Vistablind

The Sun is a mass of incandescent gas

2007-05-09T09:36:00.000-04:00

As some one who grew up knowing every word to her father's Kingston Trio album and who's first cassette tape she ever bought with her own money was They Might Be Giant's "Flood". I simply had to link to this compilation of Folky Children's Science Songs. One of which is done by TMBG, "Why does the Sun Shine?". via Cosmic Variance.

Curse words and power tools

2007-05-02T09:14:00.000-04:00

Every week or so Cog Daily surveys their readers on one topic or another and then analyses the results. A couple weeks ago they did a study that I actually participated in. It was their most popular survey to date. They took about 10 curse words and asked people to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being neutral and 10 being extremely offensive. So far they've written two results posts with the possibility of more to come:
(Warning: they use the bad words in the results analyses. So don't link through if you don't want to read them.)
Results post 1
Results post 2
Some of the more interesting results are the inter generational reactions to certain words as well as the gender specific reactions to gender specific bad words.

The other neat thing on Cog daily was this post with a link to this youtube video which has guys in a workshop playing some song from Carmen on table saws, hand saws and power drills. What sets this video apart from other videos of guys in a workshop playing some classic song on table saws, hand saws and power drills, is that at one point they set up several different types of wood with different densities (therefore different pitches when cut) in a row and play a part of the melody that way. I, like the guy from Cog Daily, thought it was pretty neat.

Too much sun and no cable

2007-05-01T09:29:00.000-04:00

Another full and pretty weekend. I took off Friday, our two year, and Brian and I did a few errands, I made a pie and we played some Wii. We went to a very nice sushi restaurant in Vienna which re-energized our discussion of how we really need a nice little sake set, there's nothing like hot sake, to take the chill off a nice night out.

Saturday, we got up early and went to the National Arboretum with Ev, the other Julie and the Zimmermans. I was very impressed. They have the largest Bonsai Garden I've ever seen, if I ever get my pictures off of my camera I'll put some up. The azaleas were also in full bloom and the Arboretum had a whole big hill covered in them. Unfortunately for us, this giant pink and white hill took some finding and Eric had captured the navigator seat in the car, terrible idea.

The Arboretum has a phone number set up to hear pre-recorded lectures on what you are looking at in whichever garden you're in. Upon leaving the Herb Garden, Brian and I overheard one woman after she saw the sign, say "Oh, maybe if we go to the Visitor's Center we can get one of these cell phone thingys and listen to the tour" I kid you not.

Brian asked Zimm if Martha, who is an excellent potter, potterer, pottist?, would like to make us a sake set. Later that evening I was on the phone with her giving a very vague description of what sort of sake set we wanted. It's very exciting to think that we'll have our own handmade set!

Sunday, I dragged my parents out for a long hard day of scrubbing the sail boat. We were dismayed to see the boat covered in a dark film and a large red puddle in the galley were the rain water had overflowed the bilge during the winter. But much to our surprise and relief, we found that our new slip neighbors, Sue and Ron, not only own a power washer but were more than willing to let us borrow it for most of the day. Dad and I took turns experiencing the joy of actually cleaning with every wave of the nozzle. The boat is cleaner that it's been in 27 years! I'd be very surprised if my parents didn't own their own power washer within the month. My mom was probably imagining all the things that needed power washing around the house the entire ride home.

The boat of course is where I got horribly burned. I brought sunscreen with me in my purse but hadn't put any on by the time the power washer came out, and then I completely forgot. Now, I'm attempting to stave off a bad peeling experience with aloe lotion. Does it actually help?

After the boat was dinner at Brian's with his and my parents and gardening until 10pm. That's right, we gardened until 10pm. It was dark.

We also managed to cut the cable line into the house, oops! But really who buries a cable line only about 2 inches deep in the middle of a back yard? They told Brian last night that they'd come out today for an investigative look but probably won't be able to fix it for 2 weeks. Luckily, we can steal wifi from a neighbor but I'm afraid it's only movies at Brian's until it's fixed.

Clopping along

2007-04-25T10:10:00.000-04:00

For those of you who some how missed this record breaking event amid all of the much sadder news reported these days, the Largest Coconut Orchestra was put together on monday to play along with the song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life". To hear briefly what it sounds like when over 4,000 people smack coconuts together at once, listen to the NPR coverage here.

Soccer study

2007-04-24T11:33:00.000-04:00

Yet another link from Cognitive Daily. If a goal keeper in soccer stands just slightly to one side of the goal there is a good chance that the kicker will aim towards the other corner. Makes sense right? Unfortunately, the keepers tend to not know which side they're on so it doesn't help them decide which way to dive when the ball is shot. What neither cog daily nor the person they're linking to for this study realize is that all the keepers teammates are often in a position to see which side the keeper is standing on just like the kicker. It shouldn't be hard to develop some sort of signal where the coach or teammates let the keeper know which side the kicker is likely to go to, thereby giving the keeper an advantage. Though perhaps the distances involved are so small and the teammates are significantly far enough away so that they too are unable to tell which side the keeper is on. Perhaps they need a tv screen on the bench to watch the zoomed live footage.

What a gorgeous weekend!

2007-04-23T12:17:00.000-04:00

Saturday was spent gardening in Brian’s back yard, which I’m afraid my cracked and blistered hands will never forgive me for. But it was indescribably nice to be outside and active after such a long winter.

Saturday night we went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Dinner at Filomena’s, very good and expensive food. I had the calamari, pork chops and mushroom risotto and triple chocolate mousse pie. Happily, Brian schlepped along the doggy bag to the various bars afterwards and I’m able to revisit the amazing pork chops and risotto for lunch today. I’m usually not a huge pork chop eater but the veal reduction, olive, and sweet pepper sauce was just too good to pass up.

Sunday morning was spent having brunch with the parents and Gianluca (whose surprise visit got my parents out of a day of boat cleaning). Afterwards, we relaxed and then tackled the peach tree which is threatening a less than impressive yield this year, sigh, and my bike which was still rusting away from the salt and grime it accrued during the drive from Denver to Virginia. Then, I went back to Brian’s for potato planting and Sea Bass cooking. The mustard sauce came out very good and I recommend it if you like that sort of thing, but by all means DO NOT put wax paper in your 450-degree oven! Whoever wrote this recipe must have some terrible practical joking streak. There was fire and wax paper ash everywhere adding much to the excitement of cooking and possibly a little to the taste of the fish and sauce. So if you’re adventurous (and you have a sink within flaming paper tossing range of your oven) perhaps you would like to try the wax paper.

More evidence for smaller portions

2007-04-19T10:13:00.000-04:00

(From Cognitive Daily) Here's a study that confirms what many have been saying for a while. The best way to diet is to put less food on your plate in the first place (also, exercise - but that's not covered here).

Now, if only I could stop myself from ordering dishes based solely on whether or not they come with french fries.

Arvinomics

2007-04-09T11:10:00.000-04:00

Also, if any of you are Wizards fans then Brian and Ev have a new blog up that you might be interested in. (it looks a little odd with IE especially if you're a mac user, but everyone should use Firefox anyway)

Happy Easter!

2007-04-09T11:03:00.000-04:00

We had a bunch of fun doing Ukrainian Easter Eggs on Saturday. Basically involves lots of egg dye that you can't get out of your finger nails, candles and Hot wax!

here are what professional Ukrainian Eggs are supposed to look like:

I also had a great Easter dinner with Brian and his folks, along with some Wii playing, Church going, Masters watching, and more egg dyeing.

I say 'tomato', you say '蕃茄'

2006-10-26T15:11:00.000-04:00

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it gives me this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach when I envision one of these things in the hands of the stereotypical American tourist. If you don't think these people exist, you're either one of them or you've never been outside the US. I see them getting into crazed shouting matches with the terrified Balinese hotel clerk over some jargon filled request that, in Balinese, translated to "bite the wax tadpole". I know, it's not the same thing, but it is how I envision it.

On the other hand, it sounds amazingly cool, and extremely convenient for all of those who dream of going to far off exotic places where, strangely enough, the locals have the gall not to speak English. Also, when coupled with this recent breakthrough, it brings us two steps closer to making the world of Star Trek a reality. Trekkies all over the world, Celebrate!

In other news, it's good to hear that the Russian Mafia is still alive and thriving. Apparently, selling frozen Mammoth ovaries is quite the lucrative business.

My commute

2006-10-26T10:19:00.000-04:00

Courtesy of denverpost.com traffic

Usually takes me 30 minutes, today took me one hour and 15 minutes. The above picture is of the road I drove on for nearly an hour at 15-25 miles an hour. At least it's supposed to stop around noon and will probably be completely melted and the sky will be beautiful and sunny by the time I head home. Colorado weather, such variety!

Flight of the Conchords - Business Time

2006-10-24T16:37:00.000-04:00

Here's a pick-me-up to counter act that last entry.

Thanks Jess for pointing me towards these guys, they're hilarious!

You people make no sense!

2006-10-24T15:33:00.000-04:00

So I'd like to complain, and where better than on my very own blog?

I was hoping to head to Virginia for the week between Christmas and New Years. I mentioned this desire to my boss today and she said that it was unlikely and that she would have to check with her boss to find out for sure. Her reason was that there would be few people in the office and that meant that I would have to stay. This makes no sense whatsoever. If I communicated directly with customers then yes, I would understand. But my job is strictly support for the sales folks, in house and out in the field, and I doubt that any of them will need me at all that week at least not as much as any other week out of the year, since they are the ones that are taking off in the first place. It's not the end of a fiscal quarter or anything. Other people do not do my job nor do I know how to do anyone else's job, so it's not like I could cover for the people who do get that week off. I really don't understand why other people in the office not being around should affect whether or not I can leave. If anything, it should make more sense for me to take off while others take off as there would be fewer people around for me to support in the first place. Argh!

Side note: It makes me laugh that the word 'Blog' is not in the Blogger spellcheck program.

That's a negative

2006-10-19T14:48:00.000-04:00

Gentlemen, this is why it takes women so long to buy clothes. Negative sizes, good grief! But the big problem is every time we want to buy a new pair of pants we have to bring at least two pairs of every style we're looking at into the changing room with us. I was just as excited as anyone else would be when I could fit into a '2' after the marathon, but I would have no problem converting to a 14 if I could cut down on my changing room time by half. Today in women's fashion, sizes mean absolutely nothing. I find it incredibly frustrating that any man can go into a store and find exactly the size of pants that he wants, buy it, and walk out, while women have to spend an hour trying 2-3 sizes of each of 5 different styles. Please, stop the insanity!

Malarky and bunkum

2006-10-18T11:49:00.000-04:00

These predictions about human species divergence are just plain ridiculous. I mean does anyone actually believe this stuff?

John Hawks passes on this quote by Asimov:

The Relativity of Wrong (Doubleday, 1988): "When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

And writes a rather strong entry about Dr. Oliver Curry's predictions of humanity's future. Though I don't necessarily think that mankind has managed to fully evade those things that make natural selection work, I do think that many of his points are right on. I mean, I enjoyed The Time Machine by H.G. Wells as much as any other sci/fi novel loving nerd, but to think that something like that would actually happen is a bit silly. The Time Machine should be read as a commentary on 19th century culture and society not as a prediction of 31st century reality.

Missing: 1 Season

2006-10-17T12:24:00.000-04:00

It's snowing outside! Ok, so it's not accumulating, but seriously, what happened to the Fall?

Fall is my favorite season and Colorado has managed to completely skip over it this year. I heard all sorts of gushing over the beautiful yellow-gold that the Aspens turn every year in the mountains. But an early snow in September managed to strip them all of their leaves only about a week after they'd turned. So when I was up in the mountains this weekend, there was not a yellow tree in sight.

In case you're curious about Aspens, whole communities of them are apparently technically the same organism, they are all genetically the same and share a common root system. Possibly the largest and oldest organism on earth, Pando, is one such colony of Aspens in Utah.

It's all in the gear

2006-10-16T12:35:00.000-04:00

I bought new skis! Here's a picture of the model, Atomic Metron 8 (doesn't that sound like a character from Transformers?):

Aren't they pretty? Unfortunately, I now have to wait until the middle of November to try them out. But I believe I got a great deal on them and according to the guy that sold them to me, they are very much like the K2 Burnin Luv's I demoed and fell in love with last year. Watch out Mary Jane, here I come!

I Vant to Suck Your Blood

2006-10-13T14:45:00.000-04:00

So some random things:

I went to a friend's wedding last weekend and had a great time, lots of drinking, lots of dancing, an ingenious idea to play in the hotel pool at 1:00 am which was foiled by our growling stomachs, followed by the longest trip to a 7-Eleven ever, the worst pre-wrapped tuna sandwich and subsequent passing out on an incredibly comfortable hotel mattress. A thoroughly enjoyable wedding.

I'm incredibly excited about Wii. And have spent most of my morning watching videos of people trying out the new controllers. I know I know I'm a huge nerd but what else would you expect from someone who was recently told she was the only girl he'd ever seen reading a Star Wars novel by random-software-guy-on-the-plane.

Here is one of the weirder and more disturbing things I've read about recently. Sometimes life is indeed stranger than fiction.

I seem to constantly be in training at work, in the last month I've had roughly 2.5 weeks of training. It's nice to know this stuff I guess but it would have been nicer had I gotten it 6 months earlier.

Also, yet another blood donation story. I went to donate blood at the same place, this time they had a lovely old Australian movie playing with Tom Selleck and that chick from Just Shoot Me aka Kit Deluca, called "Quigley Down Under". As I sat waiting to get my finger pricked, I listened to the woman, responsible for the shark frenzy containing movie of the last blood drive, excitedly tell one of the blood drawers that the next movie on the schedule was the original Dracula. I couldn't help myself, I laughed and asked the two if perhaps that particular movie was in poor taste for a blood drive. The woman looked at me like I'd just asked her why anyone in their right mind would want to put ketchup on french fries. Then she laughed and said "Well, we do sometimes call the folks that take the blood, vampires." She then nodded like that statement had fully resolved the issue. I laughed and went off to the other room to get my blood sucked by a very nice 21 year-old vampire, fervently wishing that I would still be there when Dracula came on so I could watch the people's faces as they walked in to give blood.

Unfortunately, my Vampire seemed to have less experience than the one I had the last time. She chose to forgo the absorbent shield, which had seemed to unnecessary before, and this time my bursting blood vessels would not be held back. As I looked away and felt the needle go in, the Vampire let out a gasping cry. I looked back and there was blood everywhere! Well not really, but there was a large line of it on my arm and a couple drops on my pants. The Vampire seemed very embarrassed by the whole thing so I joked and told her that I needed to get the pants dry cleaned anyway, which I did. That seemed to make her feel a little better and she glanced at my rapidly filling bag and told me that by the time she was done cleaning up I'd already have the thing filled. The rest of the process went smoothly and you'll all be happy to hear that the dry cleaners were able to completely remove the stains, though I think in the future I'll be sure to ask for a splatter shield.

The evening I spent at prison

2006-09-25T14:55:00.000-04:00

Is anybody still out there?

Been doing lots of traveling back and forth between DC and Denver. Also, things have been really busy here at work and as many of you might know, I almost never write from anywhere but work.

Happy Birthday to Brian! (Saturday) In celebration of his b-day, I went to prison! Excellent!

On Saturday, I spent the morning at Judo, the afternoon at K and T's making Hatch Chili casseroles and corking wine bottles, and the evening at a 15 year-old's birthday party playing quarters with prison guards. I'm afraid the explanation doesn't make it any less weird.

Janelle a girl in my Judo club turned 15. She happens to be a daughter of a prison guard and lives with her family in guard housing at the prison. She is also home-schooled, and therefore seems to have few friends her own age and the party consisted mostly of family, prison guards, and fellow judo players like myself. Her family got permission to have the party at the banquet hall on prison grounds. As most of the party was over 21 there was plenty of liquor and beer to be had.

After about an hour of eating drinking and socializing, Jerr decided that it was the perfect place for a Beer Pong tournament, however, there were no ping pong balls to be found and we eventually settled on Quarters. Who knew that the game of quarters would be so wonderful at bringing Judoka and Prison Guards together? It really was a sight to be seen. One of the guards whom we affectionately called Uncle Tom, seemed to think I was an amazing quarters player and would repeatedly say things like "one hit wonder", "she's dangerous", and "You have way too much time on your hands" whenever it was my turn to flip the quarter. I found out later that his wife and children left him there because they couldn't pry him away from the quarters table, he had to get a ride home with someone else.

Finally, it was about 9:30 and they had to clean up the hall and kick us out. I realized that I must not have done as well at quarters as Uncle Tom thought, because there was no way I was going to drive myself home at that time. I got permission to leave my car at the prison overnight and rode with Bianca back to Jerr's place where the adorable dog spilt my Jack and Coke all over me and we watched a British Transexual stand-up comedian until we passed out.

The night reminds me vaguely of the time a Chicago-native and I taught an entire bar full of Australians how to play flip cup. I love drinking games!

The gremlin on my plane

2006-08-21T17:19:00.000-04:00

So, I haven't been writing any blog entries for a while but I haven't been reading any blogs for a while either. Well, it made sense in my head. Things are going good for me out here in Colorado. I've been full time (before I was considered a temp) here for almost 2 months now and will finally see some extra money from my pay check this Friday. My AC-free apartment is finally cooling down. I made it through a Judo BBQ at Jerr's without puking. I ran almost 9 miles on Saturday in preparation for the annual VA Beach Half Marathon on Sept 3rd (one day after mine and Becca's birthday). And the pain in my ass intern at work is finally leaving!! His last day is Friday, and I couldn't be more excited.

For those of you who haven't been listening to my endless complaints for the last couple of months I'll give you an update. The online database program that I'm primarily responsible for is getting a complete refresh with a go-live date of October 1st. The refresh, however is spearheaded by the IT department. I'm in the Sales Operations department and therefore have no authority over the little twit they hired to work on the refresh this summer. I have no idea where they found this kid but he's a complete idiot. I might be inclined to give him a little leniency since he had absolutely no training on the database before getting pushed into this project, but I started only a couple weeks before him and was in the same boat. Come on buddy, it's not that hard to figure out! IT's first mistake was hiring this simpering lost cause, but their second mistake was giving the fool System Administrator privileges! For what he's supposed to be doing he does need the privileges but they never should have put a college intern in this position. Over the last couple months he's managed to:

Completely delete an important field in the database forcing me to repopulate it and correct every single report that uses it, thus making me miss that nights soccer game

Delete several slides for an online training course that took me almost half a day to create

Screw up all the online training content that he was responsible for, so that I had to review everything and get him to fix it

Create lots of useless lists then call several meetings to discuss them

The worst part is that he's such a scam artist, it takes people a while to discover his ineptitude. I was just about fuming when I got out of a meeting with several people that had never met the kid before and kept deferring to him for answers instead of me about stuff I work with everyday. I know he has no idea what he's talking about, but they had no clue. I think that the real reason is that I look my age while this 20 year old, looks about 30.

Those of you who know me might be shocked at my vehemence and use of the word 'twit'. Not to worry I haven't shown any outward signs of my displeasure to this poor clueless numbskull. But I will probably jump for joy when I leave work this Friday and realize that his productivity level will move up to 0% from his current average of -20%.

And Brian has to learn many more names

2006-08-09T09:25:00.000-04:00

I flew back east this last weekend and drove up to Long Island for a family reunion. We had a great time. My aunt and uncle's house is pretty amazing with a tennis court and pool. We got a lot of mileage out of that pool as it was incredibly hot the whole weekend. The house was big but there were about 40 of us there so Brian and I ended up in a tent in the back yard. The major draw back of the tent was the fact that we couldn't sleep past about 8 o'clock when the sun would heat the tent to unbearable temperatures. The best part about the weekend was the meals. Every night a different family would be in charge of dinner for 40 and breakfast the next morning. Every meal was wonderful. I really have to start eating better when I'm at home, first step, go to the grocery store.

We all got blue "Hadley Reunion" t-shirts and had our individual pictures taken in the back yard by the chicken coup. My cousin Kirstie will now stitch all of us together in one big happy family photograph, technology at work my friends. I can't wait to see the result.

Brian and I then drove back down to Northern Virginia on Saturday night after dinner since we were afraid of what the Sunday traffic would look like. We had a relaxing Sunday, with lunch at Jaipur (an amazing Indian restaurant in Fairfax, which you should all try) and dinner at my parents house. We also saw Talladega Nights, which was funny but lacked the great supporting characters that Anchorman had. I was so exhausted from the weekend that I managed to sleep the entire plane ride home, which I haven't done since I was about 10.

Another jewel via Dienekes'

2006-07-25T10:13:00.000-04:00

The answer to poor female body image is found! Starve your men!

Please, watch the sharks while we take your blood

2006-07-20T09:46:00.000-04:00

So yesterday I gave blood for the first time since I went to Scotland. Because I'd been in Scotland for 6 months, I was barred from giving blood until recently when they relaxed the restrictions. You see, as far as I know, scientists have yet to discover a way to screen blood for the presence of mad cow disease. Therefore, anyone who'd been in the UK for over 6 months in the last 20 or so years was considered possibly tainted. They changed this last year to anyone there for a certain amount of time before 1996, and since I was there in 2002-03, I'm free to bleed for the Red Cross once again.

So when the building across the street from us announced that they were having a blood drive and that our company was invited to donate, I signed up. I kinda like giving blood it makes me feel like I'm doing something nice for others and of course, it gives me a certain feeling of pride when I see the blood letters reaction to my gigantic veins. That's right, I have huge veins. Just ask Jamie, a friend of mine who is at the moment a traveling nurse in Cali. She's mentioned several times how easy it would be to stick a needle in my prominent blood vessels, often while in a public place, making other people in the room either laugh or appear very nervous.

Anyway, so I arrive at the conference room and they begin to ask me all sorts of questions like, "Have you traveled in a malarial area in the last year?", "Have you taken drugs by needle not prescribed by a doctor?", "Have you ever had sex with a man who has had sexual relations with another man?" and so on... In both the survey/snack room and the blood room they were showing on large projector screens a video from BBC and the Discovery Channel about life in the sea. There were pretty pictures of parrot fish and sea turtles. I had a lovely conversation with one of the volunteers about scuba diving in Australia, all in all, very relaxing. Until the shark segment. One man walked into the room, ready to get stabbed in the arm, looked up and immediately went pale at the sight of a shark feeding frenzy blown up to cover almost the entire wall opposite him. Possibly not the best choice in movies for a blood drive.

Once a blood bed had opened up for me I was called into the other room. My blood pressure was taken, things were taped to my arm and I was given a stress ball to squeeze. The woman was just about ready to stick me when she looked at my huge vein, paused, and then brought out a sheet of the same material they make your bib out of at the dentists office. She put it between my shirt an my arm and told me it was in case my blood squirted out. How weird is that? I've never heard of blood escaping while the nurse takes it from your arm. At first I thought does my vein look like it's about to explode? Then, as I turned my head so as not to see the needle pierce my skin, I wondered if maybe she was just terribly incompetent and soon my blood would be everywhere. Thankfully, she was not incompetent and there was no blood squirtage during the entire donating process. As I sat there squeezing my stress ball every 3-5 seconds I realized why I had had to wait so long for a bed to open up. The beds on either side of me were occupied by people still recovering from their own blood letting ordeal. They were being feed plenty of juice and were asked if they were feeling alright every minute or so. Both ladies looked quite the worse for wear. Fortunately, another consequence of my massive veins is that I tend to fill their puny blood bags very quickly and was having my elbow pressure wrapped and walking out the door in no time, feeling slightly light headed and wondering if it would affect me any more since I was now living in a less oxygen rich atmosphere.

I'm Melting

2006-07-17T10:03:00.000-04:00

Denver hit another record high yesterday at 106 degrees and I don't have air conditioning. Rick saved me on Saturday by organizing an impromptu camping trip in the nice cool mountains. However, I was back in my sweltering apartment on Sunday afternoon debating whether or not getting drunk by myself at a bar at 2 in the afternoon simply to be in an air-conditioned place was a wise decision. It was so hot that the power company apparently had to institute rolling blackouts simply to cope with the power used by everyone's AC's. Even the Body Worlds exhibit was forced to close for an hour or so while the museum was hit by one of these blackouts.

This morning it was already 76 degrees out at 6 am when I got up. I couldn't wait to get to work where its always freezing no matter what the temperature is outside. One of the interesting ways that Coloradians deal with the heat are swamp coolers. I'd never heard of these things till I moved out here since they probably wouldn't work so well in a place as humid as Northern Virginia. But apparently they work wonderfully in semi-arid Colorado. Basically, it's a machine that sits on top of your house and sprays cool water down through a fan which vaporizes it. These use much less electricity than a normal AC and many people out here swear by them.

I'm hoping that next weekend isn't as bad as this last weekend, but if it is you'll probably be able to find me at the gay coffee shop down the street taking advantage of their free wifi and AC. Either that or taking a cold cold shower.

Redstripe is beer. Hooray Beer!

2006-07-11T11:06:00.000-04:00

Brian was out here all last week, yay. Unfortunately, it rained almost every day he was here! Denver has been in drought mode for 5 years and it decides to rain the whole week he's here! But hey at least neither of us got sick, I figure things are looking up :)

There was much soccer watching as the World Cup was in it's last week so we caught most of the games at The Park (a bar around the corner from me) where the beer flowed, Hooray Beer! We had to watch the last game at the airport as Brian's flight home was scheduled to leave in the middle of it. His flight ended up getting cancelled which was sort of good because he got to watch the whole game live and I got him for a whole extra day, but bad because he ended up having to spend 6 hours at the airport and miss a day of work.

Anyway, on Sunday and Monday last week we went camping in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was gorgeous except for the crazy lightning/rain/hail storms which seemed to hit every afternoon. We hiked nearly 10 miles in on the first day and stayed at Lost Lake which to our surprise was completely infested with mosquitoes.

We hadn't prepared for that at all and so had no bug repellent and ended up hiding in our tent whenever we were at the campsite. Monday morning we explored the area around Lost Lake and attempted to scale Icefield Pass but ended up turning back halfway up. This was probably the smartest thing we did all day, however, since soon after one of the above mentioned freak storms set in and we were later informed that the pass is pretty dangerous this time of year without an ice-axe and cramp-ons. Afterwards we had to book it back to the campsite since it was starting to lightning and we were far away from any sort of forest shelter.

After waiting out the rain in the tent once again there was a lull and we heard a voice outside wondering if anyone was around. Turns out it was a Park Ranger and we were camping in the wrong spot, oops. Apparently, I had completely not paid any attention to the name on the backcountry pass and had assumed we were meant to be at Lost Lake when in fact we were supposed to be about a mile down at Lost Meadow. He asked a whole ton of questions and the whole time I'm hoping he doesn't see the bottle of 151 in the tent and that our bear bag wasn't quite high enough in the tree (it was impossible to find a sturdy and high enough branch in the wimpy trees near our tent).

Eventually, he decided not to fine us the $50 for camping in the wrong spot and not to tell Colorado DMV that I'd moved to denver in the winter and still hadn't registered my car or gotten a colorado license. He said we were free to stay at Lost Lake that night as long as it was ok with the two guys that were supposed to be there, then he disappeared back into the woods. Since it was only 3 o'clock or so and we didn't particularly like the idea of camping 5 ft. away from two random guys we decided to break camp and head down to Lost Meadow.

But when we got there about half an hour later we were feeling really good and weren't looking forward to another hard packed dirt night or the early morning march out so we could catch the 1 o'clock soccer game at a bar in Denver. So in our infinite wisdom we decided to make the long trek back to the car. This was a great idea until the last mile or so when my feet decided that it was way past time to stop hiking. Fifteen miles in one day is a lot. That night was slept like the dead.

The next day was 4th of July and we had tickets to see the Colorado Rapids play the New England Revolution at Mile High. Unfortunately, it also was the night of the worst downpour I'd ever seen in Colorado. They had to hold the game for over a half an hour during the first half because of the lightning. Luckily, we decided to move early on and got pretty good seats in a sheltered area.

The fans were great though and occupied themselves by performing "the wave" during most of the delay. The best part about the game was the halftime show, I've never been so entertained at half-time. At DC United games they often have little kids play short sided games on the field, the Rapids had a short sided game played by a bunch of random Mascots! It was hilarious, mostly because the field was so wet that they were constantly slipping all over the place and completely missing the ball.

Ok, so maybe you had to be there.

After the game was a very pretty fireworks display accompanied by, I think, every song that ever had the word 'America' in it.

The rest of the week was fairly relaxing. It rained so we spent a lot of the time inside. We caught the midnight showing of Pirates of the Caribbean on Thursday night, which was great. We saw Superman Returns which we enjoyed despite all you movie snobs and your scathing reviews (you know who you are). Lighten up, I don't see how anyone who's grown up on the original movies could have expected more than what they got. As far as I'm concerned the Superman myth has never been internally consistent and has always merely been an excuse to show off Superman's ability to lift lots of heavy objects and pine over Lois Lane. Personally, I went to see a guy that looks a lot like Christopher Reeve repeatedly save people in an action-packed two hours. The only real downside was the guy sitting behind us who repeatedly whispered the words "that's superman's son" even after the fact had been made painfully obvious to everyone over the age of 4.

Judo Pic

2006-06-29T17:16:00.000-04:00

I forgot to put this up earlier, but here is a picture of my judo club.

A couple more from that night are here.

Dead Bodies and Dead Phones

2006-06-26T09:31:00.000-04:00

Monday whoopee, at least this weekend is a 4 day weekend and Brian flies in on Friday night YAY!

In Denver there have been signs up for this museum exhibit for the last 5 or so months. I finally went and saw it on Saturday and I think it actually lived up to the hype, it was just as fascinating and gruesome as you might think. Hundreds of plasticized human organs and many posed bodies make for probably the most successful exhibit in the history of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Here's a list of the most from the exhibit:

Most Gruesome: the full plasticized pregnant woman with 5 month old fetus in-utero.
Most Comedic: the first anatomically correct plastination in the exhibit was the 'Soccer Player', reactions (kids and grownups alike) were classic.
Most Bizarre: They had a polydactyl guy with 6 fingers and six toes.
Most Beautiful: (if you can believe it) the two bodies posed as figure skaters
Most Informative: The two side by side cutaways of a fat person and a skinny person were enough to make anyone go on a diet.

The exhibit took us about 2 hours to go through and by the end of it my lower back and my brain were both fried. One of the things that most surprised me about the whole experience was how disturbing it was to see that the eyelashes were still on most of the bodies, I don't know why but the eyelashes gave me the creeps.

After the museum I went home to recuperate and change for Beerday Colorado! a.k.a Erik and Karl's Summer Solstice Party. It was a lot of fun, the only people I knew were Erik (who I met like once through Tom and Catherine) and Porter who still knows me as that girl that threw up on Bubba's parent's new carpet. Luckily it seemed that most of the other people at the party were in the same boat (not knowing many people there). The party was at a cabin in Roosevelt National Forest not far outside Boulder, but far enough that there was absolutely zero cell phone service. It was beautiful despite having rained and hailed earlier in the day the stars were incredibly clear and there was a river that ran right by the house. They had a horseshoe pit, a keg, a grill and girls vs. guys flip cup, what more could anyone ask for? I even learned how to play yatzee at one point. A few of us were drunk enough to get up and have an impromptu dance party where one person would think up a move and everyone else would copy then pass it on, like Horse with dancing. Sounds lame, I know, but if you're as drunk as we were it was amazingly fun. Most of the people there were planning on setting up tents in the yard and spending the night but around 2:00am I decided that since I didn't have any extra clothes to change into and I would most likely either end up in a tent with a strange couple or on the wood floor of the cabin, I would instead make the late night drive back to my own bed in Denver. So I waited till I was sober enough to drive and left just as the guitar/drum circle was starting up for the night.

Promised Pictures

2006-06-23T09:57:00.000-04:00

Hey guys, here's the link to the pictures from the Ring of Fire on the Coors site.

Hanging with the Silver Bullet Girls

2006-06-20T10:46:00.000-04:00

So Saturday night was the big Ring of Fire night! It was awesome! Mindy and I met Katie (the girl in charge of us for the night), her fiance and his friend (who both seemed to be body builders), the 3 Coors Light Silver Bullet girls, and 2 fighters along with their coach. We piled as many of us as we could into the limo with some mini cans of Coors Light and headed for the show. On the way there the fighters didn't say much, they said they were focusing for their fight, but one of the Coors Girls, Janna, talked enough for everyone. We found out that she lives in Castle Rock (where we were headed at the time), she's italian though everyone thinks she's hispanic, she shaves her arms, she has several jobs, and she likes to refer to her breasts as jalopies.

Once we made it to the venue the limo took us around back and we headed in the VIP entrance. We looked at some of the t-shirts being sold, my favorite was the pink one that said "Fighting solves everything" on the back. Then we each got another Coors light and were told to relax in our comfy leather recliner sofa until they were ready for our background tour and the pre fight meeting. So Mindy and I sat down with a Coors light girl between us and one on each arm of the sofa, and we all chatted, mostly about which were the hottest fighters.

Then we went back stage met some guy named Scotty Too Hotty (He stole your name Scott!) and a couple other people and wandered around the prep areas getting in the way and generally being a nuisance. Scotty Too Hotty took us into the Cowboy's dressing room (yeah we didn't know who he was either) and showed us his "infamous" hat. Scotty Too Hotty was much more excited about it than we were.

Afterwards we listened to the Fighting Commission guy go through all the rules with the fighters and then headed back to the recliner for our beers and BBQ dinner. They had giving us trays to put on our laps for our dinners unfortunately I wasn't so good at balancing mine and my mostly full beer went all over my lap and our couch. Oops. Ok, so I never said I wasn't clumsy.

Finally, it was time for the fights to start. We (Mindy, the coors light girls and I) settled into a routine for most of the fight. Two of the girls would have to carry the round numbers around the ring for each fight and the third would sit on one of the arms of our couch discussing various important fight details. We discussed who we would root for each round, who seemed to be winning, how much blood was probably in the ring, and why the fighters made that loud whistling sound every time they punched or kicked. We also discussed the sketchy guys that kept coming by and offering to sit with us or switch seats and the incredibly drunk and sleazy photographer would often come by and try and make out with the women around us. Once I had to put up with him while Mindy went to the bathroom, luckily he didn't try anything, but he still smelt pretty bad. Afterwards we avoided him as much as possible. Throughout the whole night we only allowed two guys to sit with us on our spacious couch. The 12 year old son of one of the promoters, who gave us starbursts and told us the background of a few of the fighters, and Jeff the friend of Katie and her fiance, who we found out shaved his arms. It was really weird every time we shifted positions and his prickly arms would scrape against mine.

At one point Scotty Too Hotty came by our couch with signed gloves from the Cowboy, we still didn't know who the heck this guy was, but the gloves were kinda cool. We found out soon enough though that he was the hometown favorite and one of the bartenders at the after party. He was fighting Craig, one of the guys from the limo. Craig did really well and seemed to be winning until the Cowboy arm barred him and the fight was all over. A couple of the best fights were the two kick boxing fights. One between two girls (one being a good 20 lbs. heavier than the other) and the other between the other fighter in our limo, Nick, and the biggest guy of the night. One of the girl fighters, had apparently been a centerfold for FHM, if any of you guys "read" that magazine.

After the fights we all went back to Brothers BBQ for the after party and got drunk with the fighters. I took a giant Jaeger shot with the coors girls and Scotty Too Hotty and was served beer by the Cowboy behind the bar. Mindy was offered a job as Coors Light girl by Katie and then we had a meaningful conversation about the importance of family with one of the promo guys. After which we became innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of a french fry war between the announcer and some fighters on the other side of the room. Mindy smoothly avoided an encounter with drunk photographer man by saying she needed to go to the bathroom and the two of us barely made it out before they threatened to lock the doors and force everyone to stay and drink until 7 in the morning. All in all, we had a great time and thought it might be fun to go to another fight sometime, though we don't think they'd give us a comfy couch to sit on and we might actually have to pay for our beers.

Here's the picture I have of Mindy, the Silver Bullet Girls, and I in the ring before the fights. I never said I didn't have a sweating problem but the Limo was like a sauna on the way there! There are more pictures taken by Katie but as far as I know they haven't been posted on the Coors site yet.

Gunny sac races with the boss

2006-06-15T09:36:00.000-04:00

So all is going well here, I've got a big weekend coming up. Tomorrow is an offsite company wide meeting followed by a company picnic, which should take the rest of the day. But, here is what scares me:

Dress to play! Lots of activities and chances to get dirty or messy.
*gunny sac races *tug-o-war *pie eating contest *volleyball *slippery watermelon toss ....to name a few!
Ribbons for contest winners

Haha, should be an interesting time at the least. Maybe I'll finally get to meet the fun people from across the street.

Then Saturday I have a judo potluck to go to during the day and at 6:00 it's time to meet my limo for Ring of Fire 24!

BolderBoulder

2006-05-30T12:08:00.000-04:00

The big event for this weekend was of course the Bolder Boulder 10K race. The worst part was having to wake up at 5 am to catch the bus to Boulder for the start of the race. Since I hadn't trained nearly enough for this race and hadn't run over about 3 miles since the marathon last November, I was sure that I was going to hit a wall around mile 4 but, amazingly enough I got a second wind at Km 7 and ran on ahead of Kim and Ted. I only came in about a minute ahead of the two of them at a little over 52 minutes. At the end my legs were killing me and are still killing me today, just look at the elevation map. Anyway, we got a lovely goody bag with all sorts of post race foods like Sport Jelly Bellies and miniature bagels. Also, we got our free beer. Most of the other races I've been in have made the racers wait in an completely separate line to get their beer, this one I liked a lot better since you got the beer in the same line as your food, very efficient. Anyway, afterwards we sat in the stadium and watched the other racers finishing, there were 26,000 people in the race. Then we wandered around the Expo outside the stadium and tried a bunch of free food. It was a beautiful day and we sat on the grass for a while eating icecream before we headed back into the expo and then caught a bus back to Boulder. That afternoon we all took well deserved naps.

Ring of Fire!

2006-05-30T10:45:00.000-04:00

Yay for long weekends! And yay for Coors Light, haha! After a fairly productive Saturday morning of running, yard sale shopping and eating with Kim, Ted and DJ, I got a text message from Judo Adam asking if I was up for joining a few people at a bar to watch the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championships), I thought sure I'd only ever come across it in passing on TV before and it might be fun to see it at a bar. Plus, I had nothing else planned that night. So I show up at just about the biggest bar I'd ever seen (I guess they call it an entertainment center) and get ready to watch the fights. The Silver Bullet Girls are wandering around giving raffle tickets away if you buy a Coors Light so I think "why not?" and get one. Meanwhile the fighting has started and between Heidi on my left talking about how cute The Rock is (he was in the audience on TV) and Jess on my right telling me all the intricacies of Mixed Martial Arts fighting it was rather entertaining. I picked fighters to cheer for based on, if say, they were from Virginia or simply because I couldn't remember the other guys name and had a great time cheering away with the rest of the crowd who seemed to know a lot more about it than me. After the main event was over and a large portion of the crowd had left, a guy showed up at the front of the room with a microphone to announce the winner of the Coors Light raffle. It was a little confusing at first because, I think, the guy was completely drunk, but he finally called out a raffle number, MY raffle number! I was completely shocked that I had won and the man with the mic seemed completely shocked that anyone had won, did I mention he was drunk? Anyway, this is what I won:

The winner plus a guest will get the VIP treatment for Ring of Fire 24 Integrity show on June 17th. The winners will be picked up in a limo from Brother's BBQ where they will accompany the Coors Light Ring Girls to the event. At the event the winners will be taken behind the scenes to meet a few of the fighters for pictures and autographs. The winners will then be brought to a double recliner couch set up ringside, where they will be treated to dinner from Brother's BBQ and wash it down with a bucket of cold Coors Light served by the lovely Silver Bullet Girls. The winners will then be brought back via limo to Brother's BBQ for the official ROF 24 after party.

I love that it is completely geared for a guy to win it. Now, I've got to figure out who to take:) Also, does anyone know anything about Ring of Fire? Perhaps, you could update me before I go so that I'm not completely clueless. I hope the fighters don't get offended when I know absolutely zero about them.

Oh yeah, I forgot to give you this link to the Ring of Fire flyer.

Nike + iPod

2006-05-25T17:17:00.000-04:00

iPod is making the nano even easier to run with. In the next month or so they are supposed to begin selling the Nike+iPod Receiver Kit. A sensor that you can put into the insole of a special pair of Nike running shoes and a companion wireless receiver that clicks into the dock of the nano (not using the earphone input). The iPod will then track your pace and distance as well as play your own specified pep up song when you start to flag. It will update your workouts on your computer when you sync up and they even mention something about being able to compare with your friends. Soon after Nike will start selling their special shoes with a pocket under the insole. Assuming the user interface is easy to use, this could possibly be an amazing training tool.

But my question is how does this sensor work? Would it be possible to clip it to the outside of a non-Nike shoe and still get decent stats? Because most runners are very picky about their footwear and if they don't like Nikes then I don't see them switching over just to get the extra iPod perks. I wouldn't, I like my Brooks. I could see less picky runners going in for it though. The $29 price tag doesn't seem that bad though.

Crazy running fantasies

2006-05-25T10:25:00.000-04:00

My coworker was just telling me about the Outward Bound Relay and the Wild West Relay. They are both ultra relays out here in Colorado. Outward Bound is 170 miles and Wild West is 195 miles and it's all through beautiful Colorado landscape, yes, even mountains. It takes about 24 hours for each team to finish and each person runs multiple legs of several miles each. Maybe it's just because I got up way too early today, but these sound like a lot of fun. Unfortunately, Outward Bound is in the beginning of September and might fall a little to close to the Rock and Roll Half Marathon but the Wild West Relay is in August and I might actually think about doing it. It'd be great training for the half, my lungs would be amazing at sea-level after running over Sand Creek Pass at 10,269 feet, don't ya think?

Anyway, I better get through the Bolder Boulder 10K on Monday first. I'm way under prepared.

All right ladies, first one down and back wins!

2006-05-24T10:59:00.000-04:00

This morning has been very odd so far. On my way to work I listened to a radio interview with this guy who got into a road rage dispute with Jake Plummer and didn't know it. He found out yesterday that it was Jake and has now decided that he doesn't want them to press charges or give him a fine, since he's got so much respect for the Broncos.

I saw two baby booties on the side of the highway about half a mile from each other one was blue and the other white.

Then I made it into work and they were filming chair races outside my cube for the upcoming National Sales Meeting. They were all so impressed with my ability to cut one piece of paper into a long strip that I got a cameo as holder of the finish line.

Sorry for the fuzziness.

Olympic Medalists... sort of.

2006-05-22T12:16:00.000-04:00

Here's the picture of Mindy and I getting our medals. Unfortunately you can't really see anything. It's a little terrible, it was taken with Collin's camera phone.

That's also the last time that I'll be able to compete in the novice division. Now that I'm a brown belt I have to fight other brown belts and black belts. Darn!

Sankkyu? You're welcome

2006-05-22T10:08:00.000-04:00

The rank testing for Judo was Saturday morning. I aced the written part of the test, I was always good at cramming :) And then I had to wait for all of the white belts to test for their yellow belt. Since I was going for my green belt I was one of the last to test. When doing the practical part of the test you have to perform every throw, pin, escape, turnover and choke on your list as well as all of the previous lists. There was a panel of 5 black belts scrutinizing your every move, scoring and writing down little comments on your test paper. Also, every one else that has already tested or is yet to test are lined up on the opposite wall sitting indian style and silently watching. My hands were shaking uncontrollably the entire time. I asked Rob to be my uke (the person I throw) for my test since he's about my weight and size, he knows all the throws and I heard that he falls well making your throws look stronger.

Anyway, so I go up there and go through all of the yellow, orange and green belt throws I think it's almost over when Heidi keeps asking me to do other throws that weren't on the list. At the time I wasn't really thinking at all about what that meant, I wasn't even thinking straight enough to realize that this was weird. I knew a few of the extra throws but there were one or two that I couldn't do because I'd never learned them. Then they tested me on the ground techniques, I relaxed a little since I was back in familiar territory but of course after I finished the ones from my lists they started going through others that I had learned long ago but weren't on the list. Later, Nate told me that he could actually see my hands shaking while I was trying to do the chokes. But I still didn't know what was going on until after I finished, sat down and had a second to realize that they had been giving me a test for brown belt. I was so confused.

We watched the last few people go through the tests and then had a little ceremony for the presentation of everyone's new belts. I was the last to be called up, and I think I was more shocked than anyone else when they gave me a brown belt! They said that if there was a rank between green and brown belts they would have given it to me since I hadn't learned all of the brown belt techniques but that I deserved more than a green belt. So they had decided to give me the brown belt and help me get up to speed as fast as possible. I think that I was the first person they've ever promoted 3 belts at once. No one had thought that it would happen, they hadn't even gotten a new brown belt for me, I was presented with Jerr's old brown belt which he kept at the dojo and was about 2 sizes too big for me. I'll get a new brown belt as soon as Heidi has a chance to go pick one up.

Saturday night there was a celebratory BBQ at Jerr's house. I celebrated a little too much as Mongo ended up having to drive me home and force feed me water and toast. I vaguely remember him commenting on my gamecube and being very surprised that I played video games. I asked him why he was surprised and he told me that he thought I was girlier than that. This made me laugh and say "well, whatever gave you that idea?"

Is this for real?

2006-05-19T11:03:00.000-04:00

What happened here? What were the police officers thinking? If anyone has seen the story from the officers' side I'd like to know. There just has to be something more to it. Otherwise, it is completely idiotic. How can someone get arrested for trespassing on public property?

Merck Smerck

2006-05-18T10:50:00.000-04:00

Merck seems to be doing well these days. I noticed two Health breakthroughs from them today. One involving a recently discovered compound which acts as a completely new type of antibiotic that bacteria are not "yet" resistant to since it kills them in an entirely new manner. This compound is newly discovered and will need years of study before anything practical can come out of it.

The other news item is about the new vaccine which has proven effective against certain papilloma viruses which are believed to cause some types of cervical cancer among other things. This, ladies, is what you get screened for when you get a pap smear. Though the vaccine does not protect against all types of the viruses (I believe we'll still have to get pap smears) it would offer a certain amount of protection. This is being viewed as a huge breakthrough for medical science, however, there are already symptoms of how touchy a subject this could become.

I believe that if the FDA approved a vaccine for say, the bird flu, tomorrow there would be near riots in the streets of people clamoring to receive the shot. There's no question, everyone and their grandmothers would claim a right to have the vaccine. However, because the virus involved in this vaccine is sexually transmitted the outcries have already started and it hasn't even gotten FDA approval yet. They think that kids who get the vaccine will think they have a blank check for as much promiscuous sex as they can handle. Um, excuse me, are you forgetting the other consequences of unprotected sex? Wasn't there the same outcry when condoms where introduced? Is this what's going to happen if they ever find a vaccine for HIV? As far as I'm concerned this is a completely counter productive fear. Kids learn a lot about how to view sex from their parents. Even if those parents aren't sitting their kids down and explaining the birds and the bees, I'd argue that teens and pre-teens learn a lot more from their parents reactions and actions than they ever will from those often awkward and painful conversations. If you're afraid that you're child will see the vaccine as a path towards more sex, then don't you think that your child will think the same thing? I don't think that "do as I say, not as I do" works when you're dealing with morals or views. I'm not saying that sitting your child down and having "the talk" isn't a good idea, far from it. I'm only saying don't tell your kids that they shouldn't have sex and then turn around and say that getting a vaccine will allow kids to have no fear of the consequences of sex.

Judoing?

2006-05-17T12:18:00.000-04:00

So here's the update on the Judo Tournament this last weekend! It was held at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and I got a GOLD MEDAL!! Ok, ok so there was only one other Senior Woman there to fight and she is a white belt. But hey, it's still a medal, right? The only other woman there was Mindy, who is also from Denver Judo so technically our dojo swept the division, go us! The two of us weighed in at the exact same weight and I might be a little stronger than her but she's no weakling that's for sure. If Mindy's boyfriend ever sends me the picture of the two of us on the podium I'll post it but for now you'll have to do with this:

DJ loved the medal.

Mindy and I fought twice the first one I won with Tomo Nage (Circle Throw)

Graphic from Judoinfo.com (if you can't see it click the link)

The second one, I'm not really sure what happened. I had her in a pin and time ran out, so I guess I had more points than her. Judo scoring is incredibly confusing. There are 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 and full points as well as the opposite in penalties. The referee yells them out as you go in Japanese and does not stop the match when someone scores a point. There is a score board where they keep track but it was already reset by the time I looked at it so I have no idea what points I had and what I didn't. Anyway, that's how it went.

This Saturday is Rank Testing and I'm going for my green belt. Very exciting. There are a whole bunch of pins, throws, and terms that I have to know. Unfortunately, I twisted my ankle yet again on monday and won't be able to participate in practice tonight. But it shouldn't be too much of a problem on Saturday, provided I tape it up.

Ooh la la lollipop, POP, ba doom doom doom doom

2006-05-09T13:04:00.000-04:00

So there is a restaurant called Forth Story which is surprisingly enough on the 4th floor. It's above a popular Denver book store called Tattered Cover in Cherry Creek. The book store will soon move and the restaurant will have to close. It's a fairly fancy restaurant that has live jazz every monday night. So I went with Rob last night after judo to catch some jazz before they close. I wanted dessert and the cheesecake intrigued me. It said it was served with cherry-rhubarb compote and cherry lollipop. I thought that's strange, it must be some weird jam or something that is named cherry lollipop or perhaps they crush up lollipops and put them in the compote for a little crunch. How wrong I was. They actually served me cheesecake with a side of lollipop!

I think that Rob now thinks I'm a little weird for taking out my phone and shooting a picture of my food, apparently he's not a big blog reader. But he got over that when I told him about the Myrtle Beach Biker Children, now he thinks I'm odd for a completely different reason.

Go forth and Donate!

2006-05-09T12:55:00.000-04:00

So, Brian after giving blood today informs me that I can once again give blood. Apparently, last year the Red Cross loosened their restrictions in reference to Mad Cow and travel in the UK. I guess I hadn't checked for a while. So all of you people who thought you couldn't give blood, check again, you may be able to.

Bambi and Smokey team up

2006-05-05T11:15:00.000-04:00

Recently, I've started seeing forrest fire commercials that instead of prominently displaying Smokey the Bear seem more like a trailer for "Bambi". Here's one. I thought what a great way to play on our emotions, cute baby animal and memorable movie from our childhood. I remember Kim taking Billy and I to see "Bambi" in the theatre when it was re-released in 1988. I was somewhat surprised to find out that the Bambi anti-wildfire campaign actually predates Smokey. I know random, but I bet the commercial makes Catherine tear up ;)

Not so intricate but still weird...

2006-05-05T10:17:00.000-04:00

dreams. I had two of them last night. One was a little gross, I had gotten out of the shower and was cleaning out my ears with a q-tip and I pulled the q-tip out of my left ear and a huge spongy mass came out of my head. It wasn't waxy or anything, it was clear and spongy and wet. So nasty. In the second dream I was in japanese class and the know-it-all girl was laughing at me because I couldn't pronounce 'au bon pain'. I kept trying and she kept laughing until finally I say "well, I took spanish, not french" and that's the end of the dream. Random, no?

At least my ankle is ok

2006-05-04T09:12:00.000-04:00

I'm exhausted. Last night I had a soccer game at 10:25 and I thought hey, judo is from 7 to 9 I could go there then get some food then head to the soccer game. No problem, right? Ughhh. I had forgotten that I had to get up at 6 this morning in order to get to my Japanese class this afternoon. I felt like I'd been beat up, I ached everywhere, I had a bloody lip from judo and I'd been hit in the face in soccer. Also, I hadn't eaten a big enough lunch yesterday and I started to realize I needed some fuel about halfway through judo when I was getting creamed by a skinny 13 year-old boy. Granted he's a higher rank, but he's also about half my weight. He seemed to really enjoy running in circles around me while grip fighting, not necessarily effective, but it was extremely annoying.

The funny thing is that I think I actually had a better soccer game since I was too tired to actually think about what I was doing. Luckily, we had plenty of subs. But perhaps next time we have a late game I'll take a page from my team captain's book, she showed up drunk :)

Why does San Fran get all the fun?

2006-05-02T17:36:00.000-04:00

It seems to me that I've heard of this before but I never saw the commercial. 250,000 bouncy balls dropped in San Francisco for a Sony commercial. It's even set to a pretty song. Take a look if you have the time.

Come on, hum the theme, you know you want to

2006-05-02T16:11:00.000-04:00

With the hopefully imminent release of the newest Zelda, I hope to be blissfully unaware of the world around me in a few weeks. I also will most likely be wrenched away from the current reading phase I've been in. So here are a few reviews of what I've been reading.

Dune prequels (The Butlerian Jihad, The Machine Crusade, The Battle of Corrin)
I never read any of Frank Herbert's Dune sequels but I heard they weren't very good. His son's attempts have so far been quite entertaining. Like any subsequent books based on a classic, it may rely a little too much on the innovations of it's predecessor and not develop much on it's own, but it was fun for me to read about how the universe of Dune came to be.

Double Star
A short book about a man hired to impersonate a famous politician. I remember liking this book while I read it but right now I couldn't tell you why. I started off hating the main character but by the end reluctantly liking him. The book explores the possibility that if we are forced to constantly play a different person to the outside world, we eventually take on that person's thoughts and even moral outlook. It's interesting to contemplate the pliability of personality, plus there are Martians :)

Atlas Shrugged (currently reading part I)
I can see how people may find this classic hard to get through, perhaps if I were reading it instead of listening to it on my iPod I'd agree. But so far I find it fascinating. The characters drive the incredibly slow moving plot and I can't help wanting to learn more about them. If you do not like long slow moving books with lots of set up, do not read this book.

Blink (currently reading - recommended by Brian)
This non-fiction book about making quick and illogical decisions is very good so far. One of few non-fiction books that I've found hard to put down. It's littered with interesting, real life examples that pull you in. This book delves into what makes us tick and is worth anyone's time. I hear that The Tipping Point, also by Gladwell, is very good too.

So is anyone else out there as excited as I am about The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess? If they delay it again, I'm going to scream!

South Lawn Face Lift

2006-04-28T13:12:00.000-04:00

For all those UVA alumni out there: Is any one else as confused by this as I am? Is that a pond in the middle of the new terrace over JPA? Are those more colonnades? Where are the new classrooms going to be?

Judo Senior Nationals Update

2006-04-27T09:58:00.000-04:00

I know you've all been waiting for the results so here they are.

Sensei Heidi came in 3rd in women's 78Kg and 2nd in the women's Open.
Bandi came in 2nd in the men's Open, to an apparently much bigger Polish guy
Jim came in 5th in men's Masters.

I'm not sure how this affects Heidi's chance at an Olympic team spot but I hope not badly, I think she had hoped to come in first for her weight. In the meantime, I continue to try and get ready for the tournament in a couple weeks and the rank testing a week after. Several people at the dojo think that I could move up two ranks, which would be pretty cool.

Today 70's and Sunny

2006-04-27T09:17:00.000-04:00

Sunday, it was a little cold and ominous looking out but I had just watched Elizabethtown, which I'm reluctant to admit gave me that sweet sadness feeling which perfectly reflected the dreary sky. So I decided to go for a short walk in Cheeseman park in order to wallow in the feeling. It was very nice, there were people out walking their dogs while talking on the phone and even some kids out tossing a baseball. After taking a quick turn around the park I decided to take the slightly longer way back home. Just then the skies opened their fury and golfball sized hail started bulleting down from above. At first they were intermittent and huge and I was no where near shelter. I thought seriously that if one of them hit me I was likely in for a gigantic bump on the head. Unfortunately, I was still in my emotion coma from the movie as well as the peaceful walk and the hail fit in so well with the About a Boy soundrack coming from my iPod that I continued my slow walk down the street chuckling softly as I watched people madly running about with newspapers over their heads. Miraculously, I still hadn't been whacked on the head and only suffered a minor glancing shot to the right elbow when I'd finally made it to the 2 foot overhang outside the gay coffee shop. Several people were out under the overhang watching the mayhem ensue. And soon the hail came down faster and faster and smaller and smaller, they were now about pebble sized and coming down as thick as a spring rain storm in Virginia. We all stood there laughing and astonished as the hail continued for several minutes and car alarms went off all around us. It was a completely surreal experience, made even more so by the fact that it had been 70 degrees the day before and as soon as the hail hit the ground it shattered and melted on the warm pavement. It finished abruptly and faded quickly into a damp, chilly and sunny afternoon. The next day, April 24th, it snowed.

Opening a Can O' Worms

2006-04-24T11:30:00.000-04:00

Often times attempting to apply statistical analyses to everyday life has some uninformed and ugly side-effects. So I must admit that I hesitated before deciding to pass on this link. But I do find it interesting none the less. These types of studies are innately controversial. I think that the emotions it stirs up are infinitely more significant than the science itself. Personally, I can see that I am much more likely to point out possible confounding variables in this study than I would be in say a study showing that women are more likely to be right handed than men. It's interesting when you can see your own defensive tendencies.

始めまして

2006-04-21T11:15:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my first Japanese class. I had fun and didn't feel behind at all since there were even a couple people in the class that had never taken Japanese before. First of all for background the class is run by the Japan-America Society of Colorado and is held in the Buddhist Temple in downtown Denver.

I had to go into work early in order to make the 5:25 start time for the class and I was a little concerned about finding parking near the temple, but not to worry the Denver Buddhist Temple has it's own parking garage which happens to be free after 5, score. I think it is pretty close to a bunch of bars downtown too, so needless to say this knowledge will come in handy in the future. A couple days ago I got an email from the girl who is organizing the class giving detailed directions on how to get to the classroom. I felt like I was heading to some clandestine meeting. The directions told me that the main entrance to the temple would be locked so I would have to enter the building through an unmarked orange door from the parking garage. Then I proceed through a short corridor and into a dark empty gym. After the gym I would find myself in the lobby and should proceed up the stairs where I would find the classroom on my right. As I followed the directions I was concerned that the building seemed completely empty and almost all of the lights were off in the place. I don't know what I expected a Buddhist Temple to be like but it wasn't like this. The place seemed like an elementary school during summer vacation. Small carpeted halls and an old school gym complete with those blue wall pads that small children enjoy running into at full speed.

I was also surprised at the average age of the class. Most of the people there seemed to be about my age, a sharp change from the class I took in Arlington, where the average age was in the mid 40's. In Arlington the main reason for taking Japanese was because the person's spouse was getting relocated there either due to business or military. In this class most of the people seem to be taking Japanese for the fun of it. A couple of the guys are preparing to enter the JET (teaching english in Japan) program in July and there is even one guy taking it to better understand Japanese carpentry. The Sensei is a Japanese woman who's english has such a thick accent that it's hard to tell which language she's speaking, but she seems nice and I assume I'll get used to the accent soon enough. I'm excited it's a woman Sensei since I've heard that women and men speak japanese slightly differently and there is definitely a difference in tone and the way the language sounds.

All in all, I think that the class will be fun even if it is mostly review.

Wine tasting: Art or Science?

2006-04-20T09:14:00.000-04:00

My brother-in-law is a master wine maker. He has his own wine cellar where he makes batch after batch of lovely wine. He performs experiments, testing how changes in acidity or other factors affect the taste. He keeps scrupulous notes in a log book for each batch. He does this up until the point where he meticulously bottles and racks the wine leaving it often for several years in order to age and develop a deeper flavor. He then of course promptly forgets where he put each batch and never labels the bottles or the racks. Effectively ending any sort of testing he started earlier in the process as he has no idea which bottles were made with reserve and which ones weren't. Of course this chain of events turns out wonderful for Rick and I who showed up Tuesday night for family dinner night and were treated to an impromptu night of wine tasting as we tried to figure out which batch of wine was which.

Our "results" followed, as one might guess, a rigorous scientific study and logical progression. We first had to figure out which batch the "?" bottles came from using the ancient but simple art of drinking glass after glass from each group. Then once that was decided we relabeled each batch number based on Ted's extensive notes, the amount of dust accumulated while the bottles lay on the racks and of course more tasting. Pure Science!

Mom always said I had a hard head

2006-04-18T10:18:00.000-04:00

I'm amazed that it doesn't happen more often but I knocked heads with a girl last night at judo practice. She was going for a throw and I was going for a counter throw or at least a block for her throw and we ended up both going down. She got me on the forehead and I had a nice red mark but that was about it. Unfortunately, I got her on the temple and she felt light headed and dizzy and ended up sitting out the rest of practice, oops. I felt pretty bad, especially when I found out that her boyfriend would have to drive her home and Rob would have to drive her car back for her. But I'm pretty sure she didn't hold it against me since she invited me to go mountain biking with her, if I ever got a bike, and after practice she seemed quite excited about the prospect of having a black eye. She smiled and said "Now I'll look tough!" The whole thing reminded me of the time in highschool that I broke a soccer teammates nose by accident. She was marking me and I turned a little too fast catching her nose with the back of my head. The poor girl had to wear a sport mask the rest of the season.

In other judo news, two of my senseis are competing in the USA Judo Senior National Championships this weekend. While I was looking through the pre-registration list I saw two other names I recognized from my time with a judo club in Arlington. When I was playing the brother and sister they were both still juniors but I'm sure they're amazing now. The brother, Leland, is only 16 years old!

More:
Here's the bio for Sensei Heidi on the USA Judo website. Not too shabby, huh?

Hey Liz, you go girl!

2006-04-17T18:36:00.000-04:00

Through the family email list I got a link to this article about my second cousin, Liz. She's created an online art gallery for young artists where you can go browse and even buy their stuff. Take a look, it's pretty cool.

I Forgot:
My cousin Kirstin Wing has some photos on the site too.

Ah, I'm Horribly Sunburned

2006-04-17T17:42:00.000-04:00

So even though I put on sunscreen and even reapplied to my arms and face, I still got burnt on both my legs as well as the skin just under my hairline over my forehead. That's what I get for skiing in shorts two miles closer to the sun. But really, who puts sunscreen in their hair?

So here's how it happened, I went skiing yesterday, Easter Sunday, with Rick and his friend Whitney, a crazy fun girl with an unhealthy obsession with raspberry flavored chewy candy. I would tell you the name of the candy but all I remember was that it was something like Manga and I can't google it because of the sheer number of Japanese Comic book sites out there, one even called "Candy Candy". Anyway, we went skiing. It was beautiful, not a cloud in the sky, and the snow conditions weren't terrible. It was so nice out that after a few runs we decided to sit down for a couple of $7 beers and very undercooked burgers halfway up the mountain. We sat there admiring the many people in tanktops skiing and boarding past us. One guy was boarding with nothing but his swim trunks on.

I decide that my legs are really too warm in my waterproof pants and so took them off. I of course dutifully put on sunscreen that Rick had been carrying around in his bag as soon as I finished my food. However, it was obviously too late as you can see. Here I am clueless to the fact that I'm already burning.

We sat there for a while, unwilling to move from our comfortable lounge chairs and occupied ourselves by calling people to wish them a happy Easter and throwing snow balls at the ski poles sticking up in the snow in front of us.

We were even visited by the Easter Santa,

who gave us little chocolate Easter eggs out of his fanny pack.

Once we pulled ourselves out of our chairs, we headed over to the base to stand and listen to a nice band while drinking tasty margaritas. We even got the added treat of a Streaking Boarder, unfortunately my camera hand wasn't quick enough to capture the moment.

All in all it was a gorgeous last day of the ski season even if my legs are now burnt in a very unsightly blotchy fashion and my hairline will probably peel in a day or two and look suspiciously like a terrible case of dandruff.

Everybody brain farts

2006-04-12T10:48:00.000-04:00

Don't you just hate that feeling when you know there was something fascinating that you were going to search in google and then you forget what it is? I do. It's like when I was a kid and would wait eagerly for the commercials during a show so I could run upstairs and do something real quick and then forget what it was I was supposed to do as soon as I got up there. Maybe I've just got a terrible memory but it seems to happen to me all the time.

Team Beer Strikes Again

2006-04-10T11:12:00.000-04:00

Since they were released a few years ago I never paid much attention to the crazy wheel shoes that so many kids are wearing these days. But after going to a Judo tournament and seeing all the kids from my judo club zooming around the gym in them, I have to admit they look incredibly fun. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I'm too old to go around sporting such mobile footwear, though I'm pretty sure I could probably find them in my size. Ah well, maybe I'll invest in a pair of rollerblades instead and go zooming around Wash Park with my sis.

The Judo tournament was fun, I didn't participate though since it was only for higher ranking belts (brown and black) and I'm not quite up to that challenge yet. I'm told there's another tournament in a month or so that has a lower rank division, so look forward to the play by play in the future.

Afterwards there was dinner and then four of us went out for drinks and pool at some college bar near DU. I had great time. One of the guys is Mongolian and apparently an amazing Judo player, he's in some national tournament in a month or so and a quick google search reveals that he came in 5th in the US Open last year and used to be on the Mongolian National team, anyway the poor guy is still working on his english proficiency and conversations with him are fairly difficult. We did learn that in Mongolia dogs say "gwa, gwa" and the word for beer sounds suspiciously like pew.

Yesterday Kim and an old friend of hers (in town for the weekend) and I went to the mall to see the "Mask Project". It was pretty cool with masks painted by all sorts of random artists and celebrities. One of the ones that made me laugh was William Shatner's. So many of the actors would just have other people paint the mask and then sign their name to it, but I'm fairly certain that Bill did is own painting. Another one I liked was done by Mimi the Elephant, it's her "trunk print". Anyway, I thought it was cute.

Afterwards, I got a lesson in car maintenance from Rob (the other judo guy from the night before) and his friend Ty (sp?). I "helped" them change the oil in their cars and do some crazy bypass surgery on Rob's electrical system. Apparently something was draining the battery on his very old car so that every time he stopped driving it he had to detach the battery. So now he has one key to start the car and another plastic key to put in a switch, that we installed to the left of the steering wheel, that completes the battery circuit. The whole thing is very ghetto but it was fun to play around with the inside of the car. Sorry I didn't take pictures of the whole thing.

Aboriginal Genetics

2006-04-06T18:55:00.000-04:00

For those who read this blog that are at all interested in genetics this may be interesting to you too.

It basically says that there is genetic evidence to support the evidence from dated aboriginal rock paintings showing that Australian Aboriginies have been around since around 40,000 years ago. For modern humans this is a long time ago. Neandertals were still around until about 30,000 years ago. And 40,000 years ago is also about the time of the Cro Magnons in Europe.

Ok, now I can go home!

More of other peoples pictures

2006-04-06T18:08:00.000-04:00

And here are more ... this time I searched Hokkaido (the northernmost island in Japan).

Crystal
Flowers
Ainu Dance
Swan Swan
Somewhere neat

Other peoples pictures

2006-04-06T17:49:00.000-04:00

Still nothing to do at work so with spring finally on it's way, I've been looking at pictures of Scotland in the winter. If any of the rest of you are as bored as I am here are a couple of the pretty pics a flickr search for the tag "cairngorms" pulled up. For those of you who may not know the Cairngorms is a mountain range in the lower highlands, a couple hours north of Edinburgh.

Beinn a Bhuird
Cairngorm Plateau
Snowy Sunset
Rocks

Weirdos where are you?

2006-04-06T15:22:00.000-04:00

The weather men have been threatening us with storms for the last several days here in the Denver area. Even though the Denver weathermen are continuously clueless it seems that their predictions might finally come true. There were actually raindrops when I drove back to the office after lunch. Anyway I thought that these clouds were so cool looking that I took a quick snap in the car. (sorry it's so dark)

So with Salesforce down and the only work I have at the moment relying entirely on the program I've nothing to do except stare at the screen. I just got a survey from Budget to do tonight but I'm pretty sure that doing outside contract work on company equipment and time would be frowned upon. I feel so exposed in this cube.

So I'm working in the sales department which is in a separate building across the street from the main building where all the actual science and programming happen. I have this image in my head that the other building is this big party place where all the fun zany people hang out. Here are the reasons I have to think this: 1) Once I got an email saying there was food for grabs over there, 2)I've seen a couple people from there wearing jeans and 3) the zany bizarre people certainly aren't in my building. Don't get me wrong, everyone here seems normal and nice. They makes snide comments to each other over the cube walls and stuff. But there is still something lacking, they're just too normal. Where are all the quirky weirdos? Where are my people?

Sticky Sushi Rice is Fun and Yummy

2006-04-04T14:24:00.000-04:00

So, second day of work, doing mostly the same stuff as the first day. Judo last night was fun although one of the senseis I think decided that we weren't trying hard enough and made us all do squat jumps and wall sits, not fun. I got to see a few of the pictures taken by two of the guys who went to Beijing last week. Why is it that Asian mountains look so much different than American or even European mountains? Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, speaking of pictures here are some that Brian has put up from his trip out here last month. The sushi turned out very well if I do say so myself.

This time I can't wear flip flops

2006-04-03T15:13:00.000-04:00

So here I am, at work once again.

I had a great time being back home but unfortunately it was way too short. I did get to see the cherry blossoms on peak day, they are as beautiful as ever. Also, Brian and I went to Great Falls on friday and had a cute little picnic on the rocks by the river. Rolls, swiss cheese, pepperoni and a bottle of red between us, it was awesome. On sat. since my flight left from BWI, Brian got us tickets to the Baltimore Aquarium, which was a lot of fun. I haven't been since elementary school and it's changed quite a bit. We watched a pretty cool dolphin show and decided that being a dolphin trainer would be a pretty awesome job. All I need is a whistle and a wetsuit and I'm ready! Also, I got to amaze Brian with my random knowledge of fish and reptiles since there was a whole exhibit on Australia. Admit it Brian, you were totally amazed :)

It was also the visit of dinners. Two dinners at the rents for my childhood favorites, dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant in Adams Morgan with some of Brian's buds, dinner at Paya Thai for girl talk with Becca and Na, and since my dinner schedule was full Brian's parents had us over for homemade pie, which was excellent.

And now here I am working, learning some new databases and meeting some new people, who all seem very nice. But alas, my lunch hour is almost over and I better go. No good slacking off on the first day! (I'll save that for tomorrow :)

2006-03-27T20:58:00.000-05:00

Had a great weekend of skiing, unfortunately Kim, Ted and DJ were all sick. I hope I didn't get what they had, it didn't look fun at all. Tomorrow morning I'm heading back east! Woohoo. Rick is taking me to the airport at 5:30 am, ack! Thanks Rick!

I was amazed at the difference in weather the two days this weekend.

Saturday

Sunday

I swear, I didn't know it was illegal

2006-03-24T14:19:00.000-05:00

So for those of you who don't know, I'll be back in Virginia next week. Just a quick short visit since I doubt I'll have time after a start work again. I'm coming in tues afternoon and leaving sat evening. I hope to see everyone!

Yesterday I had to drive all the way out to Boulder to get a drug screen. If you've never had a drug screen before, it's much less exciting than it sounds. You go, you sign forms, you pee, and you leave. I do however think that women get the short end of the stick. The worst part though is carrying an open cup of urine around and handing it off to some nice young man. I don't want nice young men handling my waste products! Yuck. Other than that, it's same ol' same ol' for me until Tuesday. Walking to the library and back, having coffee and reading, skiing on the weekend, and listening to the random cat whining outside the apartment two doors down. Where did that cat come from anyway?

Filling up my time

2006-03-22T15:44:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, long time no see. Sorry for my lack of posts. But I now have something exciting to report to you all. I have a job! Yay! I'll be starting April 3rd and I'll basically be a database administrator for the sales department of a biotech company, I'll let you know how it goes after I start. Also, for the last week or so, I've been doing contract work, spying on the competition, for Budget truck, it's a little boring but I can do it in front of the TV so it's not that bad.

Other than that, I'm finally getting off my butt and attempting to fill my social calendar. I've started going to Judo on monday nights. Getting back into judo-shape is painful but fun, the people at the club seem pretty cool so far even if they keep beating me up :) I've also been playing indoor soccer on a girls team on Wednesday nights our next season starts next week. Then there is of course skiing, the season ends in mid april so I'm hoping to get a bunch more days in before the end. I really really need new skis though.

I'm thinking of starting Japanese classes in April and possibly kickball which also starts in April. The problem is that i think they'll both be on thursday nights and I don't know if I'll be able to do both. The hours and nights of the japanese classes haven't been decided yet. So am I taking on way too much? Probably. Ah well, at least I won't get bored, right? Don't worry I haven't gone crazy, friday and saturday nights are reserved for drinking at the bars.

So now that I've caught you all up on my life, I promise if I can force myself to sit down and write more often the entries will be much more interesting.

Random fact, did you know that Bob Barker ends every Price is Right episode reminding people to spay and neuter their pets? I find that a little weird.

Happy days are here again!

2006-01-23T18:13:00.000-05:00

After nearly 4 weeks without a phone I finally have it back! Yay!

Snowy Cheeseman Pictures

2006-01-20T19:37:00.000-05:00

So there was still snow on the ground this afternoon when I decided to go for a walk in Cheeseman Park, about 5 blocks away from me. I took my camera and here are the results, sadly nothing really exciting happened there.

More strange dreams

2006-01-19T11:38:00.000-05:00

It's snowing! And at the moment I have nothing planned for the day. Here's a few pictures from Jamie on our trip out west as well as a from our little party at Murphy's, that I haven't linked to yet.

Road Trip
Murphy's (please excuse the sappy pictures here, they made us)

I've recently realized that one of the downsides to living alone is that you don't have anyone to tell your strange dreams to when you wake up in the morning. I've had a couple of them recently so here they are.

I dreamed that Brian's friend Davis was having a birthday party, there were a ton of people there including a bunch of my friends. Anyway in my dream Davis was this amazing ballroom dancer. He asked me to dance and he was the best leader I'd ever danced with, at the end he did this crazy spinning move and I was so dizzy I had to sit down for like 10 minutes. Ok so it's not a particularly funny dream, but atleast it's short :).

My other dream included a guy I used to work with, Ben. He was an IT guy but in my dream he was also a trained surgeon, though not practicing. Anyway, I'd decided that I was going to donate a kidney, just for the fun of it. In my dream taking out a kidney required two operations. The dream started while I was having the first, they'd given me only a local anesthetic. Sorry to gross you out but, I could actually feel the scalpel going into my lower back. I'm not sure what I thought that first surgery did but here I was with a cut in my back but still had both kidneys. So they were going to knock me out for the second surgery, but I was starting to have doubts. They'd injected me with the knockout drug and were waiting for me to fall asleep. I remember thinking why am I donating a kidney to someone I don't even know? This doesn't make sense. What if I need a kidney later? You'd think I would have thought of this earlier, but it's a dream, oh well. Anyway so for the rest of the dream I'm struggling to stay awake and terrified that I'll pass out before I get the chance to tell Ben that I don't want him to remove my kidney afterall.

Scary huh?

Na and Joanne come for a visit

2006-01-17T18:14:00.000-05:00

This last weekend was a little crazy, after some major plane issues due to DC fog, Naomi and Joanne made it out to visit me, Yay!

here are the photos to prove it.

Home, sweet home

2005-12-22T01:04:00.000-05:00

I did go skiing last weekend, it was awesome and snowed almost the entire time. It was also ridiculously cold. Fortunately, I was well prepared. Aren't the trees pretty!

On sunday night we went to this really good Chinese restaurant in Winter Park and Kim and I got some cocktails in really cool containers. I took a picture on my phone since my camera wasn't around.

Mine was the one with the big belly. The big news is that I signed a lease on an apartment. Kinda scary, it's the first time I will have ever lived alone, and also the first time I've ever had my own kitchen! Granted it's tiny, but I actually had to buy my own plates and everything! It's a studio so a little difficult to capture it in pictures but here you go.

This is the view from the entrance, the bathroom is to my left.

This is my tiny kitchen and my upteen million glasses, it's amazing how many glasses you can accumulate when you enjoy stealing them from bars. The kitchen is such a tight fit, the fridge door doesn't open all the way, we'll see how long it takes me to get incredibly annoyed with that one.

And those are my two closets, with most of my clothes in them already. And the front door on the right. So cozy, no?

Well, I won't get to enjoy it much since I'm heading east on Saturday and I've just changed my flight so that I'm not coming back to Denver until the 8th now.

Chicago Pics

2005-12-14T15:14:00.000-05:00

Ok so I finally got some pictures up, unfortunately there aren't that many. I'm hoping Jamie uploads some soon, I think her's are much better.

Too bad DJ was moving it was hard to keep him still for a picture with the hat on. The rest are from Chicago and are here on Flickr.

One down, not too painful

2005-12-13T22:43:00.000-05:00

So the interview went well, I think, as it's my first real interview I figure I have no idea really. I won't know for a while too since they said they won't be really hiring anyone until next year anyway. But, I ask you, do I really want to be the person responsible for thousands of people getting catalouges that they never asked for in the first place? Probably not. I think I'll keep looking.

Aunt Julie Strikes Again

2005-12-12T23:04:00.000-05:00

I spent most of the day performing my duties as the out of work aunt, in other words attempting to entertain a cranky 11 month old. It really wasn't bad at all but it was draining. He did give me a shock when I went into the kitchen to put some stuff away and he starts screaming from the other room. I picked him up and figured he'd just bumped his head on something but then he sneezes mid heart wrenching bawl and blood and drool come flying out of his mouth and down his chin. Ok, so it wasn't that much blood but it shocked me enough to have brief flashes of loose baby teeth run through my head. Fortunately, he eventually calmed down enough to let me inspect his mouth which proved to be perfectly alright except for the tiny little cut on the inside of his lower lip. Nothing to cry over at all, unfortunately no one had told DJ that.

In other news, I've got my first interview tomorrow, it's a little bit scary but I was told today that it would take 45 minutes to drive out there. I'm not so sure I want that as my commute. I'd much prefer to work in Denver where it's likely I'll be able to bike or possibly walk to work. Ah well, its good practice.

I'm a terrible blogger

2005-12-11T16:56:00.000-05:00

So for those of you who I haven't talked to recently, here's the update.

The Marine Corps Marathon didn't go too well. I was fine up until about the halfway point, then all hell broke loose and my body was in crazy pain until about mile 21 where I finally gave in and dropped out of the race. Poor Brian had to finish on his own with two very painful knees. He ended up walking the last 3 miles or so, luckily his parents were there to take care of us. His mom walked with him for the last few miles and his dad took care of me by picking up their van and retrieving me from the ambulance where I was shaking uncontrollably with an IV in my arm. Luckily the fluids were doing the job and I didn't have to go to the hospital or anything. My parents, Naomi, Becca and Jamie all came out to cheer us on, thanks guys. It was a bummer that I somehow missed my parents along the course.

Last day of work Nov. 14th, sad I'll miss all those guys at AIBS, but at least I didn't have to go to the December meeting, it sounded like hell.

Went to visit my Bro in sunny LA. It was beautiful, and I had a lot of fun wandering around in Hermosa and seeing a few sights in the city.

Thanksgiving saw 39 people at my parents’ house for dinner; it was crazy but a lot of fun as well. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday!

Two days after thanksgiving I attempted my second marathon. I was so bummed about dropping out of the MCM that I decided, with some encouragement from Brian, not to let 6 months of training go to waste. I ran the Northern Central Railway Trail Marathon in 3:51:41. I was so happy to finish with a good time, only 12 minutes off Boston qualifying.

I then spent most of the next week getting ready for my move to Denver. I went out with Jamie, Becca, Naomi and Brian on Thursday night to see Double Down at Murphy's. It was a great time but also rammed into my head that I was actually moving. I miss you all a ton already.

Friday night Brian threw a party at his place for me. Thanks to everyone that came and to those brave souls that I convinced to take a shot of artichoke liqueur with me. I got drunk rather quickly and in my screwdriver addled brain it made perfect sense that if I didn't want to be sick then I would have to stop drinking and in order to stop drinking I should go to bed. Fortunately, Jamie and Naomi were there to jump on top of me and get me out of bed. Brian had apparently tried earlier, but got very little response from me.

This finally brings me to the drive out to Denver. Jamie and I left Monday morning and drove to Chicago, where we hung out with Catherine and roamed Chi-town until Wednesday morning. Both Jamie and I decided that we really liked Chicago and that Catherine lived in a very cute little neighborhood, unfortunately parking left much to be desired and I ended up having to move my car twice a day. Also, Chicago is the freakin' coldest place on earth. I seriously saw frozen puke on the street, I kid you not.

Wednesday, Jamie and I drove through Iowa and Nebraska, both very flat cold and incredibly boring states. I don't think I would have been able to make it without Jamie, who kept me entertained the whole way with gossip, Glamour and our trusty friend, the Map of the USA. Jamie studied the road atlas front to back keeping a constant eye on our progress across the frozen wasteland, she weighed the merits of it seems every american city big enough to merit it's own downtown map in the atlas and came up with a list of about 30 possible travel nursing destinations.

We made it to Denver at about 11 o'clock and soon collapsed on the spare bed in the basement. The next day Jamie and I went to see the Coors brewery, a tour it seems I'll never grow tired of since they give you 3 free drinks at the end. Then had a wonderful lunch at the Buffalo Rose, a cute little bar in Golden. Later Kim took us to meet Ted at the Rock Bottom Brewery just below his office and then we headed back to their place for dinner, wine, talk and knitting.

The next day (I swear this is almost over) Jamie and I went to the Hammond Candies Factory where there is a lot of expensive sugar and screaming children. But it was really cool to see how they made all the hard candies by hand. After lunch I took Jamie and Kim to the airport, amazingly enough it turned out that they were both on the same flight. I then got DJ all to myself for the next couple hours until Ted got home from work. It was a little rough at first since by the time we got back it was past time for his afternoon bottle but this soon got sorted out and I was soon back in DJ's good graces.

I've spent most of this weekend at my cousin Rick's place wandering around uptown and capitol hill areas of Denver and battling Mr. Kitty for yarn while watching TV. It took a while but I think that Mr. Kitty is finally warming up to me, at least there has been considerably less hissing after I cleaned out his litter box. Though he did knock a pint glass of water over twice in the middle of the night. I'm taking that as a sign of protest to my continued presence in HIS house.

I do have a few pictures but they are not uploaded quite yet. Soon, I promise.

Nano vs. Video

2005-10-25T11:05:00.000-04:00

Alright, so here's what happened. After several months of needing a car adapter for my ipod I finally broke down and bought one from Amazon. It worked for about a day then promptly fried my poor ipod mini. I was totally bummed and have now been ipodless for several weeks. Luckily, I'm a sucker and was convinced when I bought the ipod from Best Buy to also invest in the warranty. So this weekend I took it back to the Best Buy in tyson's corner in order to either get it fixed or exchanged. The Geek Squad guy checked it for me and verified that it was indeed dead, and informed me that since Apple no longer makes ipod mini's I'll have to exchange it for either a Nano or Video ipod. Here is my dilemma. Which one do I get? I originally bought the Mini for $250 which is currently what the 4 GB Nano is running for, while the 30GB Video is about $300.

Pro Nano:
It's tiny!
It would be great to run with.
It's 4 GB so the playlist I transfer over from my computer might be more manageable, (I find managing even a 6GB playlist a little overwhelming)
It's the same price as what I paid for the mini so it won't cost extra.
Has photo capability.

Pro Video:
The video capability (not sure how much I would use this though, but might be fun for video podcasts and tv shows)
30GB bigger space that what my mini was and I don't have to fill it with music of course so if I wanted to i could keep my playlist smaller and manageable.
I believe it has a longer lasting battery.

Unfortunately, neither has an itrip out yet but hopefully that won't take too long.

It's done

2005-10-13T14:41:00.000-04:00

So, I finally told my boss that I'm moving to Denver. How scary is this? It's just so final now. In one month I will be without a job. My last day will be Nov. 14th.

As far as the actual quitting part goes, that was incredibly easy. Of course that doesn't mean I wasn't totally stressed out about it for the last couple days. My boss pretty much knew it was coming though, and he couldn't have been nicer. He said he was happy for me and that it was a good move, he also told me to put him down for recommendations and that I was welcome back whenever. I swear he's like the best boss ever, I doubt I'll ever have a boss as easy to work with again.

So now the word is quickly spreading around the office. It's starting to get depressing, sigh. A couple people have already wandered into my office and told me how sad it is that I'm leaving. It's scary to think that I've known some of these people since I was 19! I'm gonna miss this place a lot.

My twisted mind

2005-10-07T15:31:00.000-04:00

yet another look into it. Here's my dream from last night.

Brian and I along with his friends Zimm, Eric and Ev (I think Mark might have been there too) as well as my friend Jessica (who lives in Hong Kong) are going to a party at some girl's house. We have to take two cars and Brian and I end up driving. The house is in this big residential community area and on the way in there are people signing everyone up for a contest. But only people with cars are allowed to sign up, so Brian and I give them our info then head to the party.

At the party Jess gets completely annoyed with Eric, which makes sense if you've ever met Eric.

Other than that I don't remember much of the party, for some reason we all decide to stay there for the night though. I wake up at about 4 am and go to check on my car. During the night it had snowed a couple inches and I'm concerned that my parking brake wasn't set right and since I parked on the very steep driveway I'm afraid that the car has slid backwards into the cul-de-sac. Sure enough when I go outside my car is not where I left it. I look around and I can't find it anywhere. There are a couple cars covered in snow in the cul-de-sac and I vividly remember brushing away the snow from the license plates to see if I can find my car but it's nowhere to be found. Soon I give up and go back inside to sleep a little longer.

A couple hours later the rest of our group is awake and I've told them about my missing car. We go outside (of course there is no longer any snow and it's a beautiful spring day) and we find out that Brian's car is missing as well. We then decide that the best course of action would be to wander around the neighborhood in search of our cars. We walk around for a couple hours getting more and more pissed off that we haven't found them. While walking we notice that several hillsides and cul-de-sacs have been made into impromptu parkinglots. I then remember the contest that we had entered the day before and pull out the flyer for it that was still in my pocket. On the flyer are written these words: "Come fly away, away ..... with us!" Creepy, no? After looking at the flyer I look into the beautiful clear blue sky and am almost hit by a hover crane. That's right, it's a giant flying crane like something out of a SciFi constuction movie. Anyway, after this it all becomes clear. This was the contest, they hide our cars, using the hover cranes to transport them, and we search for them, the first one to find their car wins. This is when I wake up.

That didn't take long

2005-10-07T14:41:00.000-04:00

I thought you'd hold out a little longer.

451 Degrees of Waldo

2005-10-05T16:07:00.000-04:00

Apparently, last week was Banned Books awareness week. Banning books is sad. But, even sadder still is the fact that I learned about Banned Books week after listening to a Harry Potter podcast. Yes, I'm a complete dork, but where else am I going to turn to find out all the juicy details about the new movie coming out next month? Anyway, the Potter discussion directed me to this website which lists the 100 most challenged books from 1990 to 2000, on which the Harry Potter series is number 7. To clarify, because a book is challenged doesn't mean that it's actually banned, it just means that someone has formally asked for it to be banned. The list is derived from 6,364 reported challenges over the ten-year span. While I was reading through the list most of the books weren't very surprising, eg. something called Daddy's Roomate (#2) and Sex by Madonna (#19), but others were very surprising, such as Scary Stories (#1) and The Catcher in the Rye (#13). However, the most surprising of all of them (to me at least) was Where's Waldo? (#88). It'a a picture book for goodness sake! What could possibly be the reasoning behind banning it? I'm utterly befuddled.

Cinema returns to the Mall

2005-10-03T09:46:00.000-04:00

I went to Tyson's yesterday morning to check out the new expansion. I was totally impressed. Not only do they have a full Barnes and Noble (always a sucker for bookstores) but they also had several new trendy clothing and furniture stores. Free People is way over budget for me but the new Papaya seems to specialize in fun cheap clothing, like a specialized "going out" H&M only cheaper. Also, I'm excited about the restaurants on the first floor, Coastal Flats looks like a really fun place to get a weekend lunch or even after work happy hour, they've also put in a Gordon Biersch, so perhaps the two places can feed off each other for the happy hour crowd. Also, there is a new food court on the third floor near the movie theatre, which looks nice and clean, it reminded me very much of the food court in the Dulles town Center, lots of counters for chain fast food stores and a big center full of tables and chairs. They have Five Guys right next to Coldstone Creamery, yum.

However, by far the most startling change, is the relocated Victoria Secret. The storefront is insane! There's no way you can walk by without stopping and staring, the thing has got to be at least PG13. Most of the time Victoria Secret hides their Very Sexy line in the back of the store or off to the side in another room, but this new location seems to have said "We got it and we're gonna flaunt it!" There were at least 10 mannequins showing off the various lingerie bits and pieces along the black with neon pink lighted store front, all posed in erotic positions. Walking by you feel like you've been suddenly transported away from suburban Virginia and into one of the seedier areas of L.A. Yes, it's that shocking! Unsuspecting jaws were seriously dropping as they passed by.

I say, good for you, Victoria Secret! Tyson's needed a little kick in the butt, and you seem to have given it a cock punch as well. Unfortunately, I foresee a large backlash, I'm not sure that Tyson's Corner area is quite ready for this. The soccer moms of McLean and Vienna are going to have a conniption fit, and as we all know soccer moms rule the censoring world. So I don't give the new VS long before is cowers in fear and pushes its more sensitive merchandise back to were it came from, safely away from the front windows. In the mean time, fight on VS, I hope you give the soccer moms a run for their money!

Books are our friends

2005-09-29T09:58:00.000-04:00

While in Denver, Ted was asking me to write out a list of books I've read recently, so here it goes, in no particular order.

Stiff: The curious lives of human cadavers - I like to stick in non-fiction every once in a while. This was a good and interesting book, but don't attempt it if you're squeamish.

I, Robot (audio) - Several great short stories held together by a loose frame, Isaac Asimov is a genius. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm curious as to how they did it.

Dragonlance (the three central books) - I'm always a sucker for fantasy novels and these are no exception. If you like the genre you must read these.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - I reread books 4 and 5 in preparation. Though Goblet of Fire is still my favorite, Book 6 did not disappoint.

Phantom of the Opera (audio) - I loved the musical when I saw it in NYC a couple years ago and the book is great as well, a haunting mystery. The names were a little hard to keep straight as they were all French but perhaps that is because I was listening to it instead of reading it.

5 People You Meet in Heaven (audio) - This was on the top sellers list for a while but I wasn't all that impressed with it. It was too sappy and feel goody, also it dragged on a bit which is saying a lot for an audio book.

A Hat Full of Sky (audio) - Cute, light, children's fantasy book, though it's quite long. Terry Pratchett is a fun writer and any of his books would be good to read to your kids.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Takes a couple chapters to get into the dialog but a great scifi classic none the less. I love it when authors make up their own language, dialect or slang. What I liked the best about this book was all the references made to Australian idiosyncrasies (for those of you who aren't familiar with the book, it takes place on a Lunar penal colony).

Darwin's Radio (audio) - I loved the mix of evolutionary theory, archaic anthropology and hard core genetics in this book. The characters were a little lacking however.

Me Talk Pretty One Day (audio) - Funny and very sarcastic, though it could be a little whinny at times. The audio is read by the author himself and probably adds a bit to the story.

Currently reading:
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Tom recommended this to me and I'm about a third of the way through it. It's great so far but hard to explain what it's about without making it sound completely stupid.

Next on my list:
A Breath of Snow and Ashes - The latest in the Outlander series, it came out two days ago. Since, it's been several years since I read the last one, though, I may have to reread that first.
Biohazard - This was written by one of my coworkers professors. She says he's really neat and his life has been just amazing.
In Gods We Trust - I came across this the other day on Amazon and it looks intriguing, also, I haven't read an anthro book in a while.

If you have any good books to recommend let me know! I need something to put between those two upcoming non-fiction books.

Interesting and possibly scary

2005-09-27T16:56:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time since I looked at Dienekes' Anthro blog but after coming across a couple interesting Anthro books on Amazon this morning I thought I'd see what Dienekes was up to.

Apparently, things aren't looking so good for left-handed women. According to this article left-handed women are over twice as likely to develope pre-menopausal breast cancer than their right-handed counterparts. This seems to be attributed to in-womb conditions such as hormone levels. Interestingly, homosexuality in both men and women has also been linked to similar differences inutero. And, it's been observed that there is a higher percentage of left-handers in homosexual populations.

Keep in mind the study doesn't say anything about any linkage between left-handedness and post-menopausal breast cancer.

"Missed it by that much"

2005-09-27T10:03:00.000-04:00

I was sad to hear on the radio this morning that Don Adams a.k.a. Maxwell Smart, died this Sunday. I grew up watching Get Smart reruns on Nick at Night and pulled my first ever all nighter at a friend's house watching a Get Smart marathon. One of the first spy spoofs, Get Smart was wacky and hilarious and you can find references to it in almost every spy spoof movie since.

1. Shoe Phone - according to this article, it was the first ever cell phone (not that it worked) and I believe that they have the prop on permanent display at the Spy Museum here in DC. It's a classic.
2. Cone of Silence - One of the stupidest recurring gimmicks of any TV series I've ever seen. Max would always insist that the cone of silence be used when discussing top secret information, the problem was that the people in the cone of silence couldn't hear each other either which made for a very exasperated Chief.
3. Opening credits - Great song, great visual sequence. The camera follows Max as he enters Control headquarters.
4. Agent 99's lack of a real name - As far as I know her real name is never once mentioned in the series, and Max who ends up marrying her near the end of the series still only knows her as Agent 99.
5. Kaos vs. Control - I just loved the names of the two feuding agencies. And the recurring line that went something like "Zis is Kaos, ve don't _____ here!"

"There are no holidays in the fight against evil."
~Don Adams as Agent 86

Halfbaked=Heaven

2005-09-22T12:14:00.000-04:00

How good does this look! I saw one of these yesterday and haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Next time I go to the Deli across the street I'm getting one.

Trippin' Denver Style

2005-09-21T09:58:00.000-04:00

Last weekend Brian and I flew out to Denver to visit family, look at the city and to interview for a possible job. Unfortunately, the interview fell through since they hired someone else for the position, ah well. It would have been a cool job but since I'm not planning on moving out there right away, I doubt I would have gotten it. It would have been nice to interview anyway considering I've only had one interview ever, if you can call it an interview.

A major setback was the fact that Brian was sick as a dog for almost the entire trip. It pretty much sucked for him since he doesn't like to drink when he's feeling so bad and most of our time there was taken up with drinking activities: Coors Brewery tour, Redstone Meadery tour and Octoberfest. Poor guy :(

Otherwise the trip was great fun. I got to catch up with Kim, Ted and my cousin Rick as well as play with DJ who has grown into an 8.5 month old drooling machine! I'm amazed he doesn't dehydrate himself since Denver is so dry. He's a really happy baby (most of the time) and the type that strangers just have to come up and coo at. He's going to be a terror when he learns to crawl sufficiently.

This morning a confused coworker sent me this link. After reading the article, though, I'm not all that surprised. In absence of a gun culture, the UK has a thriving knife culture. Edinburgh isn't as bad as Glasgow but I was definitely told by friends not to walk alone at night in certain parts of the city. Also, the Scots like their drink and they get very rowdy after professional sporting events. I'm guessing most of the violent assaults are either alcohol or football (read soccer for us Americans) related and rarely fatal. For most of the time I was in Scotland, however, I was blissfully unaware and unaffected by this sort of violence. I never made it to a football match and thus never saw football hooligans in action and I usually went out for drinks with friends in the more crowded areas of the city taking a cab home if we stayed out late. This was why I got such a shock when on the night after my last day of work one of my friends, Abby, got headbutted in the middle of a bar by some random female nutcase. The woman was obviously trying to start a fight but Abby was so surprised by the sudden attack that she walked away still trying to figure out what had just happened. The rest of us after realizing what had happened took Abby outside and got her to describe the woman to the bouncers, who were called away in the middle of the description to stop a brawl that had suddenly erupted in the bar. We found out later that the woman had come to the bar with several drunken guys who were also trying to pick fights, with a bit more success. I also found out that what had happened to Abby was called a Glasgow Kiss.

Anyway, thinking of violence in cities made me curious about how Denver stacked up to Washington, DC. What I found was not incredibly surprising.

City, 2002	Crime index, total	Murder	Forcible rape	Robbery	Aggravated assault	Burglary	Larceny- theft	Motor vehicle theft
Washington, DC	7,767.9	45.9	45.9	653.5	850.2	905.1	3,661.4	1,605.9
Denver, Colo.	5,511.1	8.8	55.2	205.0	265.2	1,049.6	2,646.7	1,280.7

I was a little surprised to find that Denver was placed not far below Washington in the list of cities ranked by population size. Denver is ranked 25th with 554,636 by the 2000 census, while DC is ranked 21st with 572,059. And Denver is growing rapidly. The cost of living in Denver is quite a bit lower than DC mostly due to housing costs. According to this, the cost of housing in Denver is 110.6 and in DC it's 201.2, I have no idea what these numbers refer to but that does seem to be a significant difference. Sadly, moving to Denver will not alleviate my traffic woes. According to this Denver ranks above DC in traffic congestion. Coming from DC, I can not believe this is true. I just don't trust the numbers. After driving around the Denver area a couple times during rush hour I didn't see anything that came close to the beltway at rush hour. Yes, the road going south as we went north to the airport on monday looked pretty bad but it was still moving, which is more than I can say for certain parts of 66. Ah well, I guess I'll find out about Denver traffic sooner or later.

Incan Menagerie

2005-09-14T16:06:00.000-04:00

My coworker, Steve, recently returned (mostly intact) from a trip to Machu Picchu. We had a little impromptu slide show in the lunch room which nicely doubled the length of my lunch "hour", thanks Steve! All photos courtesy of Steve and his girlfriend Catherine.

The southern hemisphere has got us beat when it comes to exotic birds and rodents of unusual size.

(These are capybara in case the picture is too dark.)

However, I must say that when it comes to indigenous dogs, Australia is up to par with it's Dingos, much cuter than Coyotes, but not quite as cool as Arctic Wolves. South America, however, is way way way behind.

Naked dogs! Gross! You may already know about my dislike for the naked mole rat. As far as I'm concerned the only hairless mammals should be humans or water dwelling.

Anyway, here is the necessary Llama picture.

Apparently, Llamas got their name because of a misunderstanding. Similar to how the Kangaroo got it's name. The Spaniards on seeing Llamas for the first time asked the locals what they are called, "como se llama?" and the Indians, having no idea what was going on, simply repeated the last word. The story I heard, while in Australia, was that 'Kangaroo', in the language of the aboriginal tribe near Sydney meant "Go away" or something less nice.

A mobile space transmitter?

2005-09-14T14:55:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I realize that this is a bad picture but can anyone tell me why one car really needs three giant antenna? I mean assuming that this car isn't an under cover police car parked at the office building across the street from mine. What are they for?

It's my Birthday and I'll crash if I want to

2005-09-06T09:51:00.000-04:00

Another BDay, another successful trip to VaBeach! Naomi and I drove down Friday night, amazingly not hitting much traffic at all, the upside to ridiculously high gas prices. Saturday was spent at the Expo and the beach and visiting with Brian's family, his sister made a rockin' pre-race night curry. Admittedly, I was a little concerned about eating curry the night before a race but it turned out wonderfully. Sunday morning was the half marathon. Brian and I came in at 1:48, he beat me by one second and was one second away from getting his name in the paper the next day for being in the top 500 runners. If he hadn't spent the last 3 or so miles trying to keep me on pace he would have been in there easily, but I like to think he didn't mind TOO much. Anyway, thank you Brian, now let's just hope I can sort out what a Port-a-jon is for before the marathon. 1:48 puts us right on track for our 3:40 marathon goal, we just need to do another one of those, keeping up the same pace, easy right? Uh huh, sure, no problem.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and attempting to recover before partying for Becca's and my birthday that night. Naomi, Brian and I started drinking in the room at about 4:30 and I was nice and toasty by the time we made it to Mahi Mah's for dinner. It was very very yummy, sushi, fried oysters and tuna with some really good sauce on it. We had to wait for our table for about an hour and a half, and Naomi and Brian made the mistake of allowing me to order the first round of drinks. I got Naomi's margarita ok but unfortunately I ordered Manhattans for Brian and I by mistake, oops. You may wonder how it was I managed to order Manhattans by mistake, and if you do, you've obviously never been out drinking with me.

After dinner was the Journey concert, which was great fun, lots of good sing-a-long swaying songs on the beach on a perfect late summer night. Afterwards, Becca and Patrick decided to go walk on the beach and the rest of us piled into Amanda's car to go to a bar. Sadly, we gave up after 20 minutes of trying to get drinks and decided to try another bar, by this time, however, Brian and I were both about to fall asleep on our feet so we wussed out and made the 17 block walk back to the hotel instead, where we promptly crashed. I guess I'm just getting old, so sad.

Anyway, thanks to everyone that came and cheered us on, and who helped Becca and I celebrate!

A good Scottish podcast

2005-08-29T11:11:00.000-04:00

One of the podcasts I regularly listen to is Top of the Pods, it's goofy, silly and British, right up my alley. Recently one of the guys went on vacation and they had a guest host from another podcast come in. The guy's name is Mark and he sounds exactly like John Hanna, needless to say, I was instantly in love. Anyway, I decided to check out his regular podcast called Tartan Podcast. It's a music based podcast that features a wide variety of unsigned Scottish musicians and seems to have gotten quite a bit of popularity in recent months. I've just listened to a couple of shows but so far I've been very impressed. You can find and subscribe through iTunes or you can listen from his blog here.

Tomato Mania

2005-08-23T14:09:00.000-04:00

Most summers my company has a nice little picnic or lunch of some sort to help the two offices socialize and get to know each other. Unfortunately, we almost never intermingle and instead spend most of the time talking to the people in our own office anyway. The whole thing is very fruitless (not sorry for the terrible pun).

This year one of my coworkers came up with the idea of doing something constructive instead. And picking food for the poor won out over other more costly ideas such as going to a Nationals game. I had a lot of fun, we got to hang out in the sun, get a little dirty and do a little charity. Also, we got to take home any tomatoes we wanted to. Unfortunately, I wore a tank top and in my effort to make sure I got every fruit on the plant, made a habit of leaning over the bush as far as possible. I noticed several hours later that my armpits were dyed green by whatever chemicals they sprayed on plants. Of course this was after I had spent most of the day in public, still with a tank top on. I wonder what those old highschool friends thought of me when I saw them at the mall sporting my alien colored underarms? Ah well.

Here are some more pictures, taken by my coworker Liz. Yesterday really was gorgeous, the perfect day to be out and about.

Mahna Mahna

2005-08-23T11:13:00.000-04:00

This song, by The Muppets, was sent to me by a coworker a while ago and remains in my iTunes Library so that it comes up every so often when I'm least expecting it. It cracks me up every time, and reminds me of the Space Ghost version of it that Brak sings. I used to have two CD's of Space Ghost Coast to Coast but I stupidly loaned them out to a guy in college and never saw them again.

Did I slip through the system?

2005-08-23T10:56:00.000-04:00

This weekend I received my new license in the mail. Even though I have many speeding tickets, a parking ticket and one accident on my record, it seems that the DMV has decided to continue allowing me free reign on the streets without retaking the written test. This rocks, since even though taking a couple hours to study the test booklet wouldn't have been too bad, I was not looking forward to taking on the nasty behemoth that is the DMV waiting line. Of course they only let you renew online every other time so I will have to battle the waiting line in five years time, but who knows where I'll be then.

The good thing about getting my new license is that it is now sideways instead of vertical and I can go to the giant wine store in Denver without being kicked out. This store for some reason kicked me out when I was there with my mom and sister three years ago even though I was 21 solely because I had a Virginia license that was still vertical. The stupidest part was that the woman understood and believed that I was 21 but kicked me out anyway, now tell me does that make sense? I stupidly had to wait in the car while my mom and sister finished shopping.

Podcasting to the void

2005-08-19T09:59:00.000-04:00

So, I've begun subscribing to a couple of podcasts which I listen to at work, they never quite make it to my iPod, which perhaps defeats the purpose but, oh well. iTunes has made it incredibly easy to find, subscribe and download podcasts. The problem is that all the podcasters out there so far seem to be complete idiots. Most podcasters I've come across are teams of two mid-twenties to early thirties dorky wanna-be radio personalities. The trouble is that I know these guys are idiots and half the time I'm laughing at them instead of with them but I just can't stop listening to them. The trouble is that even though they're idiots they're still much less annoying than the actual radio personalities that get paid to broadcast their inane chatter over the radio waves here in the DC area.

The DMV, NICE? No way.

2005-08-17T15:28:00.000-04:00

So, I'm an idiot and of course I let my vehicle registration go out of date before renewing it. However, I eventually did decide to fix that and went over to the DMV website to see how that could be done. I first find out that since I recently moved and my address is now out of date, I have to first change my address before renewing my registration. I then find out that I need a PIN number with the DMV to do so. Since, I've not done anything online with the DMV before, I don't seem to have a PIN number, so of course I request one, but the only way they have to get it to me is to send it to my address on file, which is of course no longer my address. I call up the DMV to explain that they are about to send my PIN number to the wrong address but it is virtually impossible to get a real person on the line. So I sit back and put my trust in the US Postal Service who I have asked to forward all of my mail for me. This was 2 weeks ago. I finally got my new PIN number Monday but too late as I came back from my weekend trip to NY State sunday with a ticket for having expired tags neatly tucked under my windshield wipers (which also need replacing).

Anyway, I got my PIN and went back to the website today to change my address and renew my registration, all of which was so painless that I thought, "Hey! while I'm at it I'll renew my license" which will expire at the end of September. I had thought that because of my ridiculous amount of speeding tickets they would make me retake the written test and not let me renew online. But the License Renewal form I got in the mail the same day as my new PIN number mentioned nothing about having to go in and retake the test, so I figure why not give it a shot. It was easy, a little TOO easy if you get my meaning. They tell me that I will receive a new license within 5 business days, but I have the sneaking suspicion that instead I'll get another letter, accompanied by a study booklet, telling me that I have to go into the DMV to take the written test. But, if this is the case, why couldn't they have just told me up front? What about the people that don't realize they might need to take the test and wait till the last minute to renew?

Are you prepared to be fabulous?

2005-08-17T09:51:00.000-04:00

As I sat down to enjoy my free bagel with jam (someone finished my cream cheese) I picked up the section of the Post closest to me and began to read. Granted the Style section is not the most hardcore news but still how many articles really need to be written about iPod obsessed freaks? There in the lower right corner was an article titled: "The iPod: A Love Story Between Man, Machine". As if the title weren't bad enough the article goes on to describe in an utterly whimsical fashion the songs that send this otherwise normal seeming man into a frenzy of nostalgia when heard on his ipod. Granted, I own an iPod mini, and I like it. It's compact, allows me to carry around half my music library in that little pocket in my jeans that seems to have no other purpose, and it's excellent for listening to books on cd while I'm brainlessly going through hanging files at work. However, it does not "complete me". The Post seems to think that articles about twenty-somethings freakishly in love with their iPods is the only way to get in touch with their younger readers, and so has been putting out at least one article a month about it. I'm beginning to wonder whether or not Macintosh is perhaps contributing a little monetary padding to the Post under the table. I haven't seen any articles about other mp3 players, though this doesn't mean they don't exist. These articles wouldn't be nearly as idiotic if they carried some sort of new information but they don't, they're pitifully similar to articles I remember reading in the Madison Highschool newspaper, Hawktalk.

Anyway, while we're on the Style section, two more articles caught my eye this morning. One on a new place in Arlington called Denim Bar which apparently features bartender styled salesmen selling designer jeans and perhaps even giving out a beer or two. This is perfect, beer while you shop! What better way to get someone to spend a shitload on a pair of jeans than to get them drunk first. The only problem is that these jeans probably cost about 600 smackaroos and I would most likely be turned away from the store after being told by the owner that I am just "not prepared to be fabulous."

A man who is "prepared to be fabulous", Christopher Walken, has his own article as well. Directly under the article about Denim Bar is an article about www.walken2008.com. Which includes such wonderful quotes as "Why vote for the lesser of two evils, when you can vote for someone who looks evil?" and suggestions for campaign slogans such as "When I win, everyone gets a glass of shhham-pan-ya", "Like your father's gold watch, this country needs to be kept safe, secure and in a warm place" and "More Cowbell!" Christopher Walken is awesome!

There's Caviar in my Shoe

2005-08-03T09:27:00.000-04:00

This week I've been plagued by strange vivid dreams, perhaps it has to do with the fact that I've moved back into my parents house, or perhaps I've been getting too much sleep since I hurt my ankle (yes, again) the other night at a soccer game, and am therefore not getting up early to run before work. Whatever the reason, last night's dream was the weirdest by far.

I was in Becca's house but not the house she just got, this place was more like a warehouse of some sort. Anyway, I was changing in this big store room when all of a sudden about 5 guys burst in the room. I yell at them to get out but they ignore me and start talking about all the stuff they have to move around. Becca and Patrick are at the door looking like they want to try and get the guys out of the room but are for some reason unable to. So I go up to the smallest one of the 5 and punch him as hard as I can in the left jaw. Weird feeling considering I've never punched anyone in the face before.

Anyway, so I finally get them out of the room and am able to finish changing. Then I'm in a bathroom but instead of a toilet there is a big bucket. Soon, a small Indian boy, about 8 years old, walks in. We proceed to have a very in depth conversation about philosophy and religion, the boy is Hindu and tries to explain the religion to me. I get the feeling that he is somehow exasperated with me and also feels very much superior to me. Then I hear my mom calling from the other room. We are late to go somewhere and I'm in a rush. I put on my shoes and scoop up the boy and hurry out. My parents are waiting for me, sitting on the couch. My mom says, "ah, there you are, now I just have to put on my shoes and we'll be ready. There's caviar in them." And sure enough I can hear the little caviar eggs being squished as she puts her feet into her shoes. The sound makes me feel a little queasy. The end.

The only things that I can think of that may have something to do with my waking life are the little indian boy and the caviar. It's possible that the caviar is related to the band named Caviar, whose song "Tangerine Speedo" I have recently rediscovered on an old mix CD of mine. The little indian boy reminds me of my cousin's son Matthew, who is not indian, but who told me the other night that Harry Potter is not cool.

Vending Machine Conspiracy

2005-07-11T15:36:00.000-04:00

Why oh why won't you just give me a Snickers?! I put in my money you accepted that. 60 cents a little expensive yes, but i graciously overlook that every time I get a major Snickers craving and I hear you calling me, like a siren, from 2 floors down. I thought we had an agreement, once we got past that nasty folded paper bill incident and you very clearly let me know that you would only accept coin money from me in a future, i bent to your will, I gave in, the lure of the Snickers was just too much.

But now, what is this? "Make another selection", what does that mean? I tried to placate you, i tried reinserting all of the coins, I even tried putting in an extra dime to make sure that you registered all of my coins. But all i get from you is "Make another selection", no explanation, just "Make another selection" rolling endlessly across the screen every time i hit E3, the Snickers combination. Why must you torment me?

Ok, ok, after the third person passed by with a sideways tentative look in our direction, I gave up. I'll settle for the second best chocolate fix on your menu, a Kitkat bar, E4. But what is this? "Make another selection"! Feverishly I go through all of the other chocolate bar selections. Three Musketeers, E1, "Make another selection" Hershey's, E5, "Make another selection" Crunch, E2, "Make another selection" Nooooo! All of the chocolate is organized on row E, and you won't give me any of it!

Just when i'm thinking i'll have to return downstairs dejected, forced to get Peanut M&M's instead, I see it, Butterfinger, D1. I'm saved! Sure it wasn't my top choice or even in my top 5 but that's ok, I'll deal. It's hard to argue with someone that doesn't bother to explain any of their behavior. But, if you keep treating me like this i'm going to leave you. It's not like you have the monopoly after all. I could just take my money up to the 6th floor machine, sure the commute's a bit longer but I can handle it. I'm sorry but you really are forcing my hand on this one.

Washed out

2005-07-08T15:15:00.000-04:00

Sorry, not a great blogging week from me. Anyway, here's an update:

New Camera Phone, pics below

New iTrip, I've already made it through most of an audio book in my car

Camping trip last long weekend, this deserves it's own entry but i haven't bugged Brian for pictures yet so you'll all have to wait

My new procrastination tool at work, Sudoku Yep i'm a nerd, but they're fun! And it beats mindlessly playing solitaire over and over again.

Running, running and more running... we're now well over 100 miles since we started training

Anyway, so for those of you not living in the general area, it's been extremely wet here recently. And just to emphasize that fact here are a couple of pics from my commute to work this morning taken with my new handy phone.

This is Huntermill Road just before you cross the W&OD, there were two of these sections of washed out roadway.

Not a very good pic but this is a field behind a horse stabling place. Usually, it's a beautiful lush green field where they let the horses out for exercise, this morning it seems to have transformed into a swamp.