when she comes by just pretend you belong. "swei bier bitte". Those women are impressive, holding 4 one liter mugs with one balanced on top in each hand. 10 liters of beer at once, pretty intense. We did eventually find a table with some friendly germans and stood on the tables singing along to songs, some in english (sweet caroline, YMCA, and the like), some in german, it didnt matter, we were just having a good time.

Our next stop was Prague. The Czech Republic. It sounds so foreign. It was, of course, and loaded with history and impressive gothic relics. The biggest castle in the world, buildings from the BCs, an intricate astronomical clock. I wish I had more history on these places, we took a bike tour to learn what we could, but it turned into a pretty terrible experience. City Bike tours in Prague, what a sham. Well first of all, the Czech is not part of the European Union, so we had to get Czech Crown, which is about 20/1 with the US dollar, so when I got money out i got a single 2000 crown bill. Well the stinkin tour cost us 500 crown apiece, 5 of us followed Nikolai as he flew through the Prague streets without even a glance behind him to make sure we made it, somehow we all did, bounding over curbs, carrying our bikes up steep muddy hills, and swerving through traffic. His broken english and limited knowledge made for a pretty pathetic tour, and what he did tell us about I am fairly certain was made up on the spot. We did make it to some pretty awesome places on the journey though, it is a beautiful city. That night we experienced what FHM magazine said was one of the top 10 adventures in the world, the Prague Underground bar crawl. A young chick from louisiana started it 5 years ago, she and about 30 others met at the first bar, we drank free for 2 hours, played some foosball (or kicker as some here call it), and the rest of the night was a jumble of clubs, drinks and dancing, we met some germans, some aussies, brazilians, it was a pretty great time, though i wouldnt even give it top 10 adventures of my life, Im not sure what FHM was thinking.

It seemed kindof inapproriate to me to go to a natural history museum while on vacation, rocks being rocks and animals being animals wherever you are, but the National Museum in Prague was incredible. We walked in unaware of what we were getting into and ended up spending more than 4 hours wandering the exhibits. Thousands of specimens of rocks and minerals were enough to occupy and amaze you all day, but it led into thousands more of fossils, huge rooms full of taxidermied animals and skeletons, specemins like a stuffed giraffe and an entire whale skeleton, anthropological exhibits of the culture of prehistoric man and human evolution in the area with rooms full of artifacts and bones. I loved it, and Kari did a great job of pretending to. Just outside of the museum we had Italian food better than any I had in Rome, in Prague, weird. I am going to just have to do a whole seperate write up of the culinary experiences, that is an adventure in itself.

Oktoberfest is in Tents

I am now in Munich Germany looking at the glow of Oktoberfest from our platinum club hotel room a few blocks away from the park where it is held. Freakin nice. I have 2 more days here in Munich with the guys and then they leave and Kari flies in, it has just been a whole mess of awesome and it is not going to stop. Switzerland was a blast, the high points all being because of a little snowboard shop called Popcorn. I demoed a Burton board from the shop and it was awesome, it was a $1500 board, so it better be, and it did not dissapoint. we took the half hour gondola ride up to the glacier in the morning and rode until the slopes closed at 2, they close it early because the afternoon sun melts the snow and makes for bad conditions, but while we were out there it was great. I was surfing the snow all day, i felt invincible on this board, it carved like a dream, was responsive, light, fast and nimble, and it was all great until I went for a jump in the snowboard park, i tried a few times and the park was just way too big for me to handle. I hit it, biffed the landing, and it was fine, but then when i got up and was boarding down the icy landing ramp I caught an edge on my nice new sharp edged snowboard and next thing i knew i was lying in thge snow and couldnt breath. Really it was no big deal, I fell unexpectedly and a hard sunglasses case in my pocket jammed into my chest and knocked the wind out of me, but then i was sitting there and couldnt breath and i kind of freaked out a little bit. I am a pretty level headed person, reasonable, unflappable you might say. Well that flapped me. I think that somewhere in the back of my head I was having some kind of post traumatic episode, lying on the ground unable to breath I thought maybe my lung collapsed again, maybe thats something that if it happens once it is easier to happen again, so i am contemplating the fact that i am dying right now, rocking back and forth trying to make something happen and I finally ghet one big breath in, that felt so good, but if you have ever had the breath knowcked out of you you know what it is like after that, you cant breath back out and when you finally do it comes out in a terrible groan, so i sat there struggling to breath in and then groaning out as i rock back and forth for a little while. I finally got back to normal and boarded back to the bottom and sat there for a minute trying to figure out what just happened to me, both physically and mentally. I was really freaking out, like i was scared to go down thge slope again, but i wasnt about to let myself get in my own way... so I went and booked it down the next slope and it was fantastic and i was fine. But man was that a weird experience, i wasnt quite right for the rest of the day. The night before we hit the slopes we went to the "discotech" that we heard was world famous for its parties. It was at Popcorn, the snowboard shop, which turned into a rockin dance party at night with a full bar and a DJ. We partied all night with mostly locals, we were the only americans in the whole place, which made us instantly awesome, and we knew every song they played because they played the exact same music you would hear at a club in the states, and we had a great time.

Heely segway shoes, they have a wheel in the heel like heelys and the mechanics of a segway.

The train ride to Rome was interesting, we spent most of the trip trying to converse with 2 Italian women and a German couple and learnig what we could of the italian language, it was pretty fun. We stopped in Milan and explored the city a bit, got some pizza at a little cafe and it was magnificent, I ate pizza at least 6 times in Italy and none of it even came close to the caliber of the Milan pizza. Our waitress didnt, or wouldnt, speak english so ordering was a bit difficult, I saw what I figured would be sausage pizza and went for that, Jon took a shot in the dark at a Napoli pizza, and when it came to Zack he looked up wide eyed in shock and pointed to Jon and said same as him. Our pizzas came out, my delicious sausage pizza, and... I kid you not... it turns out Jon and Zack both ordered sardine pizzas. It was salty and fishy and really not very good, edible, but definitely a mistake, a ridiculous hilarious mistake. So all in all great dining experience for me, not so much for the others, and we went on to Rome. Our hostel was great, one of our rommates joined us for the evening, he was from a navy ship not much smaller than an aircraft carrier that stays out at sea almost all the time and just sits, loaded with weapons and vehicles, to act as a first response should quick action be needed in the area. That night I put my Vibram 5 fingers on for the first time and the response was unexpectedly insane. They are shoes that have toes, like toe socks with soles basically, and people freaked out about them. I talked about them in the hostel bar till it closed, went around the corner to a bar and the manager sat down with us and we had little bargaining war as he tried to buy them from me, he was ready to take my offer of 60 euroes and the sandals he was wearing, but he decided he would see what he could find online first making me promise to come back the next day. I didnt, i bet he was pissed.

Dang is the Colleseum big! That was impressive. The city was full of historic sites that even today were incredible to see, to imagine what it must have been like when it was built to see such incresdible feats of architecture is mind boggling, no wonder Rome was so powerful. A full days walk got us around to most of the main points in the city, and on day 2 we went to the Vatican City. People... I saw the pope. not a picture, not even through glass, just me lookin at the freakin pope. There was a ceremony on the vatican grounds and he was there in front of thousands of people, including me. I snuck my new swiss army knife past the guards. The Vatican museum started with an extensive display of egyptian art, which totally blew my mind. I thought it was going to be entirely devoted to catholicism and its history but the first 3 or 4 rooms were all egyptian artifacs and information about their culture and religion. The rest consisted of a ridiculous amount of roman sculptures, some out of place modern art, some truely impressive paintings, a couple hundred gift shops, and last but not least, the sistene chapel. The effort put into every detail in the chapel made it an incredible sight to behold, that guy was good.

After another train ride and talking the night away with a new friend from Berlin we are now in Munich enjoying Oktoberfest. They serve beer in liters here. A liter is a lot of beer. A lot of good beer. One thing i was not expecting was the rides. There are more, bigger, better rides here than at the amusement park I have been working at for the past few months, it is insane, we rode a roller coaster that just flings you through the 5 olympic rings, got flipped and turned and flug on other rides, then went and ate a delicious bratwurst and got a liter of beer, standing on tables and clanking sloshing cheers with random passersby as we do our best to sing along with thousands of others crowding the massive tents, what a crazy place to be! The famous Munich glockenspeil. Dissapointment. Traditional German clothing. Awesome. There are more people walking around in lederhosen and dimdl than not. I feel out of place without leather pants and suspenders on. Who ever thought that would happen. The guys kind of look ridiculous, and the girls, well, i dont look, but i have heard that they look pretttty good, with their shirts all down to there and skirts up to here. Thats what they tell me.

We are now getting ready for the monastary, if i survived the vatican in the presence of the pope, i am pretty sure i can get through this without any smiting. we will see. Pictures will come once i get home and get the time.

Eurotrip

9/14 over the atlantic- I did not expect to be this excuited to be llanding in Europe. I think "giddy" is appropriate. But lets not get ahead of ourselves, most importantly on the agenda, get a load of this, you may remember my last home in Pennsylvania before moving to California was on California Ave, and then my last home in California before moving to Pennsylvania? Pennsylvania Ave. **Cue Twilight Zone music** Crazy right? I am going to have to find a Hawaii Ave. And speaking of a place to live, I dont have one! After legitimately trying to get a job for the last few months, I have absolutely nothing to show for it, not even a phone call. The closest I have come to getting an interview is the first sentenceof the 3 rejection emails I have received. Thank you for your interest in a position with our company, after reviewing your application... bla bla bla. At least some real person looked at my resume, I am probably more excited about those rejection letters than I should be. My resume was recently reviewed by someone at Pioneer for a job working with corn hybrid crops, i know that because of the rejection letter, but at least I know that.

9/18 On the train to Saas Fee Switzerland- There is nowhere in the US that is anything like Amsterdam, though I think Santa Cruz is one of the closest. The architecture is amazing, all of the buildings have an aire of importance, maybe arrogance in their old age. I suppose I am just not used to seeing such old buildings and the architecture that goes with it, I have only been exposed to it in history books and movies, so to see it in real life it just seemed important. We made friends with a couple on the train earlier today and they live in a building that was built in the 1500s, I cant even begin to appreciate the history that their one building has been through, but it isd all like that, this whole freakin continent. Its so old. Beautiful buildings, the city is right on the water, parks throughout the city, a canal system throughout the city, it was awesome. Of course, that is what they made it for, to look so great, it is one gigantic tourist trap, we literally met 2 actual Dutch people the whole time, one of which on the train out. We were in a crowd of about 150 people watching a street performer and he was desperately trying to get someone to say the Dutch word for torch, but literally nobody within earshot of this poor screaming man knew the answer. All tourists. We had an opportunity to see the real Holland with a Dutch girl we met through our hostel mates, but my travel buddies had other plans, we rented bikes and toured the city, which was a great experience. The streets are packed with bikes and vespas, the occasional car honks its way through the crowd, but bikes rule the road my a great majority, you are free to go anywhere and park your bike any time without worry. WWII is a much bigger deal here. Everyone in Amsterdam speaks perfect english. There are Swiss Army men everywhere in Switzerland. You get weird looks when you go into a coffee shop and only get a coffee. Shared hostels = no sleep.

We have checked in to our bed and breakfast in Saas Fee, it is nice here at the resort, but we can see the glacier and the peaks 10,000 feet up covered in snow and people walking around with ski equipment, its weird. The bus ride up was incredible, winding through the valleys of the alps, through tunnels and over bridges, surrounded by centuries old villages, mountain streams and waterfalls. This is gonna be good.

9/19 It was good. More on this later.

Why My Mom Didn't Know About My Stitches Until the Rest of the Internet

I'll keep this short. I was in an awkward position at the top of a ladder, I cut a zip-tie and the knife continued through and grazed, GRAZED, my knuckle. I put a bandaid on it, it was fine, continued with my day for a couple hours but my swampy hands wouldnt allow a bandaid to stay on for long and i had to go to the nurse to get some tape. I tried to get the tape without showing her the cut, but my boss happened to be in the nurses office when i walked in. So she saw it, and she freaked out. This 20 year old nurse was freaking out like my finger was about to fall off and insisted I go to the ER, and my boss had to agree with her. She started filling out paperwork, recording that the cut was 1/4 inch deep... a security guard that was in there who was an EMS corrected her estimation, he said 1 mm, that was more like it. A paper cut. I protested as much as i could, insisting i would sign any paperwork to absolve them of responsibility, asking if I could wait till tomorrow to see how it looks... just really trying not to make my supervisor drive me to the ER at 8 pm. It didnt work. So I went, all of it workers comp of course, got the stupid stitches in my paper cut, and that was that. Then when it came time to get them out, all of the nurses at the boardwalk either said that they legally couldnt, or had never seen stitches like that and didnt know how to take them out, and I couldnt find on google how to properly take them out, so I made the mistake of going back to the ER, and you know what happened then.

Dominican Hospital Disappointment

I am pissed. It is 1 am, I just got back from the hospital, Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, CA, where I went for the minor procedure of getting 3 stitches removed, it was the worst experience I have ever had in a hospital. I died in one once. This was worse.

I showed up about 11:30, I went late to avoid the more crowded daytime hours thinking the wait would be minimal, it wasnt, though I cannot hold that against Dominican, thats just how it happens in the ER. I give my basic info to the first receptionist and was almost immediately called to receptionist number 2, "wow, that was fast" I said with a look of hope on my face "Oh," says receptionist #1 "Dont let that fool you, we are really slow here." Awesome. After receptionist number 2 I take my seat in the waiting room and inhale the stale hospital scent mixed with the stagnant aroma of multiple cups of old coffee left on the table next to me. As I sit amongst fellow patients and the friends and family of those who have already been admitted, I am inevitably drawn to the television. Dominicans waiting room television policy: think of the kind of television that would be least appropriate for a hospital waiting room, turn that on and turn the volume up. We are watching a show based on hurting people, how funny it is, and being rewarded for it, MTV's Silent Library. In the hospital waiting room. My head is buried in my hands, the only man more miserable than me is being rolled by on a stretcher, a punk kid fights to stay quiet as he gets whipped by a jumprope in the whirling hands of a boxer, I have been here for 12 minutes.

The wait continues in a similar fashion, the occasional stretcher, the moments of hope when a receptionist starts calling names, the fat man with nipple clamps attached to RC cars. I try to zone out, slip away from the waiting room. "Jackass up next." You've got to be kidding me. Back to back episodes opening with Johnny Knoxville getting kicked in the balls by kindergartners. An hour goes by. Finally the moment of hope turns into actual progress as my name is called. I get up, walk with the nurse and I swear I did this, she asked me how I was, and, im serious, I smiled. I looked into her eyes, smiled and said I was doin alright. Somebody saint me. Get the pope. Damnit St. Brendon is already taken.

So I am finally getting somewhere as I follow the doughy figure adorned in urban camo scrubs to my room. She gets her suture removal kit and starts poking at my stitches, apparently the doctor put them in very tight and she will have to do some digging to get under the stitch. Great, fine, please, I told her "dig to your hearts desire, I can handle it". So she starts digging, and no, no iodine, no alcohol, not a single sterile wipe or even a request to wash my straight-from-work hands. I had three of these funky stitches that are only showing the knot on one side, as my skin had grown over the tight loop on the other side. She successfully got her snips under the knot, a quick snip and... wait, no I dont think you quite got it, you just snipped the ends of the knot off, I can see the knot still there in my skin, you see there are only two tiny pieces of the suture in the tray, oh you are moving on to the second one, okay. She snipped the second one successfully and to my surprise it pulled all the way around the other side with no trouble. On to stitch three and she snips it fine, just has to pull the remaining piece, and... she cuts it right off, leaving every bit of suture in my skin that was already in there. She continued to suggest that she had taken out the sutures and I would question her every time. When I point at the black knot still clearly in my skin on the first stitch she said it often will look black at first. When I ask if it is okay that some of the suture is left inside, she tells me she thinks we are lookin great. She is wearing urban camo scrubs. I am confused and full of suture bits. Nobody is looking great. She leaves to get the doctor, telling him "Room 20 needs a final look, I just took his sutures out."

I am sitting there looking at my hand that still had the majority of the stitches left in it when the doctor comes in, a red headed dude with a mustache, he looks like the MAD magazine kid 30 years later. A quick glance at the job and he turns into a fountain of "It looks like we are going to be fine." About three of those and he heads for the door, it was no longer than 10 seconds he was in the room before he starts to leave. I ask him to wait, ask him whether some of the suture could stay in, show him the knot still in my skin, show him the few bits of suture in the tray, tell him that only one came out. The fountain starts again, 7 more "It looks like we are going to be fine." Though apparently I am convincing enough for a second look and after taking an actual look at me, he does see the knot still in my skin! After acknowledging that I was right, he wants to just leave it in, but I insist he could do whatever it would take to get it. Camo pops around the corner "He has been so brave!" With little effort Dr MAD fishes it out, cuts it and pulls it through, painless, simple. Again he tries to leave. Again I stop him. There is still another stitch, the third one. He takes a look. "It looks like we are going to be fine." The stitch is in there, just like the first one was. Is that okay? "It looks like we are going to be fine." I sit, mouth gaped, as he walks out the door. Camo nurse comes back in and I continue my protest with her, and I start to get an attitude. I never ever get to that point with people, especially strangers, I was being totally dismissed and it was getting to me. I ask her how it was okay to leave the stitch in there, which she insists was normal. Why did I have to come in to get it removed if you were just going to leave it in? I thought you would clean it and take all the stitches out, how am I done here? I ask her all of this in an uncharacteristically rude tone and she dismisses it all. I sign some pink piece of paper in a huff, though I shouldnt have, and storm out the door.

I don't know what I can do about it, but I feel like I should do something. I know that removing sutures is not the most important thing on the doctors plate, but to address my concerns like they did, and for the nurse to insist that she had completed a procedure that she clearly hadnt, the doctor to completely fail in his faux check up if not for my insistence that he do something, it was horrifying, degrading, seemingly unsterile, and definitely a waste of my time, I am 100% certain that I could have treated myself better at home with a swiss army knife, with just the scissors.

What can I do?

Navi Boobs

When I watched Avatar for the first time I was amazed, along with the rest of the audience, by the fantastical world that was created on the screen. I saw it twice, and both times after the show I said something about how ridiculously far fetched it was for life to come about in a way so similar to our own, most notably I laughed out loud when the first navi woman came on screen and she had breasts, wearing a bra. But when I expressed my amusement at this fact afterward, both times I saw the movie, I got the same response- "Well of course they would have boobs, why wouldnt they?" Well why would they? Breasts are for mammals, they are mammary glands, so you are telling me that life formed totally separate from ours, evolution followed the same path through random mutations to the genetic code and ended up with virtually the same creature, only blue, that feeds its young through 2 mammary glands on its chest. Well of course, right? Evolution creates the perfect organism through its workings, so ending up like a human is the only way to go, humans are the pinnacle of evolutionary perfection right? Right? NO WAY! Evolution is far far far from perfect, and I dont think I am disagreeing with anyone when I say that humans are also quite far from perfect (except the millions who believe that we are created in the image of god and we are actually what perfection looks like... what a disappointment). Evolution does not always give you the best possible outcome, it can only do so much to make progress. One good example is a nerve in the giraffe, the laryngeal which travels from the brain, all the way down its neck to the heart, around an artery, and then all the way back up the neck to connect to the larynx, without serving a single function anywhere besides the start in the brain and the end at the larynx. This pathway works perfectly fine for our distant ancestors, but the wasted energy and space that the mammalian neck, especially the giraffe, exhibits is an astounding example of the imperfection of evolution. For the record I tried to see if James Cameron, the director of Avatar, had anything to say on the subject, and when he was asked why the Navi had boobs, he said it was because it will be humans that are watching the movie and thats what humans want to see. I am so glad he didnt try to justify it any further than that.

Now I dont want to go on too long about that, I think everyone knows that Avatar was far fetched, I wont even get into the fact that they were relying on the DNA of the Navi to be of the same construction as our own, you know, our inefficient system of ATGC, all coding the same proteins through the same mechanisms... just ridiculous... so ya, I wont get into that. But this did lead me into a more interesting train of thought. When contemplating the imperfection/incompletion of human evolution, I tried to think of a way that the human population was still evolving. My brother said that he thought there was much evolution to still occur, that we will soon overpopulate the planet and bring ourselves to a point where we will be competing for resources and there will actually be a fitness curve for various traits allowing success in such a society. I disagree, first I think that humans posses the intelligence to keep ourselves from getting to that point, and even if we were to reach that point, I think that genetic traits would have nothing to do with our ability to survive. With human politics and such advanced social networks, it is the situation that one is born into that often has the most to do with how their life is lived. Just because one boy is born in a third world country and another is born to an upper class family, does not mean that the genetics of the upper class boy are more "fit" but he will have a better chance at survival.

Could we still be evolving? When looking at the evolutionary fitness of a human individual, ultimately it is the rate of reproduction which determines fitness. You only have to look at: can they have lots of babies. And tell me in todays society who cannot have babies... everyones doin it. I thought for a while trying to think of a trait that still could be evolving, its not like people who are taller reproduce more, or smarter, or better vision, or better athletes, or have better backs... We have all kinds of problems that seem like they would be selected against in a primal kind of society, but with the complex society that we have developed, well, everybody is having babies, we have reached what seems to be a self imposed evolutionary standstill.

There is one factor that I think may be acting on the human population today. Going as much as I can to the heart if the matter, I think there may be one trait that would lead to a better reproduction rate for humans, and that is the ability to reproduce later in life. The human population has extended its lifetime well beyond what we are made to live, like I said, evolutionary standstill, we were made to die in what we now call our middle aged years, and yet the life expectancy is on a constant rise. This changes the oh-so-important reproductive habits as well, as we are now educating ourselves and being taught abstinence and birth control all through high school and college, which, physically, are really our prime baby makin years. The social norm for having children has been climbing right along with the age expectancy as the human body's age of fertility stays relatively even. Now improved health definitely plays a factor in how old a man or woman maintain fertility, but there has got to be a genetic factor as well. This trait, I think, would be selected for in todays society. If one woman can have a child at 47 and the next at 48, it may be a small difference, but thats all it takes to change the presence of a trait in a population, and I think that is a conceivable possibility. So, I guess it doesnt look like anything is going to happen with our not quite fully evolved bipedal anatomy, male pattern baldness is not going anywhere, we are not evolving into a super intelligent race, and sadly the women of the world are not evolving into (i dont know where this idea just came from, but its awesome) a perfect blend of the Jessicas (You know-Alba, Simpson, Biel(,Rabbit?)), but hey, in the future, women could be popping babies out when they are 70 years old, so there is that to look forward to. You know, by that time we will probably be artificially altering the human genome so maybe all of those things can happen... and you know what that means- Jessicas everywhere.

Keepin California

The plan was to drive across the country with Kari, have my fun in the California sun, and then drive back with her, right now, in the end of June. It will come as no surprise that I have decided to stick around California for a bit longer than planned.

I landed a pretty awesome job at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, and after the... less than awesome... temporary jobs I have been grappling with over the past year, I figured that staying in California to finish with a fun exciting job would be a good idea. I walked into the HR department at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk as I spied it while biking by one day about a month ago, and the lady behind the counter told me I would be perfect for their tech services job, she wouldnt even let me apply for the other jobs. Well I applied, I interviewed, I second interviewed, and I was accepted. After learning the start date, I told my future boss that I would have to take a week and a half off to drive my girlfriend home, this after being told I would have a tough time getting more than 3 days off in a row, and to my surprise he said that would be fine. I started working 3 weeks ago and I have loved every minute of it.

The first 2 weeks of my employment were spent assembling the bandstand on the beach for the free concerts that we put on every friday during the summer, we have bands like Herman's Hermits, Blue Oyster Cult, Eddie Money, Spin Doctors, and I cant forget Cory Feldman's band, singing about global warming and saving the environment. I am not allowed to publish some stories I have on the internet, but be sure to ask me if you get the chance, good stuff. So, days are spent erecting trusses for all of our equipment, raising and positioning speakers, lights, cables, monitors. I spend almost all day playing in the sand, working on the beach, and climbing around 25 feet up in the trusses. All of this interspersed with calls into the tech services department about problems with various rides in the park, so I would have to stop playing in the sand and go flip a switch at one of our rides and then give it a couple test runs. I love my job.

I am currently fulfilling my duty to drive Kari back home to finish school, it has been a great adventure on the way back, taking the northerly route, through Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. I will post later about our experiences on the trip.

I have a personal little game I play sometimes, it is played at stoplights when there is someone behind you, the objective is to have the person behind you take their foot off the brake and scooch forward a little bit and you get higher points by making them move with the least movement yourself. You have to decide between moving quickly but not very far to give a sudden dramatic movement that will cause the driver behind you to take their foot off the brake, or making a slow lengthened movement that would travel about the same distance as the quick movement but take longer to do so, therefore giving more time to catch the attention of the driver behind you and getting the nudge forward. You may also then notice trends in car/personality types, equating type As with BMWs and the like, impatient, in a hurry, more likely to make the nudge. Motorcycles are resistant to the nudge. Vespas however are quite willing to nudge. Youll see.

Next time you make bacon, dont just make bacon, add some flavor. Maybe dump some brown sugar and ground red pepper into the frying pan... delicious. Then the next time, if you can resist the brown sugar again, pick out your favorite seasoning blend or a barbecue dry rub and sprinkle them on, the possibilities are endless and almost always turn out well.

Santa Cruzin

Santa Cruz, California. It consumes you.

I decided after the last couple posts of pointless drivel just regurgitating what I was doing with my life I would only post when I had something interesting, thought provoking, constructive to say along with the status updates, or at least a good story. Turns out I dont have that many thought provoking things to say these days, or maybe just not the time and motivation to put it to words. Santa Cruz has a way of taking up your time, what with things like surfing, biking, climbing, beaching, etc all at your immediate disposal, or really just sitting outside enjoying the sun is a common time taker.

Constructive thought for the post: I have started drinking dirty martinis and when I couldnt find a way to make your own olive juice, I decided to make it up. 8 olives and a small garlic clove, mush 'em, put them in a sauce pan with 2ish cups of water, add a splash of vinegar (I used balsamic, red wine vinegar might have been a better choice, or maybe just red wine for that matter...), add a bunch of salt, like 5 tablespoons, just do it to taste, bring to a boil and simmer for half an hour. I put it in a jar unfiltered, just made me a test tini and its pretty good. Really though, I have no idea what Im talking about, I mean, I have consumed like 8 martinis, but I know what tastes good to me, it feels good to order a martini and know what you want. Dirty, extra dry.

Whew, being constructive is difficult, anyway, back to me. Santa Cruz has just been a whirlwind of awesome, it is going to take much longer than the three months I planned on being here to really get a good grasp on the area. So... Im staying until September. I got a job at the Boardwalk, a seasonal deal, the summer season ending in September, so I am going to drive Kari back home and fly back out here. I applied for a few jobs out here, the ice cream shop didnt hire me, the tourist trap candy store didnt, the coffee shop didnt, so I changed something, I figure it was the degree in bio, why would a bio grad keep such a menial job for any significant length of time? For my application to a grunt job at a photo lab I tried to think of the most boring, useless degree possible, so I could just tell them I didnt like the possibilities in my field. Communications. I told them I was a communications major, and it was an easy task convincing them I would rather handle hot metal photo plates all day than do any job that a communications major would do. They were looking for a longer than September commitment though, and I couldnt convince them that I would stay for as long as they wanted me. Maybe even a communications degree was too much. I didnt tell the Boardwalk that I have a college degree at all. The Boardwalk hired me. Not only did they hire me, but after telling me that I probably would not be able to take off more than 4 days in a row, I explained that I would need to take 12 days to drive home with Kari, after a couple days deliberation, my future boss, who interviewed me, said that it would be ok... I guess I made a good impression. An intelligent, motivated worker without the worries of a college graduate, what more could you want? It looks like I am going to be the first line of defense for the tech services team at the boardwalk, troubleshooting sound, electrical, computer problems in the park. Seems like it will be an interesting job and the timing is great, I will finish up the job and head to Europe.

So now, after the first wave of guests have come through, my brother will be here soon, Karis friend, thencmy friends, then my family... then we drive back. We have a pretty full schedule for the next month, but a good kind of full. The best kind of full.

Topics to address in the future: West coast people, blood type diet, Na'vi boobs. Stay tuned.

XC

California here we come

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Evansville, Indiana; Dallas, Texas; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Mathers, Grand Canyon, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; Santa Cruz, California.

We have made it to Albuquerque and it has been amazing. We did lots of planning for things to do as we are bored out of minds driving through the deserts, the monotonous expanses of nothing. We have not needed any of it, sitting in the seat for hours and hours straight takes a bit of a toll, but it is endless entertainment watching the world change outside the window, that might change as the states get more square, but I dont think so, I am loving it.

Going through Tennessee, Arkansas, Kansas, it was not much different than the northeaster travels I am used to. I was hoping that would change as we entered Texas, but not a single tumbleweed crossed our path between us and Dallas, slightly disappointed, but it was still Texas. Our wonderful hosts took us through Dallas/Fort Worth, sampling the cuisine, buying souvenirs, attending the dog show, the usual. We went with Mick to scope out the huskys at a dog show in Forth Worth and had a hell of a time really just mocking the whole situation. The range of crazy you can find in a place like that is phenomenal, watching the people prance around with their little dogs, pampering them, cuddling them, it was just ridiculous. They had professional photographers going around to get pictures of owners and their dogs, so Mick and I got pictures with ours, they even put us up on their website (be sure to browse through the other photos, noticing how many of them are just people), I think ours deserved best in show, dont you?

So now we are at a hotel in Albuquerque preparing for our trip to the grand canyon where we will be camping for 2 days before heading to Las Vegas. I thought $15 a night for a camping spot at the canyon was pretty decent, and then I booked a hotel on the Vegas strip for the same amount... oh well. There are lots more things to talk about and pictures to share, but we are on the move, so we gotta get movin. Come back soon for some hopefully spectacular views of the Grand Canyon.

High up in the hills of California... Avenue.

Hey internet, been a while since I updated, I started writing this like a month ago and just didn't finish, so, here goes.

Well, I have made the move to the other end of the Pennsylvania turnpike, made another visit out to Indiana's early morning dew, and prematurely fulfilled my calling to "high up in the hills of California". Ironically Kari and I have rented an apartment at the tippy top of a hill... on California Ave. Ha! We still have plans to move to Santa Cruz in April, into the bottom apartment in her grandmother's duplex. It looks like it will be amazing, the house is at the top of a hill and the beach is at the bottom (This just in, might actually be too good to be true, the owners are looking to sell the place thinking they can get over a million for it... more on this later). The past month has been full of hustle and bustle. Moving to Pittsburgh, touring this half of the country for family time over the holidays, a trip to Vegas, I have literally only spent a week of the last month at my own apartment. It was great to see all the family, the gathering are starting to grow, with cousins getting married and having babies and all that junk. There were 32 Aunts Uncles and cousins at the Rawlings gathering, and that wasnt even everyone. So many Rawlingses.
Right, so since I started writing that, our California accommodations have changed a bit. Kari's grandma let us know that the landlords are kicking her out and selling the place cause they think they can get like a mil for it. And she has to be out in a month, after living there for 13 years... something tells me there is more to this story that she isnt telling us. So we have been looking online for places to live and it looks like we will be able to find something for a reasonable price, or maybe we will just have to live out of the car, whatever, itll be good. We already have loads of people that are going to come out to visit, so I guess we will have to get a place. And hey, if you wanna experience the west coast with a free place to stay, come on over.

My employment status has elevated to "occasionally" with a trip to a temp agency Staffmark. I worked 4 days last week stuffing tax audit booklets into envelopes for the state of WV, and I just accepted a job sorting through Netflix returns from 3am to 8am tomorrow. It is simple, mindless work, and though even the simplest task takes its toll after 5100 repetitions (about how many times I figure I repeated the same arm motion when stuffing envelopes), the hardest part about it is the mental agony I go through just sitting there without a single mental stimulation all day. I think about lots of things, sometimes thinking that I should write the idea in my blog. That got me thinking about how long it has been since I updated last, though I have been unemployed for most of the time between posts. I realize that I always have something to do while I am sitting at home, something to occupy my mind. I play Nintendo, read articles, look for jobs, Stumble, my mind is too busy with other things to think my own thoughts through. It is a good reminder that I need to give my mind time to do its own thing. I am still as forgetful as ever, so i dont remember most of the things that I thought "hey, I should remember this", which is why I started carrying around a memo pad, though they dont give you breaks of any sort with the work I am doing, which im pretty sure is illegal, no 15 minute breaks, 8-4:30 with just a 30 minute unpaid lunch.


I didnt know what to expect when I started this envelope stuffing job, for some reason I was expecting some kind of slave labor set up with a bunch of sad old women sitting at cold metal tables in a room full of printers supplying them with an endless pile to work on. I show up to "Triangle Systems", enter the room in the back of a business park, turn the corner, lo and behold, there are 10 tables lined up in 3 rows and beyond that the whirring and clunking of 3 huge printers spitting out the 8000 booklets we are to stuff today. An old lady comes in and sits down next to me. We go through the procedures, the strategies for moistening the envelope glue (luckily we dont have to lick every one, not after what happened to George Costanza's fiance), and she avoids me for the rest of the day, like I was trying to talk to her about her kids and stuff and getting one word answers. Worst old lady ever. She has been stuffing envelopes for 8 years and you can tell. In my boredom I counted how many envelopes I do in a day, around 1600, and figured out I make about 4.5 cents per envelope completed.
I also completed a research study with UPMC, they are doing studies on brain injury patients. I went in and did a little memory test, she started by reading a list of numbers and asking me to repeat them, adding more as she went. I think I got up to a list of ten for that. Then she went on to letters, same drill. Then the tough part. She read a list of letters and numbers mixed together and I had to go and pick out the numbers and give them back in numerical order, then the letters in alphabetical order, I got up to 9 but couldnt handle the list of 10. She said that I was doing so well that she was having trouble keeping up herself as she wasnt used to going that far with it. I dont know if i was actually that good or if she was just used to working with more serious brain injuries... ha, but i think i did well. They then took me through some memory drills on a laptop which were fairly simple, one had to do with letters, like, is this the same as the letter we showed two letters ago, and one was spacial, like, is the dot in the same box as two boxes ago. The laptop exercises were repeated while I was getting an fMRI, so I layed in the scanner for about an hour, clicking buttons on a glove in response to the exercises, it was kind of a crazy experience being in there. It is freakin loud, and not like mechanical noises, but highly variable notes that sounded like they were coming from speakers. I dont know if it is the different magnetic resonances that make different notes, but whatever it was it was really distracting, I started getting into the rhythm and I started to make music out of the noises, haha, and kept losing my concentration on the test. I am going to try to get my results, could be interesting. They referred me to another test that is testing acetylcholine medication on TBI patients, so I am going to start that one soon as well, the first payed 100, this one will pay 250, maybe I will just do this for a living, professional guinea pig.

Ah I didnt even touch on Vegas (click that blurry picture, its a pan of the strip I took, its not actually blurry), admittedly it wasnt as exciting as my last trip, but as always it was a rockin time, did a lot of gambling, saw Cirque Du Soliel's Ka, caused some trouble, good time had by all. I also have to mention our adventure at seven springs last friday, we got 27 inches the night we decided to go, the boarding was awesome, it is not often you get to snow in serious powder like that in PA, but needless to say we were not going home in that. We sat at the bar well into the night, found ourselves in that state of special sleepyness that comes after a night at the bar, and slept on the floor in a meeting room at the hotel. So, I am finally settled in the burgh, its good to be back with all my friends and closer to all my family, and I am looking forward to the next couple months before the Californiadventure begins. Life is good.

Oh the Weather Outsides Delicious.

Philadelphia is seeing the second largest snowfall in December ever recorded, look at the table on our back porch, that is a good 18 inches of snow, its up over my knees walking around out there. It has been a couple years since I have been in the snow, and I am loving it. The first thing I did when it started piling high was whip up a batch of some good ol' snow ice cream. Heres how:

You will need
-4 cups snow
-4 Tablespoons milk
-1/4 teaspoon vanilla
-3 Tablespoons sugar

Go get 4 heapin cups of the good powdery stuff right off the top of the snow in a nice big bowl. Add the vanilla, sugar, and lastly the milk. Good substitutions for the milk would be egg nog, which I just tried- delicious, some baileys irish cream perhaps, or an creamy variation you can think of. After all the ingredients are added the powdery snow reacts strangely like flour, it kind of turns into a loose doughy mixture. Just mix it up well and youre done, eat it quick because the integrity deteriorates quickly, though the last few bites when it is just the right amount of melty are always the best. Dont be afraid to experiment, add some cinnamon, chocolate powder, fruit, go crazy. Enjoy.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra LIVE!

I am sure that many of you know what the Trans-Siberian Orchestra is and what they are all about. Making Christmas songs rock. Now, this initially seems like a pretty difficult task, one which I thought, in my limited exposure to Trans-Siberian, that they had managed to pull off. They go on a yearly tour around Christmas time, and Philadelphia was lucky enough to be pretty early on the list, just early enough to get your christmas music in before Thanksgiving (woo hoo!). Kari wanted to see them, and I thought it could be good, so I bought 2 tickets and was genuinely excited to go. The day of the concert arrives, and after driving to the Wachovia Center (I wont even say how much I paid for tickets and parking) we walk across the lot and through the crowd adorned in christmas hats and reindeer antlers I realize that I didnt really think about this at all. Did I really do all of this for Christmas music? In general I dont even like christmas music, let alone in the middle of November. I try to keep my hopes up as we take our seats, Kari and I entertained with people watching in the very diverse crowd. The people around us range from 3 to 172 years old and we have fun just observing while Ricky from Better Off Dead (great movie btw) goes up and down the stairs multiple times looking for his seat. The clamor of the crowd is full of excitement as the stage lights up and the emcee walks up on stage to a grateful roar of applause. We are told how the night is going to unfold, with a narrator telling us a christmas story interjected with the rockin Trans Siberian Orchestra. Sweet, lets do this. The narrator comes on, an old black man with a weathered tone and an audible grin, and sets the scene of some stranger going into a bar on a cold winter night. TSO starts into their first song, starting quiet and then... getting louder... and... and... and... oh... thats as loud as it gets. I thought the first two songs were some sort of joke before the concert would actually begin and they were going to wow us with their incredible sound system, but that never happened. Kari and I could carry out a conversation in normal speaking voices for the entire concert, babies 5 rows behind us were drowning out the music when they cried (cant blame them, I was pretty upset too), it was pathetic.

The rest of the concert/story played out with the man in the bar befriending a santa like character that sat by him and following the story that said santa man told. He would tell part of the story, I don't even remember what it was about now, and the last word in a section would be snow, so they would break into "Let It Snow" TSO style. Or something like that. The songs all ended up being the some over done mediocre music played by a bunch of showboating guitar heros headbanging with their long flowing hair, and the rockin violinist doing the same bend over and headbang for 4 seconds then fling hair back and run/dance for 10 seconds, all while "playing" the violin, often over her head or behind her back. The only people with hair less than a foot long on stage were the actual string section, which turned out to be a minor after thought in the concert. Yes, the string section, in the "TSOrchestra", was hardly even acknowledged, they went around to all the guitarists, narrator, pianists, back up singers, lead violinist, all by name and listing accomplishments, pause for applause for each, and then oh, ya, and the 5 members of phillys local orchestra in the dark corner in the back of the stage.

To make up for the less than exciting music, they had the previously mentioned guitar heros and violinist flailing on stage, but also featured dancing backup singers which were also a sad attempt at eye candy, and the most impressive part of the show which was the laser and light display (An interesting side note- they aimed the high powered lasers at the small sections between the sections where nobody would be blinded by them) and the pyrotechnics. The dancers ended up being an exciting repetition of- swing right arm down, swing left arm down, swing right arm out, swing left arm out, even when they were in the lime light center stage. Every song was the same desperate attempts at excitement, and for me just about every attempt was in vain, there were a couple songs that were genuinely exciting, like their best known rendition of Carol of the Bells, complete with fire shooting up with the beat, as well as the demonic sounding O' Fortuna with the entire auditorium lit up with red flames, both real and videos on every screen available. If the entire concert was carried out with the bravado of these few songs, I would have gotten more than I expected, but the few good bits were interlaced with an over hyped plethora of power chords, terrible acoustic originals from the creator of the TSO that put you to sleep (more than one with a Pachelbelian tune), ridiculous stunts (like the mini stage set up in the middle of the audience they were on for 10 minutes and it lifted up into the air and then sat back down)and a sad attempt at a story to give meaning to the whole thing. I think the show was summed up quite well by the character in the story when the old man had finished relating his fantastical tale (whatever it was). The old man asked "Well, did my story entertain you?" and after this story which fueled the whole show and they tried to inject with such excitement, you were expecting the character to say how great and entertaining the story was, however the response came... "It had its charms" and this is how the story was closed. So, was it worth the ticket price? Did it get me into the christmas spirit like it promised it would? Did the concert wow me with its rocking christmas tunes?... It had its charms.

Million Dollar Idea

Everyone has one of those great million dollar ideas. Like the guy who made the pet rock? The guy made a million dollars. Or the "Jump to Conclusions" mat? pure genius! Well we all have these ideas, which inevitably end up just that, an idea. It is rare that... wait... I am sitting in the car with my parents and I just told them what I was writing about, my dad is relating his idea right now: Personal bobble heads. He has a couple different ideas, use a stereo lithography 3D printer to make exact bobbling replicas and hand paint them, or have a stock of general faces and you could personalize the painting. So that is just another example of those ideas that we all have, you are thinking of your million dollar idea right now aren't you? Well, as I was saying, it is rare that anyone actually brings this idea to fruition, and even then the attempts are often swiftly beaten down by the reality of the consumer market.

Every now and then the right idea will surface in the right persons head and they will be one of the rare few who actually tries to make that idea a reality. I am fortunate enough to have one of those few as one of my best friends, and a rare breed they are. It takes a special bit of ingenuity, a gamblers spirit, and a touch of crazy to take that leap. My friend fits that mold, he is actually embarking on a business venture right now, investing thousands of dollars and countless hours into his idea, and I am amazed that he is actually doing it. I know I am not one of those people, I'm never going to do anything with my ideas, so here it is, you knew it was coming, my million dollar ideas.

Just a couple days ago I had this idea, which is what gave me the idea for this post. I was thinking about a friend we met in the Bahamas, Dick from the boat Rio Dulce, and the fact that I owe that man a drink, but how could I buy him one? This led me to my million dollar idea. The Webar (thats web/bar... mixed together... ok the name isnt important). Set up a streaming high quality video of the patrons sitting at the bar and create a color code or something visible to the camera that distinguishes each seat. Allow users to go online and view the streaming images and, heres the kicker, buy drinks for anyone sitting at the bar. They could buy with a credit card from an online menu and specify who it is to be sent to with the color coding, send the drink and a message to go along with it, like, maybe your phone number, maybe your name, the possibilities are endless. You can scout out the scene before you show up to the bar, buy a couple drinks and drop your name with the men/women of your choice and by the time you get there half the work is already done, you already broke the ice, thats the hardest part! Ladies would get all hussied up and show off for the camera to get free drinks, and who knows what else people would do. The bar top could be interactive, enter your name so those online can see, it will tell you when someone bought you a drink, oh man there is so much you could do with it, I'm just thinking up more as I go. You could link up to your Twitter and Facebook and all that crap! And be like, hey, im at the Webar, buy me a drink! It almost seems practical in todays techno driven world, and if nothing else the novelty would be enough to make it a success. And... I could buy a drink for someone no matter how far away they are. The Webar.

This idea is not nearly as exciting, but it is something that I think would be very useful, in fact I would be surprised if it dosnt already exist, though it didnt turn up in a quick google search. Liquid screen protector. A slightly viscous liquid you could apply to your cell phone or ipod screen or whatever that would set and harden into a clear protector over your screen, and if it gets too scratched up and worn out, a special solvent would harmlessly take of the protector completely, leaving you reapply a fresh coat or do whatever you please with your still perfect screen. It would be a simple, universally applicable product with an ever widening market. There would be problems to overcome of course, like getting the product to set without compromising screen clarity, touch screen response, that kind of thing, but things that could be overcome. I know I would buy it.

I have more ideas, but I know I have gone on too long already, if you really want to know, email me, or call my google voice!



haha, and I will be glad to discuss my ideas and yours, maybe we can have an inspiring conversation that will turn us into one of those rare few.

Peters Township HS Reunion

I'm writing this for all the fellow alum who joined me at the PTHS reunion on Saturday. Done in true Peters Township style at the Diesel night club, I wasn't sure how excited I was to attend... heck I wasn't even sure if I was attending, but I ended up going and I really am glad I did.

After graduation we set out to experience the real world and the people who inhabit it. At the time, I thought my graduating class was just your average bunch of kids, we had the go-getters and the lazy, the nerds, the jocks, the bandies, Mike Puchi... And everyone would go out and do their thing, some would succeed, some would fail, we would all just fade into the rest of the world and become just another part of the whole. That's not how it is though. And I didn't realize that until Saturday night. I have experienced the people in the real world, their work ethic, their intelligence, their personal hygiene habits, and I just went with it, its the real world, that is just how people are. But this Saturday I realized that is not just how people are, that's how the average person is, but the people I saw that night are not average. I walked into a room of good people who are ambitious and successful, and I was a little surprised at how glad I was to be there among them. I found myself talking to people that I hadn't spoken a word to since high school, as I am sure many people did, and I actually cared, I wanted to hear what they have done in the last 5 years and it is because they are good people who actually have something say, I want to hear what they are doing because they are actually doing something. Had they changed since graduation? No, not a bit, I just didn't appreciate it until it was put into perspective by reality.

There is nothing more that can be asked of you than to do something with the lives you have been given, and you are doing it, so, here's to you, PTHS class of '04, keep doing it.

Bad and Awesome

I started my last post with disappointing news that I would not be going on the sailing trip. A fact that is even more depressing as I follow my brothers progress with the boat he is crewing on and the amazing experiences he is having, like this nonsensical awesomeness... he got pictures of sharks jumping out of the water... I didnt even know awesome got that awesome. I regret that I have even more disappointments this time as well. I have been planning on moving to San Diego with Kari where she got placement for fieldwork for three months, there were contracts signed, plans were made, and then last week they called and told her that they cannot afford to take her in as a (non-paid)student... so after all of her classmates have all of their placements figured out, she is back out again looking for somewhere that will take her in. There are prospects in Texas, Arizona, Boston, Virginia, all over the place, but... who knows what will happen. I am definitely moving back to Pittsburgh in December, though even that has been tainted with a bit of misfortune. I was supposed to be moving into a house with a few of my friends when a current resident moved to Colorado, but turns out the guy decided to be all ambitious and go to medical school instead of taking the nursing job in Colorado. So we have no room at the house and are mow looking for apartments around the area. It wont be too hard to find something, and it will be nice to live without roommates, Kari wasn't too excited about living with 5 other guys anyway.

The last few weeks I have been transforming into a nocturnal creature due to my work schedule, and it is great. We have started to work overnights in preparation for the biggest day of the year, Black Friday, or as it is officially called by Toys-R-Us, Green Friday, because they make so much money. My work nights are 10pm to 6am and I try to keep a similar sleep schedule when I am not working also, so I am up till at least 6 every day. A lot of people would look at this as a big pain, but i actually kinda like it, plus I get a whopping $1 an hour extra. I get up some time between 12 and 4, so I have time to do all the stuff that has to be done during the day, but then most of my waking hours are during the night. They say that nothing good happens after midnight, but I beg to differ. I have always been most productive after the rest of the world is asleep, I have written about that before. The things to do at night are far fewer, and therefor produce fewer distractions, I have nothing better to do than work on my resume (click that link there and not only can you see my resume, but you can edit it! Ah the power and wisdom of google), or do some dishes, or maybe write a blog.

OK, so I just got back from work, and another benefit of being out late, you get to experience all the crazys that inhabit the night. For example. I went out for food during our "lunch" break (interestingly they call it a lunch break no matter when you are working, in this case the break is at 2am) and when I came back, my coworker and I were walking through the parking lot when the sound of screeching tires caught our attention. We look over to see a car 30 feet away, maybe a Dodge Stratus, careening over the curb of the street that goes by the store at a good 40 mph. It was airborne as it flew over the 20 feet of grassy hill between the street and the parking lot, landing in a spray of shrubbery and dirt as it landed in the landscaping around the parking lot, crunched over the concrete barriers at the front of the parking spaces, its tires flattened by now it went sideways across the lot, hitting off the barriers in the spaces opposite, almost running into the building, at this point I expected things to stop, a driver who had been sleeping at the wheel to get out shaken... but they kept going, burning metal as the rims spun on the pavement, thankfully headed away from us towards the back of the store, they slid around the back and out of sight just as we heard another set of screeching tires, this time accompanied by a siren. The cop ripped through the side lot (opting to take the entrance to the lot that was 10 feet before the spot where the chasee had decided he wanted to go through) after the guy, and I hurried over to the other side of the store to see the rear entrance where they would have exited the lot, I got there in time to see that the car had lost control when it tried to make the turn out of the lot on flat tires and wound up nose hard into the embankment across the street. The cop was out, gun drawn, yelling at people to get on the ground and a woman was screaming, and then... I went back in to the store eat the panini I just bought. After relating the story to the rest of the crew in the break room, they went out to have a look at the damage done, mostly just to the shrubs that were now scattered on the lot, and watch the arrests, there were swarms of cops cars within a few minutes patrolling the area, which must have meant that someone got away, so I made sure I locked my car. I will be checking the news to figure out what the deal was, but for me that made for the most exciting night of work at Toys-R-Us I will ever have.

Well that was fun.

Google Voice

Hey internet, look at this, Google voice, you link your phone numbers to a google number you pick and google works their magic to make stuff awesome, but really what you need to know is that you pick your own phone number, and the good ones will go fast. I got 754 BRENDOR, so... mines awesome, but act now if you want a good one. http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html

So you will go request an invite if you want to keep up your intercred, and if you need me, you can get me at 754 brendor.

I'm All Over It

Okay, so the boat thing didnt happen. The frog said he wanted to leave this week, I told him I would look into travel options and whatnot and call him monday, it actually seemed like it was going to happen, and... his number was out of service. Must have gone back to frogland. Oh well.

The point of this post is really to express my admiration for the musical genius that is Jamie Cullum. A friend introduced me to him in high school after his first US release- Twentysomething. I was instantly enamored with his sound, he showed songs that I already knew from a totally different angle, and his originals sucked me in with their catchy melodies and jazzy beats. He does covers that you would never expect, like Pharell's rap crappin hip hoppin "Frontin", and totally spins it, jazzes it up, and turns it into something that is good, no, great. Twentysomething contains covers of some songs of today, like the aforementioned "Frontin" and Radiohead's "High and Dry", but also adds a little pop to some songs from the past, like Frank Sinatra's "I Get a Kick Out of You" and the classic "Singin' in the Rain". Twentysomething is not even why I am writing this, I should move on.

A couple of years after Twentysomething's release, the pending release of his second album "Catching Tales" got me excited, though I was skeptical that it could get any better than Twentysomething. The release of the first single "London Skies" fueled my concern that I would be dissapointed my the album, and upon its full release my concern was confirmed. Now dont get me wrong, the music is great, I still love it and many say it was an improvement, it just wasn't for me, didnt suck me in, lost some of the jazz i think. Just after the release I went to see Jamie play to a sold out Byham Theatre in Pittsburgh and he was incredible, full of energy, it was amazing to see the genius just oozing out of him on stage. Any doubt I had was gone. Then there was nothing for 4 years except little updates that he was working on some things, a rogue show now and then, some radio interviews, and a pretty sweet collaboration with Clint Eastwood on Gran Torino which got him a Golden Gldobe nomination for best original composition. He finally announced the release of his new album "The Pursuit" and went on tour, one stop being New York's Carnegie Hall, which I attended and it was awesome, just got me more excited for the new album.

Afraid that Jamie's music was headed in the wrong direction for me, The Pursuit had potential to turn me into one of those snooty "I like his old stuff" people. The first single "I'm All Over It" was released a couple weeks ago... I am so happy. It brought back all the excitement and drew me in just like Twentysomething did. He released the video which is crazy cool, and then, in accordance with his obsession with twitter, did a live video broadcast for his twitter followers. The broadcast is probably the best example of just how good he is at what he does. When an album is released it could be the product of so many alterations and polishing that it sounds nothing like the original recording. Jamie doesn't need polishing, and he proves it. Twentysomething was recorded and mixed on analog tape, meaning almost straight from the instruments and his voice to print, and this live twitter show is another example. Jamie sets up a mic and a webcam in his kitchen, and in perhaps the most informal situation possible, cranks out some damn good music, this might be more impressive than anything else I could show you, a recording some girl from Singapore did of her laptop playing the show Jamie did in his kitchen, broadcasting over twitter, watch it, really. In the broadcast he asked for requests, saying that he is sure that some people have gotten ahold of the new album even though it is not to be released until next year... which fueled me in a search through the dark alleys of the internet, which turned out to be pretty easy, and I am now listening to the full album. In all of its glory. Jamie has done it again, injected the new and old with his jazzy flavor while continuing to progress his style, produced some originals that will be played over and over, and created an album that could appeal to you, your grandma, the stinky guy at work, and most importantly, me. Thanks Jamie. You rule.

Stumbling Along

Still in philly. Working at Toys-R-Us. It isn't exactly exciting, but it is satisfying to be working again, no matter what it is. I am enjoying my time, and in an attempt to take advantage of my current situation I am in contact with a guy who just bought a boat and needs it delivered to Florida from Connecticut. This might be the only job I will ever have that I can go up to the store manager and ask for a month off so I can go sail a boat to Florida and get a "yes" without hesitation. He did say he would really rather I didnt go, but thats as much resistance as I have seen. A while back I posted my profile on a crew finder website, not really thinking anything would come of it, as there are thousands of profiles on there. I had forgotten about it until about a month ago when I got a message from a guy who just bought a boat in Connecticut and needs it delivered to Florida. He lives in France and makes a living as a chef on yachts. It sounds great and he seemed like he had at least a basic knowledge of cruising and would kind of know what is going on. He is clueless...

I have talked on the phone with him a few times and he just gets more and more confused every time. We were originally supposed to leave on the 15th, but after his arrival in the US on the 2nd I guess he realized he had much more to do than he thought, and every call after that he has become more and more hopeless, to the point that I think that if I dont take it upon myself and go up and take the boat out of the slip myself, he might just stall until its too late. Everyone keeps telling me this is a bad idea... I am going to end up sodomized and finely chopped into chum by a crazy french chef... whatever, I miss the ocean, and I think he seems ok. It is kind of serving as a justification to me that I can go off sailing and it dosnt really affect anyone (except the less than thrilled Kari), makes my less than ideal situation worth it, in my head.

So other than that, theres not a lot going on in my life, not a lot to write about. Work is fairly routine, the most interesting about it is the people, the guys that work in the storeroom with me are pretty cool, but there is of course the requisite crazy. Unloading the truck one day I found myself in a conversation with one of the requisites about the reptilian overlords, the boy of wonder, Friday night mudwrestling and Saturday night monster trucks. After a contemplative silence, me going back over the absurd stream of consciousness pouring from this mans mouth, him, brewing his next profound insight, he lifts a box, looks at me and pauses as it clunks onto the rollers, our eyes locked "How well do you think the average human can handle the truth?", and goes on with his business, leaving me to marinade a bit in the broth of that insight. Thats pretty much how every interaction goes with him, lots of questions about the establishment, whether they care, why you care, if anyone cares, "do you consider yourself a good person" "sometimes I dont know if i am a person at all", "Good morning" "thats what they want you to think".



I would like to take this time to do a little spot for something that has taken up a lot of my time the past few years. A program called StumbleUpon (I just got lost for a good 20 minutes just by going to the page to get the link). They have over 8.5 million subscribers, so I am sure that some of you are already stumbling away your time like me, but for those who have not discovered StumbleUpon, tread carefully. This is no joke, you will waste time, it is an absolute guarantee, if you are have an addictive personality, very little free time, no self restraint, cataracts, back problems, are or may become pregnant, well then this is not for you. StumbleUpon is a simple idea, you supply them with interests, a quick selection of the columns of my interests gives : Archaeology Astrology Astronomy Gambling Genetics Geography Geoscience Psychics Puzzles Quizzes Racquetball. And after you supply them with a list of interests, they supply you with a button. And when you click that button a website comes up that others in the 8 million subscribers thought was interesting and that you would be interested in it as well. Its that simple. They of course go far beyond that by giving you a thumbs up and thumbs down button, giving you suggested interests to expand into depending on what thumbs you give, allowing you to network with other users, etc. etc. I have given a thumbs up to 351 sites and they can all be seen in my profile, I have worked long and hard on that list. So if you are a stumbler, add me as a friend, maybe i will share things with you, and if you are not, join us in our time wasting ventures into the interwebs.

Another amazing program. Picasa. Have you seen the new facial recognition feature? You give it one sample of a persons face and it goes off and finds more pictures of them, its incredible, I have tagged hundreds of pictures with peoples faces with hardly any effort, and it is remarkably accurate, in 100 suggestions of myself, the only inaccuracy was that in one picture it thought that Alan was me, a very forgivable offense. It tags them in sync with your google address book, and I dont even know what it can do from there. Google, you amaze me.

To a tree, who in the proper conditions could live an infinite amount of years, struggling with disease and damage day after day towards infinity, the agony of death must be just that much more devastating with so much unrealized potential.

Random Bag of Crap. Woot!

Now, I feel a little strange about posting this on here, just because I don't know if all of you really appreciate the magnitude of this accomplishment, or at least the significance it has for me. Some of my closest friends and family know how much this means to me, and I know you are all happy for me and I thank you. So anyway, you must be wondering what is such a big deal. It is a Random Bag of Crap (or BOC, as we Wooters call it (or Bandolier of Carrots, Bulgarian Olympic Committee, Blinged-Out Cabbage, etc (you get it))). Now that doesn't sound exciting, and they make every effort at woot.com to make it unexciting, but the orders flood in at an incredible pace. Wooters wait for this item, hitting the refresh page over and over when a new item is about to arrive, and when one of these babys pop up, it is a scramble to get through the ordering process before the servers go down and/or all of the BOCs are sold. They sell around 2000 every time, and it is near impossible to click your way into getting one, as evidenced by the stats they put out after every woot item, here showing a blistering .089 seconds between orders. So why this fervor for a box of self-proclaimed "crap". Well woot has a new deal on something every day, they buy out excess and refurbs and things like that from other wholesalers for cheap and then put it on woot.com for a great price, this leaves them with some spare items sitting around, either too few to list, too damaged to sell, to crappy to put a price on, or who knows what else, and all of this randomness culminates in the BOC. BOCs have been known to house Nintendo Wiis, Xboxes, SLR digital cameras... or broken RC cars, obscure action figures, loads of cheap random cases, useless gadgets, anything imaginable really, and for $8 shipped, it is well wirth the gamble. I have been trying for years, literally years, to get one, and the last wootoff, on September 25th, was finally my time.

Order pace: 0m 0.089s

Woot wage: $122,049.53

Woots sold: 1499

I resisted the urge to post about this as soon as I got it, because I know the biggest question would be, well, what is in it. So I waited, and just a few minutes ago the mailman buzzed my apartment and I knew what was in store for me, so I bounded down the stairs and gazed with delight upon the hefty box that awaited. After a quick pic to text to friends and family, I opened her up and was shocked by the quantity of crap that stared back at me from inside the box. I started digging.



2 Smith and Wesson Galaxy 3 LED flashlights, with blue LEDs
1 Xpal iPower Power on the Go for the iPhone
1 Thermor wireless indoor/outdoor weather station with forecasting technology
1 DXG digital camcorder with MP3 player and 5.1MP digital camera capabilities
1 set of Sansa earbuds (as well as one pair with the camcorder)
2 EzyFlare emergency electronic flares
1 Energizer Energi To Go iPod spare battery pack
1 white cheese grater thing that I have not figured out yet
5 Excalibur vinyl bags roughly 18x12 inches with picture of scary red horse head
3 Daiwa bags, roughly 9x12 inches with a clip, a pouch, and a single pen pocket
1 horribly cheap looking air pressure gauge with pocket clip



So there it all is, it holds true to its name, and it was everything I had hoped and dreamed about and more. I will go online and try to figure out the value of my crap when I get back from work, but I think everyone can agree it was worth the $8 and the effort. Right?

Next to a Dream, Be a Laugher

Last night I lay in bed restless, as inevitably happens because I try to get to bed reasonably early but sleep in every morning unreasonably late. This attempt to force sleep sometimes brings on a state of mind with which I am sure a lot of you are familiar. You lay there thinking about all kinds of random things, you try to stop thinking and get to sleep but your mind goes on without your permission anyway. And then, once your mind starts to give in to the siren song of sleep just a little, your normal thoughts start to meld into the fantasism of the dream world and your rational thoughts turn into completely irrational situations. The worst (best) time for this to occur is when you start to travel to the Land of Nod in the middle of a lecture. You still hear what is going on but it gets transformed somewhere in your half dream state and you get the urge to yell out ridiculous things that make so much sense but then when you jolt into full awakeness because you are about to yell out this packet of brilliance you realize the insanity that was about to sprout from your mouth and catch yourself just in time to not make more of a fool of yourself, though everyone is already looking at you because you just had a miniature seizure when you landed back on earth, probably for the 15th (and not the last) time that class. I have found myself in this situation just a few times, and have never given in to the urges of the dream world, but you have all either seen or heard of it happening. The poor kid who spouts out something about Macbeth being a fish or some such nonsense. Or maybe that just happens in movies.
Ok, I didnt plan on going there at all, that just kind of came out, what I was planning on writing about was laughing, because in my thoughts, for some reason, I thought about the tent we borrowed from Kari's Pap. I was thinking I hoped I got it dry enough the keep stored away and hoped her Pap wouldnt be put out by my packing job or something. And when I thought of him, the thought that came to mind was him laughing. For some reason that intrigued me... I intrigued myself I guess... so I thought on it more. I thought of my own Grandad, he was laughing. Papa was laughing. My brother was laughing, my friends were laughing. Maybe it is just me, but I realize that when I am mentally recalling someone, their laugh is the clearest image in my head, maybe its because it is linked with a strong emotion, a good emotion, and always has a distinctive sound, it seems like a laugh would be the best way to remember someone, maybe we are programmed to remember like that. I think you can tell a lot from someones laugh, whether it is genuine or forced, outgoing or reserved, whether it goes on just a little to long, or I guess whether it exists at all. While writing this I have been thinking about people, and I dont have a laugh on file for everyone. Maybe I just forget, or maybe some people are just better remembered otherwise, maybe I dont remember those forced, reserved laughs, or maybe some people just dont laugh enough.

In this world I have just created where people are split into being remembered with a laugh or without, I think I surround myself with laughers, and I think I am myself a laugher for most people. It is important to me to be a laugher and its something everyone could strive for. Be genuine, be happy, let it out, and thats how you will be remembered. Be a laugher.