I is Alive!

Hey all, and happy Memorial Day! I swear that I am still alive despite my silence these past... 6 weeks now? Yeesh. Well, at least there's been a good reason for it as work has been cra-zy. Both of my customers had huge events occurring on the exact same day and the build up to it devoured all of my time. Then I jumped on a plane and flew to Florida to spend the next 15 days pulling 11-14 hour shifts every day (except for one Sunday... yay!), and now I am finally back home in Madison.

Still, even though it's been crazy and super busy and likely will continue to be so for the next couple of weeks I've definitely learned a lot. The go live was lots of fun and went a lot smoother than I was expecting, which was a welcome relief. There were lots of high-fives being thrown around the first couple of days as we blasted through issues right left and center. We also got to eat really well while there- macadamia encrusted trout served in a witbier beurre blanc sauce on top of steamed seasonal vegetables anyone?

I also want to give a shout out to my backups for my other customer (who upgraded on the same day Florida went live) for dealing with their issues while I was out of town. I owe them a cake I think...

But, now that I am back in Wisconsin's loving arms life is good. Yesterday I spent at the Terrace enjoying the company of my friends, good quality beer and the much milder weather. Granted, I was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat at the time in the hopes that the sun would peek its head out, but all in all it was good. I have three more days on my four day weekend to rest, rejuvenate, catch up on e-mail and in general get my life back in order. Hopefully I'll be posting more regularly now that things are (hopefully) calming back down, as I've missed this blog and letting you all know how thing are going.

Apologies for no pics- I'll try to rectify that this weekend. Again, happy Memorial Day everyone and I'll be chatting at you again soon!

Finished with app camp!

I'm finally finished with Inpatient Application Camp! Only took about 2.5 months...

Anyway, I still have lots of projects and tests to do before I get my certification, so the upcoming week will be filled with all sorts of fun times. I'm confident though that I'll be able to at least get the lion's share of my training out of the way before I am assigned a customer... which might happen before the end of November. Yay!

Speaking of fun times, this weekend was pretty fun, though accidentally so. Friday was pretty quiet in the apartment, both of us just getting some work done, but Saturday was going to be our big night out. First there was to be bowling with my work friends, then an Olde Tymey Drinking Party at Dwight's where we would have Olde Tymey cocktails and wear Olde Tymey clothes.

Unfortunately there were a few hitches. I went to pick Rachel up from her volunteering/studying on Saturday night but through miscommunication and ridiculous traffic thanks to the Badger game what should have been a 5 minute pick up turned into half an hour. Then actually getting geared up to start our evening took much longer than we anticipated, pushing us back to 8 o'clock before we could even get out the door, tanking our chance at bowling. So we ended up waiting until 9 to head over to Dwight's.

Well, we still had Olde Tymey drinks to look forward to, right? Wrong. Apparently the party had been cancelled the day before but since we were silly and didn't RSVP we didn't end up getting the message. So we stood awkwardly outside of Dwight's place for a few minutes ascertaining this information and jumped back into the car.

We drove for a bit, crestfallen that our magnificent attire would have nowhere to go, so we pulled off into a parking lot to mull our options. We eventually decided to take our awesomely bedecked selves to a local Irish pub and just hang out. Turns out it was very fun- the place was hopping, the drinks were good and we got to actually have a lengthy conversation which is sadly becoming a rarity these days thanks to work and whatnot.

Still, it's a shame that we didn't get to show off ourselves... oh well. There's always next time, and my coat still looks awesome.

Until next time...

"There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it."
- A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

Cha-Cha-Cha-Chaaanges

The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of activity in which pretty much every facet of my life has been altered beyond recognition. Many of you probably know or have heard of most of these, but let's just put them down for the record.

• On Thursday, August 12th, my poor car, the Alpacamobile, was flooded while waiting patiently on a street in Uptown for me to return. When I came back there was 6 inches of water in my car and a debris line from the flash flood that went halfway up the outside of the doors. While still drivable, the damage to the seats, carpeting and electronics totalled the car. May it rest in peace.
• On Friday, August 20th, I had my last official obligation with the Community Technology Empowerment Project and said goodbye to my coworkers, students and friends. This was much more emotional than I thought it would be, as apparently I have done some good over the past two years and people wanted to let me know that. I'll definitely miss my time there, though it is good to be moving on.
• On Saturday, August 21st, Rachel and I piled our belongings into a U-Haul and drove to our new apartment in Madison, WI. With help from both our families we got moved in and Rachel took the initiative to make our apartment look awesome. A video tour of the place will be my next post. Suffice it to say, it's really nice to have multiple rooms all to our own!
• On Thursday, August 26th, I obtained a new car while visiting my family back in New York. Pics of the car will appear at some point, as it is a beaut. Still miss the Alpacamobile though...
• On Tuesday, August 31st, I finished my second term of service with CTEP with one final hour's worth of work in my last week on the job consisting mainly of e-mails.
• And on Tuesday, September 7th, I am going to be starting my new job at Epic.

So far in Madison I've spent my time unpacking and rearranging things in our apartment. I've hung out with Rachel's grad program friends a bit and they seem like a nice bunch of people. I'm looking forward to getting to know them better.

I'm also going to be mustering up my courage to check out some of the geek stores in the area starting with Misty Mountain Madison tomorrow for their Warhammer open play night. I figure that's one way to make new friends in this strange land, right?

Anyway, many more posts to come, as now I definitely need to post somewhere in order to talk about all of my adventures. To all of you, I miss you, and as long as I try to keep in contact so should you.

Until next time...

"It is the epitome of life. The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity."
-Letter to Edward Dimmit from Mark Twain, July, 19, 1901

Reconstruction

Our house has been undergoing quite a bit of reconstruction recently, as Jason is removing the roof of our house and a lot of work has been needed! As a small example of the truly heroic labors that are happening, please take a look at the albums below. One is from the Easter Feast and shows a bit of our house before construction. The other is from what it looks like now. Enjoy!

Easter Feast '10

Reconstruction

Until next time...

"...it is less trouble and more satisfaction to bury two families than to select and equip a home for one."
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

The Sky is Upon Us

Happy belated Independence weekend everybody! The 4th up here in Minneapolis was a nice time. The weather people  had been saying all weekend that there was a chance of showers on the 4th, and the clouds certainly looked to fit the part.

Rachel and I had planned to head over to a fellow CTEP-ers house for a BBQ and decided to bike over. I brought steaks and beer, only to discover that I was the lone meatatarian at the party. Oh well, more steaks for me! We had a good time at the party, talking about lots of different topics and ending with games of Mad Gab and Can Google Translate This?

We then biked into downtown to watch the fireworks. I had never done this and it felt  pretty bad ass to be biking around the traffic and crowds on our way to our destination. We ended up watching the show at St Anthony Main, and we were pretty close to the action. The show was relatively short, only about 15 minutes if that, but the people seemed to enjoy it.

We then headed over to the Soap Factory for the 10 Second Film Festival. The Soap Factory is a great arts venue in downtown and festival is a collection of 10 second submissions from all over the world. It was pretty casual and irreverent- the judges bowed to the will of the crowd on almost every decision, probably due to the fact that there were a lot of no-shows for the winners. This led to certain films (STICKS!) winning in very different categories and pretty much every film with actual artistic merit being left out in the cold. Still, it was entertaining and there were some pretty cool submissions in every category (including the awesomely named Mindless Violence). The films should be up on the website soon if you want to take a gander.

Image from City Pages and Taste of Minnesota

As mentioned previously, Rachel won a pair of tickets to the Taste of Minnesota festival thanks to the Nomad's World Cup festivities, so we decided to go on Monday. Since it hadn't rained the night before, all of the weather people were predicting doom and gloom for Monday, and the dark clouds we saw hovering over the fair certainly didn't prove them wrong. Almost as soon as we walked into the park it started raining, then pouring. The vendors were great and let us shelter under their tents until our food was prepared, then we scurried over to the tent where the bands were playing.

The first band was pretty good- had a certain Caribbean sound to it and at one point they had an extended section where they did improvisational beats on cowbells that was actually good. Then the Heirospecs came on and they were AWESOME. A St Paul band through and through they had plenty of references to the local area in their songs. They had a cool rapping style and some great beatboxing talents when need be. Every song seemed to be a different musical style, and they were uniformly good. Rachel and I have decided that we need to get their album now.

Image from Musicnear.com and the band Heiruspecs

After the Heirospecs show the rain let up somewhat, allowing us to journey home once again. We decided to spend our evening cleaning and packing up stuff from our room, which led to plenty of dust flying around and a forest of cardboard to spring up in our living room. Thank God for storage lockers...

Speaking of rain, it's been raining indoors for quite a while now! Jason, his dad and a team of carpenters are busy dismantling our roof and hopefully installing a new one... but they keep on running into more and more unseen complications because our house is weird. Basically there have been iterations of construction since the 1920s, and none of the previous owners seem to know anything about architecture. Wiring is a crazy mishmash of styles, the supporting beams are incorrectly put in place, and a wall sinks a little along the roof... lots of stuff. So we've been living with blue tarp and plywood over our heads, but it hasn't been as secure as we'd like. So our kitchen occasionally turns into a mystical waterfall, and the near daily rain hasn't helped matters much. Oh well, should be great once it's finished.

I've spoken enough, but I've got more to blog about. So until next time...

"The rain is famous for falling on the just and unjust alike, but if I had the management of such affairs I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust out doors I would drown him."
- quoted in My Father Mark Twain, Clara Clemens

Musings

So I'm currently sitting in my favorite bar (Nomad World Pub) starting my second beer of the day. The Paraguay-Japan game has been fairly lackluster so far and the bar is pretty empty- maybe 9 people including myself out here since 9:00 cheering on Japan, Paraguay or simply the game itself. I've had my laptop out, like many times before, except this time I have few distractions. The game is on halftime right now and music is playing, and I can finally sit down and write a blog post.

This past month has been pretty hectic. Work has ramped up as it always does during the summer, and this time I have two employees to help me out. They're hired through the Youth Job Corps of St Paul and I've been having mixed success with them. One is a natural at any task that I give him, while the other is a bit more of a challenge. I knew this from the outset, though- the YJC program is half intended to help me and half supposed to be me giving the YJCs valuable work and growth experience, which is always a good thing for a resume I hear.

I don't understand how my classes are going, as it seems to be fits and starts. My Adult classes have had their members grow by magnitudes over the past two weeks, though actual attendance is still touch and go at times. The YJCs have really helped this out, providing translation and outreach for me. Unfortunately I also need to make sure that they have something to do all the time, which can be tricky when all I want to do is plan the next lesson or send out some e-mails. Outreach time I guess?

I've also gotten a new projector, and it is a GODSEND. Suddenly I don't have to be sitting right next to a student to show him or her how to perform a particular task- I can just show it to the class entire on my projector! I can also now manage large class sizes, which is fantastic, and have real class discussion about what I am showing on the screen (which is a glorified bed sheet. Budget budget budget... where hast thou gone?).

My kids classes, though, are not doing so hot. I thought that a class designed around the world cup would be a GREAT class for a predominantly immigrant population. But summer school and the early morning hours that are all that I have to use have apparently sapped all the will out of the children and teens, even if I promise them free food. I can get them to show up on Thursdays for the game and free time, but even then they don't watch the game. It's all about the lab time.

But all is not dark in my life- I had an onsite interview with Epic a week ago that I think went pretty well. I could wax poetical about their philosophy, work space and possible pay for hours (and will if you ask me!), but we'll sum it up this way:

1. You can book a meeting IN A TREEHOUSE.
2. They theoretically want to pay me in real, American currency.
3. Except for a few people outside the company I have heard nothing bad about them.
4. They have a very focused environmental policy and are one of the most bike friendly companies in one of the most bike friendly cities in America.
5. On the coffee table in the HR department they had several books, including a Calvin and Hobbes anthology, How to Be a Villain, and The Pop-Up Book of Phobias.

The interview lasted from 9:15-3:30 and had quite a few parts. First there was a tour of the campus, then an introduction to my potential job (Technical Services- trouble shooter and integrator of stuff into hospital mainframes), then the actual interview. First was a series of situations, which I did well except for the first question. Second was a standard interview, including the excellent question of "What is a common misconception about you?" Third was me vainly trying to remember how to pseudo-code to answer several questions, but that part apparently won't make or break me, especially since I've had two classes in a language that isn't terribly useful to modern day programming.

I came away very hopeful, and they said that they would let me know their decision within two weeks. It's one week now, so I'm starting to get a little nervous, but hopefully they will let me know soon and in the affirmative.

Sorry if that was a bit rambling- probably the beer is having some interesting effect on my literary style, and I do have a lot to talk about. It's definitely a time of great change right now- old friends are fleeing the city, my employment of the past two years is ending in about two months, and I have to think about moving to a new city, a new state, and a place where I know no one. I haven't had this big of a change since I left high school to start college, and it's a bit scary. I've grown comfortable in my current position, but it's probably time for something new. Six years is a long time- a quarter of my life so far- but it's probably time. Time for something new.

Next time, some more looks at my experience of this World Cup.

Until next time...

"When your watch gets out of order you have a choice of two things to do: throw it in the fire or take it to the watch-tinker. The former is the quickest."
- Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

Musical Meandering

I started off this weekend with a bit of an adventure. Rachel, Sophie and I had been interested in going to a show involving Dessa, a local artist who we know from her hosting trivia at the Nomad World Pub during the summer. We hadn't had much exposure to her music (which until recently has been mostly hip-hop), but simply from seeing her work the crowd at trivia and our interactions with her there convinced us that she was a person awesome enough to go out and see.

So we hopped on the bus and headed over to the Fine Line Music Cafe to stand in the rain and sleet waiting for a chance to get a ticket. The line started moving and we quickly got to the front.

Where we stayed.

These faces should pretty much say everything.

So, we tried for a plan B to salvage the night. Wandering through downtown we came upon The Shout!  House.

This is a bar that features two pianos and a band that plays plenty of songs that most people are familiar with. There were a lot of '90s faves as well as some oldies and most of the things going on seemed to have a cult-classic status among the people there. Or maybe it was just that everyone was completely shmammered. As for us, it was entertaining but not nearly to the degree of the other patrons there. Maybe if we had made an event out of it and prepared before hand it would be entertaining enough, but for now I think we'll leave it to the much classier downtowners. Of note: overweight white men performing Single Ladies. HILARIOUS.

We left a bit later and caught the bus back to Uptown where we hung out at the Bryant Lake Bowl then walked back to our house. Unfortunately Minnesota is going through some incredibly annoying and disgusting weather right now that makes walking to anywhere a frightening proposition. Basically, it's cold enough that we still have a whole lot of ice, but warm enough that a lot of that is melting. So we now have sidewalks that are completely covered in a slippery sloshy mess, resulting in plenty of people walking on the streets as it is safer. If this were going on in March I would say ok, and most of this stuff would be gone by now. But in January?!? Stupid global warming...

Well, until next time...

"All of us contain Music & Truth, but most of us can't get it out."
- autograph for Stefan Czapka, quoted in Our Famous Guest, Mark Twain in Vienna, Carl Dolmetsch

The Weekend

Rachel and I have been incredibly social this past weekend (at least by our humble standards). On Thursday, as I said last time, Justin and Kyle were around. This past Friday we went with Russell to see Avatar in 3D at an incredibly swanky (and expensive!) theater in St. Louis Park. This theater was so swanky that they not only had assigned seating inside the theater but also had an option to upgrade to a VIP ticket which would let you have access to a cash bar while the movie is going on. Crazy, no?

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Anyway, quick movie review:

• very pretty; the visuals were gorgeous, the 3D added to the effect and wasn't annoying, and everything either had a sense of gritty sci-fi or wonderful alienness
• ok plot; stolen from Pocahontas, Fern Gully and half a dozen other films/stories over the years. Still a good story, but definitely derivative.
• overall- worth your money, especially 3D version.

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Then on Saturday we had the gang over to watch Labyrinth in celebration of David Bowie's birthday on Friday. I had never seen the film before, so I had no idea what to expect. After the movie, I still have no idea what to expect. It was that trippy. Entertaining, in the cult classic and awesomeness of Jim Henson kind of way, but very, very trippy.


Finally, on Sunday Rachel and I got to play hero twice. First was an unprecedented going into work on Sunday to help out one of my students with her college applications. Rachel was great with her, and between the two of us we managed to get three of her applications finished before her due date on Monday. Later that evening our housemate Zoe created a big, deep slice into her finger when trying to open a can. After some doctoral consultation she and I headed out to the hospital to get it all stitched up. My job there seemed solely to keep her knowledgeable of the fact that she was not going to die or be horribly scarred from this minor wound. As I said to her "Dumb things happen to smart people all the time..." and went on to relate several instances in which that exact thing has happened to me and people that I know.

Well, that's all the news from Minneapolis. Next time there will be some pics from over Winter break that I've been wanting to get out there for a while. Until next time...

"We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself there would be no heroes."
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

The Week of E-Waste

This past week was an incredibly hectic one. I have been running around at work almost every day trying to put out various firestorms ranging from broken printers to kids screaming for cookies and the right to use my laptop. The most aggravating of these problems had to do with my electronic waste project.

For those of you who follow regularly, you will remember that I have been working on getting materials translated and printed for the Cinqo de Mayo festival that was held on Saturday, May 2nd. I sent my files off to the printer on Tuesday and believed my work to be done. Unfortunately I got a call as I was driving to work from the printer, saying that the text of my files was very bitmappy and wouldn't look very good as printed. It turns out that they needed a publishing program file to make sure that there weren't any unnecessary artifacts with the picture.

Herein lay the first problem: they suggested using InDesign or Quark to remake the flyers. Unfortunately this was not possible, as neither I nor CommonBond have access to those programs. I reached a workaround by promising that I would get them a .pdf file from Microsoft Publisher, which seemed to be the most agreeable solution.

I rushed to work, thanking the Lord that I don't have open lab or classes on Thursday mornings and started working on the project. I ran into problem #2 almost immediately: My office computer did not have Publisher installed on it. Not to worry, I said to myself, I'll just use one of the lab computers! The Publisher system worked on those computers and I quickly whipped up a document and went to save. Here we run into problem #3: I couldn't save in a .pdf file, only a .ps. Problem #4 consisted of none of the computers having the necessary programs to convert a .ps into a .pdf. I tried the computers upstairs, my supervisor's computer- none would work.

The solution was found through a lucky combination of my love of open source software and 40k blogs. It turns out that a week ago or so one of the blogs that I read over at FTW had an article on creating magazines and had posted a link to Scribus, an open source version of InDesign. I had downloaded it and summarily forgotten about it until I was desperately looking for help online. I quickly booted up the program, made a relatively ugly version of the document thanks to my unfamiliarity with Scribus and its inherent user hostility and sent a .pdf copy off to the publishers.

The hectic morning developed into a hectic afternoon (planning a dessert party for volunteers, open lab's many wonders) and was followed by a hectic corps day in which I drilled through concrete for 7.5 hours and got to drive through rush hour traffic on I-94 with a screaming baby in my car.

Saturday was a bit better- the day was crap (none of my students showed up, kids were demanding a lot of attention), but the evening was at Cinqo de Mayo. All of my materials were there, there was a latin beat being played across the street, and we managed to capture a lot of attention and hand out a lot of flyers thanks to our dancing cell phone costume. Oh, and we won "Greenest Booth at Cinqo De Mayo" as well!

And on Sunday I rested, and it was Good.

Pics of this weeks adventures can be found here. C'mon, you know you at least want to see the dancing cell phone...

*edit* An addendum to the talk of Friday's corps day: I just got this e-mail from one of my supervisors.

"Hi Max, Carolyn wanted to make sure you got a special thanks for “drilling into concrete all day long” on Friday. Happy Monday!"

Until next time...

"I do not like work even when someone else does it."
- "The Lost Napoleon" by Mark Twain

An Adventure, an Awesome, and an Airplane

Adventure: Downtown

So, after hearing that Russell was deathly ill with fever we decided to cancel Warhammer 40K round 2: metal mayhem. Now without a fixed point to guide my wanderings that evening, I chanced upon a call from Ms. Teagle. She wanted to know if I wanted to go see a play about one of her friend's travels around the world, so I said sure. I got her in the car and we headed out... to downtown Minneapolis.

Now, many of you may here the term "downtown Minneapolis" and not shudder in horror; in fact, you may laugh at those of us who do. Granted there is not as much traffic as in other, larger cities, but the layout is almost certainly more confusing. Streets are randomly decided to be one way, and many more are blocked off by the scattered bits of construction that pockmark downtown like chicken pox. The most dangerous and frustrating part of all of this, however, is the light rail. Normally a beautiful, well thought out thing in most cities of renown, the Minneapolis light rail is very dangerous in downtown because it looks like a normal street and is very easy to drive on to.

My personal experience with this happened that night. We wanted to make a right turn to try to find parking near the bar where the show was and accidentally turned onto the tracks, not knowing that the real street was actually in the third most left lane of the "street." Panicked, I pulled onto the sidewalk and assessed the situation with Teagle. Fortunately no trains were coming, but there was still the matter of getting from the sidewalk on the right side of the "street" to the actual street all the way to the left. The city planners seemed to have realized that their planning made no sense and thus made the medians seperating the two lanes of train and the lane of actual traffic by very low medians that can be driven over with care.

We managed to make it over the medians before oncoming trains flattened us and continued to try to find our way to a parking place. Unfortunately all right turns were denied to us by the light rail tracks, and this continued all the way until the tracks (and our road!) ended. 7 minutes of circling back around eventually got us back to our starting point, but still... what the hell, Minneapolis?

As a good note, the show was really good. It got me thinking about exactly what my "culture" is, and how typical it is of American, or any other culture on the planet. It also got me thinking about my heritage and how much that defines me. For myself, it does quite a bit, but I still think of my self as an American with German ancestry, not a German-American. There were some other good tidbits, like realizing just how different some cultures can be and exactly what some cultures find refreshing, fun, outrageous, etc.

Awesome: Danny Boyle

So, Danny Boyle is awesome. It takes a lot of people a while to realize this mostly because his movies are all so different from one another. In his directorial resume are such disparate movies as Trainspotting (need to see), 28 Days Later (probably the best zombie movie around despite the zombies not being the stars of the show)... and Slumdog Millionaire.

The last is his latest work that just debuted this past Friday. It tells the story of a boy and those closest to him, from his origins in the slums of Mumbai, throughout India and eventually back home, all in the search for who he is and to find his childhood sweetheart again.

The first really awesome thing about this movie is the fact that it is all told in retrospect as the main character is being investigated for cheating on India's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The second is that, while the movie can be lighthearted at times, it is also ruthless to its characters and subjects them to all sorts of real trauma, both physical and emotional, so it's a love story with something at stake. And the music is awesome, and every single person who saw the movie with us (i.e. the entire theater) enjoyed it, as well as 50 other screenings according to the pollster guy at the exit, which is kind of ridiculous. SO: go see it. NOW.

Airplane

I went home to New York on Friday. Yay! On the way I got to have a philly cheesesteak in Philly. Yay! I then got to sit in the woods for 4.5 hours waiting for invisible deer. Yay! Then I played Heroes 5 and Fallout 3. Yay!

Yay!

Until next time...

"We can't define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers… one saying to the other: 'you don't know what you are talking about!'. The second one says: 'what do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?'"
-Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics

A Party, an Anniversary, and the 15th best invention of the year

So, on Friday our house decided to hold a party. There was no reason for this party other than we wanted awesome, so awesome we would have. This was a great idea for a couple of reasons. First, awesomeness is, by definition, awesome. Second, our house was a mess. In my family our rule is we clean the house up for parties but rarely at any other time, and it seems my house follows the same rule. So at least for a few hours before the party our house sparkled. Third, I had no other plans for the night, and drinking beer/ F_ _ _ Me punch with friends I haven't seen in a while sounded like a good idea.

We had plenty of beer and punch, and Josh went all out making even more stuff, like a cauldron of homemade chai, pigs in a blanket, beer-cheese dip and toasted french bread. Our guests also brought all sorts of awesomeness, like beer, brownies, swedish meatballs, and more booze. I got to see a lot of people that I see a lot, some that I haven't seen in ages, and even got to meet some new people. Unfortunately I had to go to bed at some point (stupid working on Saturdays...), but it was definitely a lot of fun while it lasted.

At work the next day my students didn't show up for the first class and were late for the second. Because of this we barely had time to get through the day's lesson before I had to shut down early because the other person at the site wanted to go home early. (CommonBond has a policy of having at least 2 people at the advantage center while it is open). So, I did some paperwork and headed home early.

When I got home I began unlocking the door only to have it opened for me by Rachel, who was staring at me with shock and some form of wrath.
"What are you doing home already?"
"I got off early from work."
"Oh, okay." *slams door in my face*
We have a long giggling conversation about my coming home early and ruining something; I don't remember a lot of it except for Rachel calling me "punk" a dozen times or so. We were celebrating our three year anniversary that day (woohoo!), so I can only assume it had something to do with that.

Anyway we calmed down and headed out to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. We arrived just in time to take a tour of the India: Private Places and Public Spaces gallery before the museum closed. It was a pretty cool exhibit, especially the video bits, and Rachel swooned over pretty much everything in the room. One thing that I found particularly interesting/disturbing was a video projected on a screen before which 72 mirrors were placed on the floor. For the most part the video showed the pictures of waves crashing against the shore, but would occasionally show pictures of horrific circumstances like the Holocaust, Indian train disasters, etc., with weird, disjointed sound bites from each as the water slowly turned red. Pretty weird, as I said.

After this we tried to head to our restaurant but I got the bus wrong and we ended up about 2 blocks from a Blockbuster. We figured renting a movie was cheaper than going to see one, so we said what the heck, rented Godfather Part II and headed to dinner, which was at a place called Moto-I.

Moto-I is the only sake brewhouse outside of Japan and it is located at Lyndale and Lake in Minneapolis. The sake is delicious and the food is rather expensive for the portions that are delivered, but we figured that our anniversary deserved a splurge. We tried three different kinds of sake and had bulgogi beaf and lettuce wraps, baby octopus and seaweed, some curry chicken dumplings, a tofu bun, and icecreams served with sweet potato candy. Delicious.

We then headed home to watch our movie... which was kind of weird. I popped the disk in and the first thing I saw was a car going through the snow. I was kind of confused as to why there wasn't a title screen, but I figured that would come later and promptly forgot about it. The plot seemed kind of confusing, like they were assuming that we had a lot of inside knowledge, but once again I assumed that there would be a flashback sequence or something that would explain everything. And so the movie kept on going, and got even darker than before... and then it was suddenly over. I spoke up and said "Wow, that was really short," at which point Rachel just started laughing and popped out the disk. Apparently we had only rented disk 2 of the Godfather, Part II by accident and had only watched the second half of the movie, and neither of us had realized it.

Any way, that brings us to today and me making pancakes for breakfast using an old family recipe. It also brings us to my trolling online and finding the 15th best invention of the year according to Time magazine.

Can you guess what it is?














Yup, it's Dr. Horrible., which beat out bionic contacts, shadowless skyscrapers, and the video game Spore, which only got the 20th place. The latter kind of pisses me off because... Spore? It's not even a very good game! Ach... oh well.

Until next time...

"What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light. Anniversaries are very well up to a certain point, while one's babies are in the process of growing up: they are joy-flags that make gay the road and prove progress; and one looks down the fluttering rank with pride. Then presently one notices that the flagstaffs are in process of a mysterious change of some sort--change of shape. Yes, they are turning into milestones. They are marking something lost now, not gained. From that time on it were best to suppress taking notice of anniversaries."
- Mark Twain's Notebook, 1896

Ron Paul!

So, on Sunday night Rachel and I visited Teagle and Ben and played Killer Bunnies with them. Basically it's a card game where you try to kill the opposing people's bunnies and keep yours alive while gaining carrots (including hopefully the magical game winning carrot) and using all sorts of ridiculous weaponry to win (like mini black holes, ebola, and anthropomorphic flamethrowers).

On Monday we headed out to Lake Cedar to swim and then went to Sebastian Joe's Ice Cream Parlor for dessert. And man oh man, can they make ice cream. I ordered two scoops of Chocolate Coyote, which is chocolate ice cream mixed with cinnamon and cayenne pepper. Soooo freaking delicious. That night we finally saw the elusive Karen and played Heroscape with the crew at Russell's. It was a lot of fun that saw Rachel and I destroying each other with robo rats, zombies, orcs riding T-Rexes and the Deathwalker 8000 eliminating an entire mindless horde in one turn.

That night I had lots of trouble getting to sleep, so I spent most of today in a kind of a daze. Because of this I ended up sleeping through part of the Ron Paul convention, which I had gotten free tickets for at the Liberty Parade. After a quick dinner I hopped a bus for downtown and got there in time to hear Ron's speech. It was pretty good- I agree with a lot of his sentiments, particularly in regards to limiting the power of the executive branch, the futility of the war on drugs, the overprescription of prescription drugs and the need for peace rather than war, but I'm a little fuzzy on how exactly he intends to do these things... as well as some of his other suggestions. I'm going to look into it before I pass judgment, but some of the things he mentioned seemed a little far fetched or not particularly well thought through. Anyway, here are some pics from the convention:



edit: Oh wait, I forgot a hilarious anecdote that involves Dr. Paul's introducer, Barry Goldwater Jr. I'm not sure what exactly he said this in reference to, but here goes. "So, there's this backwoods farmer who is a little eccentric and keeps really good care of his pond and goes out every day with a pail to take care of it. So, one day he goes into his barn, grabs his pail, and heads out to the pond, only to find three women swimming in it. The women shriek and swim to the opposite end of the pond and say 'We're not coming out while you're standing there!' So, the farmer shakes his head and says 'Now, I didn't come out to this pond to see y'all swimming naked, and I certainly didn't come out to this pond to see y'all getting out of it naked.' He raises his pail and says 'What I did come out to this pond to do was feed my alligators.'"

Yeah, kinda random, eh?

Until next time...

As early as 1865 or '66 I had had this curious experience: that whereas up to that time I had considered myself a Republican, I was converted to a no-party independence by the wisdom of a rabid Republican. This was a man who was afterward a United States Senator, and upon whose character rests no blemish that I know of, except that he was the father of the William R. Hearst of to-day, and therefore grandfather of Yellow Journalism - that calamity of calamities.
- Autobiographical dictation by Mark Twain, January 24, 1906

Welcome to Minneapolis

Hello all, I am writing this post from my fabulous new room in Minneapolis, MN! (address: 3532 Fremont Ave S). It took Rachel and I a while to get the room in order, but we've pretty much got it set now and it looks awesome.

On Sunday I got in to Minneapolis at about 2 in the afternoon and began unloading all of the stuff from my car. When I was about a third of the way done I got a call from Rachel, who had headed off to a restaurant with her parents just before I got there. Apparently when they exited the restaurant they found that their car had been towed away, as they had parked in a no parking section of the street. So, I hurriedly threw the contents of my car on the ground and picked up the Carrolls and took them to the impound lot of Minneapolis. Many jokes about their newfound criminality made up the trip and wait, and soon I was headed back to the co-op with Rachel in tow.

Later that night we met up with Teagle, Ben, Pechous and Russell at the Nomad World's Pub for trivia night/ 2 for 1 drinks night. While my team decidedly sucked at the former (go Vagabonds of Destiny!), the 2 for 1 deal on beer was amazing, as they had a pretty good selection of beers on tap. We decided to crash on Pechous' and Adam's couch for the night as it was late, I was drunk, our bed hadn't arrived yet, and the public transportation system here kinda sucks. Buses are fine and all, and getting to ride for 2 and a half hours on 2 bucks is not a bad deal, but trying to figure out which bus you want to take, which corner of the street the correct bus will come to, and how long the ride will take is a very difficult process. I guess there is some kind of public transit/ease of driving quotient at work here, as driving is not bad at all.

The next day we took the bus home, only getting out incorrectly once, and cleaned up our room to fit the bed in. It's actually a really cool bed, as the box spring on the bottom is split in half for easier carrying. The guy who dropped it off kept expounding on how great a deal we got, and if we wanted to sell it we should charge a lot due to its rarity and functionality. I also built two stacking chests of drawers to hold my clothes, which were a bit difficult to work at first but later got much easier.

That night we went over to Pechous' again (via public transit, got really lost, called Pechous, and got on the right track... stupid metro website...) for games and Pizza Luce. The latter is an amazing local chain with pizzas like barbecue chicken and baked potato. The game we played was called Arkham Horror, where you play as investigators trying to stop Cthulhu's monsters from invading the world and ending humanity. One of the really cool features about the game is that all of the players are on the same side; you either defend humanity, or monsters kill you all. Well, unless you get the mission Join The Winning Team, where you join the monsters by sacrificing your allies... It's pretty fun, but is a bit complicated and has way, way too many pieces and bits of information to keep track of. In our game we just managed to seal enough portals to stop the Big Bad Ugly from coming through; probably in another turn he would have made it and really given us a beating.

Today so far we bought groceries and did some reading. I finished Joss Whedon's X-Men series (killing characters for fun and profit! yay!) and started rereading Watchmen when Rachel isn't reading it.

...and pictures of the room!

The entrance to our room, with the rules
Our bed, with Rachel reading Watchmen
Showing off the corner where all of our shelves are; the bookshelf was, of course, the first thing set up in our room.
And finally, the view from inside of the room. Yay!

Until next time...

"...it is less trouble and more satisfaction to bury two families than to select and equip a home for one."
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

Down By the Sea...

Hey all, sorry about the delay- got a little carried away with the housework and geekery yesterday to find time to post. But now I'm here, so here we go!

A Midsummer Beach Bum

As I stated last time, we decided to forgo our third New Hampshire vacation for a trip down to the shore in Berlin, Maryland, where the Ryans, friends of my parents, live. The trip down was pretty uneventful- nice weather, including a brilliant rainbow, characterized the voyage. We got down late at night and stayed up a bit drinking and chatting with the Ryans before heading to sleep.

The next day we got up early and went over to the Peach Festival at the Ryans' church in Ocean City. The Festival does indeed have peaches, but it also has plenty of other food and a sizable flea market where the proceeds go towards the church and their charity. I got a whopping huge burger, a big bowl of peaches and ice cream, and purchased a cheap zen water fountain thing for my desk and the most badass coffee thermos that I have ever seen. Seriously, the thing is at least a foot and a half tall and feels like its made out of steel rather than that namby-pamby nalgene stuff. I'm pretty sure that it would make a pretty effective weapon or hammer in a pinch, too, because it definitely has some heft to it. After I had bought it I found out that it was actually Mr. Ryan's old thermos, and that he had earlier joked about finding a buyer for it with my parents. Well, shows them...

We then headed out to Assateague Island. The island is special not only because of its spectacular beaches, but because of its interesting assortment of wildlife. There are your herons and other birds of course, but also small deer... and wild horses. They got there thanks to a Spanish galleon that had sunk off the coast a few centuries back. A few of the horses on board managed to escape and have now adapted to the salty vegetation on the island, becoming smaller and more potbellied in the process. We didn't see any of the horses until we drove back from the beach, but in the past we have swum almost next to them on hot days.

Saturday was a beautiful day for spending at the beach. The temperature of the land was 75 degrees and the water was 69, so it never got too hot or cold in either environ. The sky was almost perfectly cloudless, and the water was incredibly clear. I spent the afternoon floating in the surf or sitting on a lawn chair drinking a beer and reading more of The Chronicles of the Black Company (a really good book- I'll do a review of it when I finish it).

We then headed home to eat steamed and seasoned blue crabs, which are just about the most delicious yet annoying things in all of creation. I say just about because the Ryans had another couple over to cook, and the husband was amazing. He created what I now want to characterize as "the steaks of Heaven." Seriously, these were the most delicious things I probably have ever tasted; even the fat was too good to pass up. This succulent steak was served with sauteed onions and followed up by desert kabobs and coffee liquor.

Seeing as we were already stuffed, I objected at first to my sister Liesel and her boyfriend Tim's idea to go down to the Boardwalk, but was wrangled into it to save the Ryan's daughter and my pseudo cousin Erin from having to be alone with the two. As I predicted, we ate even more at the Boardwalk, because 6 or 7 crabs, a steak, onions, and kabobs were clearly not enough. There we got enough fries to fill a bucket larger than my head, deep fried oreos (Tim's idea), and Polish ice (served by actual Poles!)

The Delaware Adventure

The next morning we got up and went to church with the Ryans. The pastor there was a hoot, and his sermon, about the different kinds of "storms" that we face in our lives, was pretty good, if a bit long on the personal examples (though the one about losing the buffalo steaks did make me cry a bit). What we didn't realize at the time, however, was that it was quite prophetic.

A little bit after we took off from the Ryans my mom noticed that our battery gauge was dropping down. We unplugged everything, turned off the AC, but it kept on dropping. We managed to eke out enough power to get the car into the automotive department of a Walmart, where we got the battery changed after a 40 minute wait. (We were actually pretty lucky- they had originally said that it was going to be 4 hours before they would even look at it) We started on the road again, but we noticed that the gauge was continuing to drop. This necessitated our stopping in Smyrna, Delaware, where we went to a local Autozone to get a new alternator and wait for a mechanic. This meant a lot of waiting around, as the mechanic originally went to the wrong Autozone before coming to pick us up. Still, the wait wasn't bad- I got to get an exceedingly delicious apple from an Acme, got to read some more, and Bug and Tim got Chinese food. Our mechanic was really friendly and really quick, and we headed off yet again. We got a little lost on some of Delaware's smaller highways while trying to avoid the interstate, but we made out pretty well...

That is, until God decided to pour His Wrath upon the world.

Our first glimpse of The Wrath was the sky turning a sickly black color in front of us, with lightning streaking out all over the place. Then the rain started, pouring down so hard that even when we were at a complete standstill we could barely see the road in front of us. We later heard hail hit our car as the rain continued to pour and the lightning and thunder continued to duel in the skies above. Fortunately I am still under Thor's protection (see Road Trippin' in the Northeast: New Hampshire Strikes Back! for the origin story, blog fans! -ed), so we made it through the storm ok, but it was still a pretty tense 20 minutes.

The rest of the ride was nice and quiet, and we reached home just after my brother did from his excursion at the beach. (he also had car trouble- seems his oil was actually smoking...) I'll have another update sometime today probably about the last two days before I head off again, this time to Ye Olde Boston Towne to meet up with Nik and The Girl (yay!). So, until next time...

The corpses of doomed men fall/

the gods' dwellings are reddened with crimson blood/

sunshine becomes black the next summer/

all weather is vicious; do you understand yet, or what more?

- a reference to Ragnarok in the Voluspa

Road Trippin' In the Northeast: New Hampshire Strikes Back!

New Hampshire Strikes Back!

Click on the pic above to see all of the NH picks!

So, just 3 hours after returning home from The Philadelphia Adventure our party lost Timmy Tim Tim etc. and gained my mom and the Herzl-Betz Auxiliaries, Greg and Danielle, for the journey North. The trip was pleasant- we had pretty good weather, and the only stops we made were for coffee and beer. The latter was due to an urgent request from Siegi and my dad, who had already driven up to NH on their motorcycles and were tired from cleaning. Oh, and there was something about a radioactive bat as well, but I've forgotten that bit...

We got to NH very late, around 2:30 in the morning, and promptly fell asleep. It was probably due to this that we didn't get started on our first hike the next morning until about noon. By that time the sky had become cloudy and a light drizzle had begun falling sporadically. Siegi and my dad, who had gotten up early, joked that everything had been perfect between 7 and 11 that morning- the buffalo had been out, the sky had been blue, unicorns were spotted on the hills, etc.

Still, events would prove that our delay was quite fortuitous. We decided to climb Mt. Sugarloaf, a relatively easy hike located in the White Mountains that takes less than an hour to ascend and is often covered in wild blueberries. As we followed the trail, we noticed little plastic bags hanging from some of the trees. Inside the bags were envelopes titled "I Love Megan" and sealed in wax with a heart. Sensing ridiculousness, I was naturally very curious as to what was going on.

The terrain was quite slippery and muddy thanks to the rain, but eventually all of us, including the little dog, made it up the mountain, when the sun decided to come out and play again. At the top we found a small tarp with another of the letters hanging outside of it... and inside of it, a white dress. Traversing the bald top of the mountain, we discovered a table set up with champagne glasses, a mound of portable cooking equipment and supplies, and a man putting on a tuxedo. Apparently the man had decided to propose to his girlfriend of nine years after months of deciding how to do it properly. Seeing all of the effort and ingenuity that he had put into the proposal, I don't see how she could say no, especially considering how she was beaming when we encountered her on our descent. One thing was definitely for certain: this man has definitely set the bar for ridiculous proposals. I'm sure I'll find a way to top it when the time comes, but daaaaamn will it be difficult.

The remainder of our day was spent at our house playing games, as it rained the rest of the day except for between 7 and 11 at night. (dun dun DUN!) Munchkin was trotted out for a few short games, but the true game of the night was, as usual, Life. Every year that we have come up to New Hampshire we have played Life almost every night for time immemorial. Some of you may be wondering how we manage to be captured by this game. The answer: getting far, far too much into the details of exactly why everything is happening to you in the game. Some examples from our game on Saturday night: Greg began the game as the first member of his family to pursue higher education and became a very well paid policeman who caught people who ran too fast (spun a 10) and too slow (stock bought on 1), though his ire was directed more at the latter than the former. Unfortunately only a little bit after he had bought a home with his wife he was fired and forced to work as a police themed stripper to make his bills. To reflect this he declared that his wife was staying with her mother until he got back on track and removed her from the car. Later Greg got to switch salaries with another person, which was emblematic of his finally making it in a big budget action movie. His wife came back (he bought her pearls), and life was good... until I stole his salary, symbolizing his brief stardom and new life as a bit star. His loveless marriage resulted in no children (probably due to his wife leaving him during their younger years) and he unprofitably retired to a retirement home, where he spent the rest of his days wishing that he hadn't landed on that "You lose your job" space...

You can ask Rachel about my career in Life, because it's all her fault that I lost. Damn Tibetan orphans stealing all of my money and distracting my other 4 kids from their studies...

ANYWAY, on Saturday we traveled to Mt. Cabot and began our ascent early enough to get the majority of it done between 7 and 11, the magical hours when everything is awesome in NH. Mt. Cabot has a special place in the lore of the Herzl-Betzes, as it was on that mountain that our entire family almost died. When I was only 2 or 3 we were climbing the mountain when large black clouds came rolling in and unleashed great gouts of lightning and rain. I vividly remember running down the mountain as fast as my little legs could carry me as lightning and thunder crashed around us, visualizing a forcefield that would protect us all from the storm.

Therefore it was rather eerie when we found most of the trail to be overgrown and, due to the recent rains, basically a muddy stream bed. We joked that a curse had befallen the mountain the day we ran, but nervous glances at the sky affirmed that it was indeed still sunny out. The ascent was slow, as large swaths of mud and slippery rocks threatened to end us at every step. Greg, the dog and I got to show off Matrix-style wall running as we desperately tried to avoid sinking into the mud. We were partially successful- I still got one shoe pretty much filled with the muck, but still not bad considering.

We eventually made it to the lower outlook after about an hour and a half of hiking and enjoyed the spectacular view. After about a half an hour we glanced at our watches and noticed that it was already 10:30. We worriedly glanced at one another and slowly looked out across the valley. Sure enough, grey clouds could be spotted on the horizon as it was, after all, almost 11. The descent was much quicker than the ascent, and Greg, Siegi and I paused to wait for the girls at a stream crossing. The sun was shining, the water was refreshingly cool, so it was alright. After the girls finally arrived, I looked up through the trees and saw only grey. It was after 11.

Fortunately we managed to make it back to the car before the storm hit. After washing up back at the house, we headed into Littleton to do some shopping. Littleton, NH has two amazingly cool stores: the Village Bookstore, and Chutter's Candy Shop. The latter is famed for having the longest candy counter in the world, as you can see from the picture on the album. It's a pretty sweet place (no pun intended), with all sorts of random candies that you would never find anywhere else. For instance: watermelon flavored coconut bars; candy chews called Mint Juleps; and more fudge than you can shake a stick at, with flavors including Reese's.

The rest of the night was spent packing, as well as the next morning. Our drive home had a few interesting side quests, including:
- hurriedly dumping our trash in a dumpster behind a supermarket before the employees came back out
- Greg answering every single conceivable question about his choice to become a priest and what he can and can't do (the latter consists of two things: sex, and acting out against the Church)
- finding an incredibly hippie diner called the Moon Dog Cafe that served amazing curried chicken salad wraps and other food. Hell, they even made a ham and swiss sandwich amazing by piling on unbelievable amounts of those two ingredients. And they let the dog in!
- shredding my tongue, almost dislocating my jaw, and getting at least 3 times my daily sugar intake maximum, all from the same jumbo jawbreaker
- and ordering drive thru at the slowest Taco Bell in existence.

All in all, the trip was a lot of fun despite the rain. I also got to talk a lot with Greg about my superhero comic idea, and heard a lot about his possible plan of writing a story about aliens that are governed by Catholic morality and have found increasing amounts of faith as their technology level increased. Unfortunately I may have to borrow them for my comic and kill them... *sigh* Leave it to a guy called Dr. Wrath to destroy our first contact species to fulfill his twisted sense of protecting the Earth...

That's it for now; until next time...

"Travel has no longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except heaven & hell & I have only a vague curiosity about one of those."
- Mark Twain's Letter to W. D. Howells, 5/20/1891

Road Trippin' In the Northeast: The Philadelphia Adventure

So, I've been traveling all over the Northeast this past week and just got back from rainy New Hampshire. Since I've been away for a while, I think I'll split my trip log into two parts, beginning with my trip to the City of Brotherly Love.

The trip was conceived as a birthday present from my sister to her boyfriend, hereafter known as Timmy Tim Tim Tim Tim Timmy, as I have taken to calling him behind his back. Their plan was to head down to our apartment just outside of Philly and go to an OAR concert on Wednesday night. Seeing as they are barely 18, my parents decided to send me along as a chaperone of sorts. Timmy Tim Tim... etc. is a good enough kid- has a good sense of humor, knows his place, generally likable- but still, gotta keep on eye on him.

The trip began well enough- I decided to let my sister get some highway practice in on the first leg of the journey, which was the high adrenaline affair that I expected it to be. After that I took over, with Hallisson guiding us past traffic jams to Philly. It was a pleasant trip, filled with nice conversation, a lot of OAR music and occasional rants on my part against the other drivers. We eventually made it to our apartment, which is located in the borough of Narberth, which is located just outside of Philly. It's a very quaint, almost Pleasantville-esque neighborhood, with a downtown consisting of lazy one way streets and plenty of mom and pop shops scattered among the pricy and trendy independent merchants. The reason I have an apartment down there is because my Oma and Opa used to run several apartment buildings there and still own that building. My Oma keeps the first floor tenant free so that we always have a place to visit when we want to go down to Philly.

The first night was fine- we went to a good Japanese restaurant within walking distance of our homebase and had amazingly delicious eel dishes there. (side note: Snow peas make delicious appetizers in lieu of bread) We then went to the local movie theater and bought fairly pricy tickets for Hancock, as Liesel and Timmy Tim etc. hadn't seen it yet. While watching it I came to the realization that my brother Siegi is either Hancock or Will Smith, because a lot of his vocal patterns, facial expressions and body language were exactly the same as my brother's... plus I could totally see him as an alcoholic superhero who's just trying to do good. (Hi Siegi!). We then retired to the house, watched some I Survived a Japanese Game Show on our exceedingly old black and white TV (vacuum tubes people, vacuum tubes in the tube!) and went to bed.

The next day the adventure began. Now, those of you who know me well will question my use of the word "adventure". For me, adventures are generally bad things- I either get lost, hurt, or something bad happens to me or others around me. Well, here it's pretty accurate. We began by heading over to IHOP for breakfast (8 dollars); not bad, just way, way too much. We then headed over to U Penn to check out the campus (parking: 13 dollars), but no one really had any information for me as apparently all of it is now online for the graduate program. Though, in their favor their bookstore looked like a B&N and there were nice tennis courts right next to the physics dept... and its 15 minutes from my apartment by train.

We piled into the Alpacamobile and headed to the Philadelphia Zoo. Unfortunately, Hallison decided to prove her evil nature by taking us on the Schuylkill Expy (pronounced School-Kill). That was pretty harrowing, as the directions came fast and furious and ended up with me half a city in the wrong direction before I could finally get my bearings. Even when we got to the Zoo it took us 15 minutes and 2 U-turns to figure out where to park, as the nice lots were for members only. It turns out that non-members get to pay 12 dollars to park in an incredibly sketchy alleyway that is bordered by razor wire on one side and a chain link fence leading to the railroad tracks on the other. We also had to park half a mile from the entrance, which did not put me in a better mood. We paid admission (20 dollars) and got to go in. The Zoo was pretty cool; lots of very interesting animals in awesome exhibits (golden tamarins walking across the path in front of me!), awesome factoids (pumas can jump 30 feet across and 16 feet up!), and peacocks roaming freely throughout the zoo. However, it was exceedingly hot that day, and we had forgotten to pack water (3 bucks a pop). Fortunately the drive home was a bit easier this time, and we retired home to eat delicious cheesesteaks from the winner of the 2006 best cheesesteak place in philadelphia (located in Narberth across from the movie theater!).

We then headed to the concert but not terribly early, as our tickets had defined seats on them. I programmed Hallison to take us there without using the highway, which not only saved us a lot of aggravation but also took us on one of the most unique paths I've ever driven on. In downtown Philly the most dominating feature is easily the city hall, and the streets don't let you forget it. Instead of moving in the normal grid pattern, the streets all go around the city hall in a big circle, forcing you to recognize that it exists and is older and more powerful than you. This was kind of annoying from a driving stand point, but the effect was really cool. Finding the concert was a bit of work, but eventually we found parking in a formerly empty lot (10 bucks). There were plenty of tailgaters there, which should have prepared us for the concert...

As soon as the concert began, I really, really wanted some whiskey. The concert had beer selling for 7 dollars a bottle, yet people still bought it in large quantities. I know this because it became a popular past time during the concert (which was standing room only, I might add) to throw the bottles into a different part of the crowd. Two of these bottles hit me square on the head (thank God they were plastic), and at least one hit Liesel. Also, drunken crowd surfers nearly knocked me to my knees with a blow to the back of my head as they crashed to the ground in my direction, which did not put me in a better mood. And the cover band was really annoying- they kept on trying to get crowd participation, but a) nobody knew the words to their songs, and b) they weren't very good. OAR, on the other hand, sounded much better than on the cd, and to their credit they did what they could to calm the crowd down and just get everyone to enjoy the concert. Still, in the end I think I'll just stick to music at home, as I don't think they're worth the aggravation.

We got home uneventfully, I got my whiskey on the rocks, and it was sleep time again. In the morning we headed home, but the adventure was not finished with us. Getting out of Philly we ran into a huge, 7 mile long traffic jam that not only pissed me off royally but also got me distracted enough that I accidentally went through the EZ Pass lane instead of the ticket lane at the toll booth. This resulted 2 1/2 hours later (at least 1 1/2 of which was traffic) in $22.75 in toll instead of our usual $3.25. After that, however, things finally became smooth sailing- Hallison took us on a very meandering root to save us more traffic woes and led us to a little gas station on route 6 that had this:
Yeah, read it and weep!

The lack of money is the root of all evil.
- More Maxims of Mark [Twain], Johnson, 1927