Crazy Nomad

2010-02-22T19:09:00.002-06:00

Once again I have tested the patience of my readership and at this point I'm sure we're just down to those who have this blog pop up in their google reader, which is fine, the savvy will inherit the earth and all that.

So my last post was shortly after the fourth of July last year. We're back by popular (1 person, love you cuz) demand so here goes everything.

My patriotic resolutions from the prior post have been fulfilled with mixed results. The John Adams miniseries was quite good and educational but the resolution to cheat less on my taxes was ill-timed as I seem to owe the IRS a bit more than expected this year, and my resolve to not cheat has served as a sort of moral anchor to the straight and narrow. Its a shame that my one New Year's resolution was to be more resolute or else I would feel better about breaking my prior commitment. Still, owing the IRS is one of those good problems (assuming one can pay) that one shouldn't really complain about.

One recent (as of last night) development is that I now have my very own internet connection at home now. Its nice being up to date in all the most recent technological wonders. I'm sure my beloved readership will appreciate the lowering of barriers to blogging that I'll now enjoy.

Went to Lake Tahoe with the Tea & Strumpets crowd a few weeks back. Was fun, I think I like snowboarding but will never love it, maybe I just have to get better. I also learned that I have an almost pathological inability to gamble. I did manage to lose $80 in craps in about 5 minutes though, so progress is being made. This was also the first time I'd ever stepped into a casino. Was more or less like I expected, except the bathrooms were exceedingly below par. I tried to practice counting cards while watching BK, AY and Tall play Let it Ride, but wasn't very successful. One morning I did manage to walk down to the lake itself and it was very beautiful. Rest in peace Fredo (Godfather II). (Note, I didn't really try to count cards but wanted AY to shake his head when he read that)

For the summer I'm thinking more seriously than I have in recent years about playing club ultimate again. That or work on long distance running. I'm leaning towards ultimate though, more social + more beer.

Well, I'm about to tuck into my nightly dose of Mencken or Twain. I'll soon develop a very healthy disdain for the American public I'm sure, which is fine.

Fourth of July

2009-07-04T21:00:00.002-05:00

So I began this morning in Cumberland, MD the Queen City (or Queen's City?, I apologize for the uncharacteristic lack of research on this). Given that Mars was canceled (Is Xmas next?) I ventured out there to visit with an aunt of mine and take in the local scenery. Turns out that its not a bad place. I walked up to a cliff overlook named lover's leap (sadly [but luckily?] alone) which one can find behind the local plastics plant, naturally. From the signage about town I gathered that Cumberland was quite important back in olden times. After a hearty breakfast and enjoyable conversation I left my aunt's 6 books richer than when I arrived and with the knowledge that one can find fossils at the top of the mountain behind her house. I plan to return and look for some of these ocean fossils in the sky at a later date.

On my way to the DC metro area I stopped at the rather happening Rocky Gap State park and walked about 4-5 miles round trip to see the first homestead in Allegheny county (I saw an old well) and see a marker for the Mason-Dixon line. Along the way I saw a sign that alluded to some supposed scenic overlook. The only thing I saw that might qualify is a metal tower that has an aviation beacon at the top and a rather rusted ladder leading up to it, I assume the park's insurance agent has neglected to hike this particular trail for some time. On the way down I came within a few feet of what I believe was a rattlesnake. I was almost upon him before I came out of my day dreaming. After I scooted around him I threw a few sticks lightly at him to suggest he clear the trail (don't ask me why I didn't do this before I scooted around him). He obliged me by moving halfway off the trail, I decided to not press the point and resumed my descent. During the rest of the walk your intrepid reporter jumped at two rather snake like sticks.

This evening I headed down to the National Mall to see the fireworks at DC's Washington Monument, which is somehow more famous than the one in Baltimore, which you have to see to believe. (link not provided) I was pleased to walk around the House side of the Capitol and hear Aretha Franklin belting out Respect, it seemed to lend credibility to the whole affair. It was quite touching to see a POW-MIA flag flying below the Star Spangled Banner on the Capitol building. Anyway, after Aretha left the stage Barry Manilow came on and did something (I was walking down to the mall at this point to get a better view and couldn't hear the performance as well due to the doppler effect [Manilow's only weakness]) and at the crescendo (I apologize if that is not the mot juste) the fireworks started, which pleased me deeply. The show was short, all of 15 minutes, which is how I like my fireworks. Any longer and I feel the maestro is overreaching. At the conclusion of the show I felt a minor starburst (sorry) of patriotism in my spirit and resolved to cheat less on my taxes and move the John Adams miniseries up in my netflix queue.

A few side notes:

I've recently been reading a bit of David Foster Wallace, mostly essays on tennis, but George also lent me his copy of Consider the Lobster. The first essay in which recounts his experience at the pornography convention in Las Vegas in the late nineties. A must read, do not skip the foot notes. Its called Big Red Son.

I believe the winner today at Coney Island engulfed 68 hot dogs in 10 minutes, the record in 2000 was 20. Progress!

I learned that Maryland has no natural lakes. If you find a lake in Maryland, it has a dam.

I have now read two of the Jeeves and Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse, if you enjoy english humor, and you can read, these are also a must.

Hiking in the dark

2009-05-11T20:11:00.002-05:00

Went up to VT this past weekend for Get Ho Get Leid. On Friday Jason and I hiked up Mt. Mansfield, had a picnic at the top, and then used his headlamp and the full moon (It's better to be lucky than savvy) to hike down in the dark.

Unfortunately the weather on Sat. and Sun. was intended more to encourage the continued lushness of the green mountain state than to facilitate good ultimate. Due to lightning on Sat. and cold, windy rain on Sunday and a Rochester team that demurred in playing out a consolation game we got a total of 3.5 games of ultimate out of the weekend. A bit disappointing, but these things happen.

Middlebury does seem to have a few things going for it: Noonies sandwich shop where I had the Vermonter and the Purple Passion, Flatbread where our team cleaned them out of the venison braised in tomato and redwine, wild leek and fiddlehead special, and Otter Creek, who were selling the remainder of their winter lager for nickels on the bottle. Also I would not be surprised if someone told me Middlebury has the best athletic facilities of any Div III school.

Good trip, glad to be sleeping in a bed again.

2009-05-05T22:30:00.002-05:00

Just finished off The White Tiger and then watched the movie Once. I guess the theme is follow your dreams? Kind of mixed means though in achieving that.

Highlights were posted from Acapulco and can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoS1_V5PhQc I've got some decent ones in there, although most of them are of the "Oh, so close!" variety. Leo has some nice ones too.

Oh and I celebrated Cinco de Mayo by putting red cabbage in some homemade tacos. Rather festive I thought.

Up to VT this weekend for hiking, drinking and ultimate. Maybe that will push me to trying out for a team in a couple weeks, we'll see.

Adieu and good night my patient readership of 1 or 2.

Hey Rube!

2008-10-13T19:55:00.003-05:00

So the title of this post is my new favorite word. Its also the name of the next ultimate team I form. From dictionary.com:

hey rube
–noun
1. (used as a call to rally circus or carnival personnel in a fight, esp. in a fight with townspeople).

2. a fight between townspeople and the members of a circus or carnival.

So after a lapse of almost 3 years in the hey, what's joe saying now series, we have our newest installment. I have an impish desire to yell "hey rube" at a carnival and see what happens. I imagine it would be tantamount to yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, but somehow I feel the sentence would be less. Good thing probably that summer and carnival season has passed us by.

Good trip back to Chicago last weekend, people seem to be doing well, what with their buying of distressed real estate, creating boom machines, brick-on-a-rope betting and first rate baby-making. Good food too. Just to be mean I printed up Hot Doug's specials for a co-worker last Friday, he's the type who will go to 3 grocery stores to get the perfect ingredients for a dinner; sadly though, showing him the specials proved to be a double-edged sword, as I saw them too, and despite my recent meal at Hot Doug's, I began to feel a bit of a longing for the world's foremost purveyor of encased meats.

I had my first fall league games this past weekend. Despite some notable plays I realized that my twice a week tennis game will not keep me up to speed on the ultimate field. I'm hurting now as a result sadly. I just noticed that Machine made Nationals, and so allow me to extend my congratulations in this semi-public forum. Dane, I would extend my sympathies for you having to cart around a brick at nationals, except I can't help but think it will be to your benefit, so I will extend no sympathy. Also Nemesis made nationals and Haymaker apparently made regionals, well done gentlemen, well done all-around.

that's all i have for now, fare thee well my good readers (no doubt only those savy enough to use google reader) and best of luck in all your misadventures.

Cheers.

The evolution of the german board game

2008-06-21T10:46:00.003-05:00

So for the last 20 days or so I have off and on been immersed in a world called Travian. Its a free online game where you have a village and you compete with other players on a world map to turn your wee municipality into a dynamic empire in route to establishing your Pax Joe Little across the known world. Its pretty interesting, like settlers but one game can last 3 months to 300 days or something, I must admit, on the server I am playing on I don't know when the "end" is. I think I'm on the 3 month track but we'll see. I've made a number of rookie mistakes but recently have been using my market to conduct arbitrage in the commodities market, that's been pretty exciting. Since I know the nerd:non-nerd ratio here is pretty high if people are interested we could all form little villages when the next server goes on, form an alliance and impose our will on lesser beings. Or not. But from the amount of enthusiasm that people had for settlers, I imagine this might prove of some interest.

In other news I went for a run/walk from my place through the maze of SW SE to the Jefferson memorial, FDR memorial, Lincoln memorial, and back. Pretty cool, nice to catch my breath while reading inspiring words.

I was out Thursday night with a friend and a young woman (nicely dressed but she'd had a few) started walking around asking if anyone had lost their cell phone in the woman's restroom. She then proceeded to call the contact listed under Dad, briefly commenting on the picture that appeared when she did so(this was around 11:00pm). It was amusing to listen to the one side of the question, especially when she commented that, "You look pretty hot too, Daddy-O." It was pretty awesome.

Well I'm off to Eastern Market to get the best peaches I've ever had. Ta ta.

The state of things

2008-06-12T19:24:00.004-05:00

So busy weekend lined up, lets hope that it proves fun in addition to busy.

In not so surprising news it is looking slightly more likely with each day that I will not play club ultimate this year, hopefully some sort of pickup team can be formed for the AY super important friendly spectacular in Naperville event (I assume he's running it) and after that we can cap things off up in Bowdoin, Maine. Plan-wise nothing firm yet, but I have a feeling something could come together.

Anything else, oh! I remember. For those who don't know I bought a car about 2 months ago. A sweet '04 bright blue hyundai elantra. Its a pretty sweet ride. Buying a car was scary, for those who know how cheap I am, try to imagine sitting with me through that whole experience, Trudy was very brave and patient. But so far the car is running fine. I'm learning small things about car ownership, like how to parallel park and changing while driving: which I'm very good at, the driving that is. So yeah, while I used to smirk when others complained about gas prices, now I sit at home (when I'm not commuting to or from there), stare at maps of Saudi Arabia, draw large red arrows from the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea to where I imagine there are oil fields and drop them off at the White House as I run by. I like instigating things.

Well sayonara, until an as of yet to be determined time I bid my faithful readership of 2? 3? a solemn adieu.

Also, I need to make an amendment to prior post. In the great penis line of DC there is a second statue of Lincoln directly on that same line, so add one more I guess. Its in Lincoln Park just across the street from me.

Just got back from a walk

2008-06-05T22:01:00.002-05:00

So as the title suggests I just returned from ma little stroll in and around the environs of our fair nation's capital. It occurred to me as I locomoted that tomorrow is the 2 month anniversary of my movie to the DC metro area. Very exciting!

So I initially moved in with Trudy but recently have located to my aunt's place east of the capitol. It's actually a pretty sweet pad. If I were to walk outside of it and stand in the middle of the road on the traffic island I would be standing in a pretty famous line. On it lies a marble representation of Abe Lincoln's crotch, the large phallus memorializing GW, the capital dome, me, standing on a traffic island vaguely reminiscent of a cock and balls, and then home plate at RFK stadium. That's like 6 penis things in a row; I'm sure it will weigh heavily on Nicolas Cage's mind in national treasure III.

So yeah, its a pretty sweet pad that I'm fortunate to stay in for a few months. The downside is that I work in Hunt Valley, MD. Why don't you go ahead and look that up on google maps and then zoom out till you find DC. So yeah, its about 56 miles away, which is pretty awesome. The saving grace is that its against rush hour both ways and I can make the trip in about an hour. A commute I once swore I'd never do, but here I am, blogging like I never swore I wouldn't do. I'm currently investigating some combination of walking, training, more walking, light railing, and yet more walking that will let me not drive every day of the week

I may just be here for the summer and then move up to Baltimore in a bit, then I'll get to go on a walking tour of places that were filmed in The Wire. That would be sweet. I've already been to the community college (CCBC) where Stringer Bell took his economics courses, or where I think he took them: nice place. (SHOOT! I just looked it up and he went to BCCC, oh well)

Well I should sign off for now since it's getting pretty late and I have to take some combination of 295, 495, 195,95,695 and 83 to get to work tomorrow. Good night my reading public and feel free to email, I miss you all.

The last thing anyone expected

2007-08-20T16:57:00.000-05:00

So, this would probably have gone unnoticed except to the few who have RSS feeds. Of course no one may have a feed to this space, in which case don't I look like the presumptuous ass.

First I'm jealous of TBR for circumnavigating the second largest freshwater body in NA. My roommate from college and I had been talking about doing this after scaling back from riding the length of the silk road and Copenhagen to Capetown, which recent houseguest, MF, actually encountered people doing; or at least people riding the length of Africa. After watching Feasting on Asphalt II though, the idea of riding along the Mississippi from northern illinoisish to New Orleans or vice versa is certainly appealing, at least from a culinary perspective. Of course the first step on any trip of this kind would be acquiring a bike, damn details.

Cooler was a bit hard. We went 0-4 on Saturday, losing to Machine, Falling apart at the end against Sack lunch, getting beaten by some team that I wish we hadn't got beaten by, losing to Surly ultimate (is Turtle automatically the best player in master's? Though i guess with Parinella playing as well and probably a few others I don't know, he's got some competition) On Sunday we lost to some team from MN, frustrating, then we managed to win, then we lost to the Van Buren Boy's (former CLX men) but actually played well. So 1-6. ouch. oh well. Oh yeah, almost the entire tournament was played in rain, nothing like being wet while losing.

In other ultimate news my competitive lost in the summer league finals, making me 0-4 in chicago league championship games. Tucker, I take back all Buffalo Bills jokes.

After watching feasting on asphalt and another show that focused primarily on weird things to eat in China (a restaurant specializing in stomach? maybe not a first date place) I want to cook a little more. We'll see what happens there. One things for sure, I definitely won't blog about it. Well that's all I got for the moment, perhaps more in the future? I'd say yes, but that might make me a liar. Cheers.

The Heineken Maneuver

2007-02-08T18:34:00.000-06:00

So today at work a colleague of mine started eyeing a piece of meat. And not the sort to lollygag about, or apparently to undertake any of this newfangled "cutting", he popped it in his mouth and after insufficient mastication, he swallowed it. But our story doesn't stop there, because the meat stopped there; inhibiting the free flow of air into his lungs and slowing turning him an alarming shade of red. One of our more alert brethren noticed the changing hue of his colleague's face and as he was telling the customer on the phone, "can you hold on for a second," a different coworker stepped in and performed the Heimlich Maneuver, dislodging the tidbit and saving our coworker's young life. I wasn't present for these happengings, but the person who performed the maneuver came into the kitchen soon after and informed me, rather proudly, that she thought she had just performed The "Heineken Maneuver." So let this just serve as a friendly reminder that choking can and does happen, and that no matter what you call it, you should always be prepared to use the maneuver to dislodge it.

In other, non-life threatening news. Went down to the old haunts last night for some lively pickup with JT and all the roommates except JF. My broken toe held up rather well, as I waddled and hopped about. Was a good time. Anyway, can't wait for Survivor to start and to hear Rick's always entertaining rendition of the opening credits song. It gives everything just the perfect primal air; I think.

Daybreak. Chicago.

2007-02-03T10:59:00.000-06:00

Last night was the surprise going away party for KC. After JC let us all down and failed to get KC to stay at Piece, He, Thor, and I took him over to smoque to eat while people arrived and the house got set up. What followed was your typical evening of revelry and merriment, with a few funny events that I can't talk about here. "Than what's the point of blogging?" you ask. A fair question, I guess, and one among many that I don't care to answer.

I along with Phil, Claire, Schultz, and Bjorn won a best of 7 flip cup competition, 4-3. Though Akira threw the second to last game so that Liz and Claire would have to kiss again. Good man. A dance party then commenced, sort of, and I handedly won the distinguished, best dancer in a pink shirt award, handed out by the inimitable TH.

This morning I woke up to the sounds of MK cleaning away, and I went out to say hi and thank you, before returning to bed; because I'm polite as well as lazy. BK, with MK's able help, is currently in the process of browning beef, boar, and venison for tomorrow's chili. We all tried some of the venison, it was very good. I'm very excited for the chili and for the future when the remaining venison is grilled.

In other news since I last posted, thanksgiving was nice, xmas came and went (thankfully), New Year's was fun, I went to mexico, broke my toe, and went to a sweet discotech in acalpulco. I believe that a walking beer schtick tournament might actually happen this year, we'll see. I took part in starting a food blog. Here and have since contributed nothing.

I'm ready for the Super Bowl, while I will of course root for the bears, since some rather comical Colts' fans will be in attendance, it should be fun if either team wins. And we have about an entire keg left over from last night, so our little party should not lack for inebriation. Well, that's all I got. Check out the other blog some time. I may write there eventually, especially if I take up guerilla gardening.

I'll post when I fucking want to

2006-11-07T22:00:00.000-06:00

So today or yesterday, I'm not sure, Someone with more magic, juggling, and ultimate ability than sense, (ok, a good amount of sense too) said I needed to post more. Well, I haven't been drunk, and no amount of sober resolve to post is equal to a drunken inclination. So here I am.

So the past week at work, my office has become a bit of a phone bank for the Republicans. This is due to the major principals of the company being rather big Republican backers. Today, a US congressman came in to the office to thank the people who had been helping him out. Two people, apparently thinking our office could double as a kennel, brought their dogs. At one point the dogs started growling at each other which prompted the dear congressman to turn to me and say, "it's really a dog fight in here." So there you have it, the first words ever said to me personally by a national representative, were quite literally about a possible dog fight. Also when a strange woman came in she walked down the hallway making a lot of cutesy noises about a "precious" or "ragamuffin" or "beautiful," I naturally assumed she was talking about me and was getting uncomfortable. Later I realized she had to be addressing one the two dogs. Anyway, weird day at work. Lots of strangers about.

In other news we had our fall league tournament last saturday. Public News Team suffered from the lack of some of our key pledge drivers but still did ok, finishing a respectable 9th or so. I played awesomely as always. We lost to Gary's team, which means I was knocked out of title contention in every league I played in this year by a Gary Ledonne led team. Fuckin' Gary's teams. Oh well.

I'm beginning to think very seriously about getting a touring bike for next summer so I can ride around and look at stuff in an energeticly efficient manner. Fun times, you all are invited to join me.

Today I went to Piece where I told Bryan I would be going to Acalpulco, and so should you by the way. We were there officially for the celebration of 4 chicago teams going to nationals. I was there really to hang out with Lyrica and Jason. Oh well, perhaps this weekend?

Anything else? nope. Well maybe, I've watched a bit of da ALI G show recently, its quite hysterical. Though I have not and will not see Borat in theatres. But the new 007 movie, Yes! Who's in? I'm in. Fuck yeah!

A plan that makes sense

2006-10-13T18:30:00.000-05:00

So I'm writing in my kitchen and may have to be here for some time as the floor is covered in grocery bags from BK's recent shopping trip. He was giddy with the excitement of finding a meat wholesaler that sells to the common man. Apparently, Bk has taken it upon himself to cook every night through monday, this is a far cry from the bryan who last week announced that he might be done with making dinners. I'm glad that resolve quickly evaporated.

As the bulk of this readership has no doubt noticed, its gotten cold in Chicago. This has became most apparent to me this morning as 20 minutes after I got to work I realized that my hair was sticking up like alfalfa's. A natural result of wearing a hat I suppose. Hopefully some time this winter the alfalfa look will have caught on with the business set and I won't have to worry about it anymore.

---2 day break in the writing

So I just finished watching Studio 60, its good, I like it. It makes me want to write. All good things. The Bears game was something else. Of course the moment I walk away in disgust (about the 4th INT) is a play before the bears return the fumble for the TD. Tough game though, I expect 3 people died in Chicago b/c of Bears related Heart Attacks. Its awesome though, I got the sense the defense was like "fuck it! we can win without an offense, we just have to keep them off the field." mentality. Anyway, the weekend was fun. I think I'm going to try and start running to try and abrogate the effects of my current high calorie, delicious, food centered lifestyle. But of course that will most likely not happen. Oh well.

It was fun to hang out with meagles, JW, LH, and all the others who came over for football and food last night. Hopefully y'all take the hint and come over more often.

The King of Chicago

2006-10-01T22:38:00.000-05:00

Just watched the bears score a lot of points against the defending NFC super bowl representatives; that was fun. Long passes, to obvious receivers, who catch the ball, Frankly I don't know if Chicago is ready, but i'm sure that we'll all appreciate it in time.

Well I survived my trip to Arizona, which is very hot even in late september and managed to have a very nice dinner with my cousin and her husband. Her 16 month old son was also there but was hanging out with the wait staff for most of the meal.

Got back to Chicago and played fall league on 2 bad hammies. Was fortunate to surivive RR's throws to me with nothing worse than a popped out lense and a sore jaw. Though of course I can't be mad at RR, he's the only confirmed reader of this space that I've had in the past month or so. Got to hang out a bit with RT over the weekend, which was nice, although much of it was during a Lost marathon that I've begun, trying to become current on the show before it starts up again this week. I have 2 discs left to watch after watching 8 episodes in about 12 hrs. That was fun.

Sunny AZ

2006-09-27T09:05:00.000-05:00

So I'm currently sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Scottsdale waiting for my ride to get here and bring me to work. I flew out yesterday (Tues) and will ne here through Friday. I was really excited to come out because I have quite a bit of family here, but as it turns out my aunt and uncle are in mexico, one cousin is in MN, my dad was here last week and will be back next week, and my stepbrother goes to school at the U of Arizona but I won't have enough free time to go down to Tucson. Fortunately I have one cousin who I will be able to meet up and have dinner with. Probably at a place called Oregano's that has a huge mural of North Avenue Beach in Chicago, I find that comical.

So the Real World Party was a bit interesting. I saw a lot of things that can't be unseen between 9 and 6am, but fortunately most were good. It was funny to go through the timeline of events with my roommates as we got different perspectives on various events and were able to go, "wait, with who? where?" It was interesting.

Sectionals was a bit of a downer. We crushed on saturday going 3-0. Won our first game sunday 12-11 after being down 9-11. We then lost to machine but managed to put up a few points and I called a time out to try and keep my roommates from their precious football just a bit longer. After that we played the team we had beat in the morning and managed to lose 12-13 disqualifying us from regionals. Though we may still be able to go by default, so a little disappointing. Though, it means I'll be able to play with Public News Team, my fall league team, this weekend for the first time, which is exciting. Sunday wasn't all bad though as I was able to drown my sorrow in home smoked pork shoulder sandwiches, crisp cole slaw, and a mighty potato salad. We kind of need to throw a fake roommate of the year competition at our place and when Bryan's name is pulled from the envelope all look surprised. He also made 2 beer-can-chickens this past week. That was a good night too.

I'm currently reading Blue Highways, which I may have commented on before, but its one of my favorite books. Guy travels around America on the backroads in the late 70s and just records the conversations he has with people and writes about America. Its fantastic.

A rockin' weddin'

2006-09-06T21:00:00.000-05:00

So my weekend started off with a bang, took off from work an hour earlier than I was supposed to, though quite by accident, and got home in time to go to Hot Doug's with Akira and kevin. There I ate wild buffalo sausage and cheese fries, we also talked the woman behind us through the process of ordering. She was a bit nervous and needed reassurances several times, I think she expected the encased meat nazi to be taking orders. Anyway, Hot Doug's, good as always.

Afterwards we did the roommate trip to target, and then to pick up yet a larger and more highly defined TV from Pfil that Akira was buying. Thankfully, through the wonders of technological progress, it managed to have a larger screen and weigh a lot less than akira's current tv, which was good considering the fact that the three of us will not be starting up a moving company any time soon.

So now we have a larger tv, its so big that you have to play guitar hero at a distance or else you sort of lose perspective on your surroundings and your life. This is easier now with our new wireless guitar hero guitar. its amazing, I haven't played with it yet, but I'm fairly confidant that you can rock out with it: hard.

Saturday brought practice and a day spent listening to indifferent jazz music while hanging out with very different friends. At one point I think we had 1.25 bottles of wine per person, incidentally I think thats a fairly good measure of expected enjoyment. Sunday brought a wedding at rockafeller chapel down at the U of C. Wow! I want to get married there, the space is just incredible. An opera chorus singing friend of the groom supplied the complementing audio to the stupendous visuals. After a good nap, we went off to the reception where I heard some very off the cuff wedding toasts, except the German's; his was quite on the cuff. After the toasts and the rather good lithuanian food and cake, the dancing commenced. That was fun, as it always is. It was amazing to watch rachael shake her hips much like a certain shakira song was imploring her to do. Fun wedding and reception. Though it was a bit daunting to be dancing under the gaze of several very stern looking gentlemen.

Monday I travelled from HP to Schiller Park back to HP for practice, because I didn't realize practice was at washington park; that was fun. Later Rachael and I grilled pizza, corn, yams, and made soup. I'll let the readership guess which one of those suffered in comparison to the others.

I am a rock God

2006-08-24T21:55:00.000-05:00

Not really (for those of you whom the title may have duped), but ever since moving into the new place, which I suppose is now officially called "Real World Irving Park" (RWIP is the accepted abbreviation) this playstation game has occupied a place of prominence. Now with two guitars we can battle for who is the better rocker. Russell mentioned on his blog that if his ultimate team in college had played this game, they would have all dropped out. Its really addictive, though I seem to be resisting the the siren call of the whammy button for the most part.

In other news the ultimate team I'm playing on did well at a tournament in Milwaukee. We were grossly underseeded at 19th or so and went 6-1 (losing to Sub-Zero) to finish 5th. I'm just excited to be playing on a team with enthusiasm and competence.

Bryan continues to amaze with his cooking, both in frequency and in quality. I've recently got into the show "Feasting on Asphalt." Which is a show about Alton Brown crossing the country on his motorcycle and trying to sample as much local and genuine cuisine as he could. So far he hasn't liked pickled pigs' feet nor brain sandwiches. I'm really jealous of what he's doing as its something that I have, and I'm sure most others have fantasized about doing at one time or another. I got the bug after reading a book called "blue highways" which I'd be surprised if AB hadn't read before he went on the tour. Good book by the way.

So our place is steadily coming together more and more. We need to have a genuine get together at some point here. Its just dying for a soiree or fete of some type. We'll see.

As for me I'm doing ok, i've enjoyed playing ultimate more this summer than I thought I would at the beginning, even with the uncertainty about who I would be playing with. I'm a little concerned though about the recent lack of whimsy in my life. I feel like I've settled a little too much into routines. Its annoying and doesn't really lend itself either to productivity or creativity, hence the lack of blogging I suppose. In any event, I won't make any promises of being more regular but here's to hoping that I am.

A conservative wedding

2006-08-11T19:55:00.000-05:00

Of recent events and so on.

So two major events have transpired since I last wrote here. The first is that I moved into a new place. Its totally sweet. With amazing kitchen appliances, central air and heat, and two separate balconies from which one may survey much that is awesome (meaning the alley running behind our building). Special thanks to Russell for helping us move, My roommates and I do number a disproportionately high amount of skinny no-good-movers and were very thankful for your aid. It seriously is a sweet place, and at least before utilities is cheaper than my old pad. It also is a 10 min. walk from the train station, which means I get to walk down a quiet residential street with cool houses, as opposed to waiting for the bus to ride down ugly ol' montrose, a vast improvement indeed.

The second major event was I attended the first wedding among my college friends. It was an intimate affair held at garfield park conservatory, which was cool in and of itself to see, the flaming sword palm was in particular, a visually exciting plant. It was a small wedding with the reception at the conservatory afterwards. Several friends came in from out of town for it and it was cool to catch up with them. The ceremony itself was brief, 13 minutes, and unfortunately I couldn't hear much of the vows, though I suppose it really only matters that they heard each other. At one point the bride giggled when the officiator used the words "passionate love," it was rather funny as the couple is usually very reserved about such things. Anyway, a good wedding and best of luck to them.

In other news, I used logarithims today at work. I can honestly say that I never ever thought I would personally have occasion to use them when I studied them in high school, but they seem to be just the thing to solve a particular problem I'm working on at work. I also went to Detroit 2 weekends ago for an ultimate tournament, my team did surprisingly well and I'm looking forward to the fall season and am having more fun playing than I anticipated I would earlier in the year.

Whatever has happened since I last posted

2006-07-18T19:44:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was good. Got off work, Rachael came up and we made some bread salad and smoothies for dinner. Perfect food in my opinion for the oppressive heat of summer. I tried to get Cho to have some bread salad, but he seemed very uninterested in the idea, oh well.

Not too much of note, watched the daily show and apparently it was their 10th anniversary show, they showed showed some of their funnier investigative reporter clips but oddly glossed over the fact that originally the show was hosted by Craig Kilbourn rather than Jon Stewart. I suspect that Jon Stewart doesn't care much for CK as when the latter had JS on the show to pass the torch, he made a lot of unfunny jokes about the difference in their height and gave JS some phone books to sit on; this was before JS could call people "Dicks" on TV with impunity.

Not too much going on at the moment, I have a dentist appointment this weekend, something that is both exciting and terrifying to me. We'll sign the lease thursday which is good, though it looks like we'll get stuck paying rent for 2 apartments in August, but its worth it to move. If any out of towners want to come to chicago and need a place to stay, I could offer very competitive rates.

That's all for now, nothing exhilirating I know but I'm trying to keep the momentum going so my posting frequency is a little better than once every month and a half.

Hey! he posted.

2006-07-15T23:13:00.000-05:00

So long time, no writing, a lack of inspiration I suppose.

I just read Eric's farewell letter to ultimate, sad stuff, the game has lost one of its great defensive innovators, (I personally saw the debut of the hide behind girls defense). was interesting to read as I've recently had my own second thoughts about playing the sport, I'm not at the point of quitting but lets just say its no longer a given.

Suddenly there's a lot more blogging going on. Casualultimate.blogspot is enjoyable, as is theunpaidbartab.blogspot.

So we're about to move. Not far, but I'll be much closer to the train that I take to work which means no bus ride, all together I should have about 30-40 minutes extra in my day than I do right now, that's very exciting to me. As is the place we'll be moving into, 3000 sq ft. or something. Its beautiful with a huge deck. I can picture myself reading, and hopefully writing, on the patio with mojito in hand Taking in gods creation, or at least his creations that inhabit the alley the patio overlooks. I'll also very living with a TV star. That's right, tv's favorite dad Sandy Cohen will be living with us. Not really of course, but about the closest facisimile (sp?) thereof I've seen, in truth it will be Joe Ferrari, kevin cho, Bk, akira, and your own humble sometimes-to-increasingly-never scribe.

Played some ultimate today, it was hot, had to stop near the beginning and catch some shade as I felt very close to vomiting. That was fun. But it was the first practice with Gary's team, which was good. I think we'll be decent, not nationals level, but decent. Its good playing with guys who have been there and know their limits, as opposed to with young players who are good but haven't realized their limits yet as players, harsh but I don't feel like being generous. I just don't want any bullshit or hocus pocus on a team I play for right now, I just want to play with competent people from whom I know what I can expect.

Sand blast and Mars were fun. I think I should ditch ultimate and focus on starting a beer schtick league. Kim? Bryan? any takers? (I know the question to kim is moot as she'll never see this, but that girl is crafty with beer in hand) We did the best the team has done when I've been there at Mars this year. had a weird schedule where we played teams that came in 1,2,4,5,~10,31,32 or therabouts. So a number of tough games. I played rather well in one of them which was nice. Although I don't think I was in better shape than last year, it was remarkable how even occasional playing allowed me to feel less toolish out there compared to last year. Good team, good fun. We are probably 1 of a very few number of teams that have gone 3-3 and made the A pool. One year we went 5-1 and missed it. I wish there were more fun random coed tournaments. PD and Mars just isn't enough. Maybe that's what I should do. Organize a combo coed tournament with a beer schtick game in place of the last round sat. and for all the consolation games on sunday. I think that could work. Maybe next year. Just need a large flat space where drinking wouldn't be a problem, maybe milwaukee? Thoughts?

Sandblast was good. rather hot, a frustrating finish, but a good tourney up to that point. We beat a good team from Iowa soundly and our women, primarily, beat a U of I alum team that had a tennis teammate from high school on it, very satisfying. Was nice to win both of those.

Just watched galaxy quest, the part where the GQ fan shoots a nerf arrow at the evil alien general made me laugh.

Well thats about it for now, figure I should ease into this again, hopefully I'll post soon, no promises though.

Poultry Days and Nights

2006-06-12T20:50:00.000-05:00

So Thursday afternoon I went from work to home, catching an episode of Battlestar Galactica to get my fix before the weekend and then I was off to the southside. I began my travels and travails by stopping into Steve Wang’s I’m done with 22 years of school party and gave him my compliments on finishing his Ph. D. He seemed rather happy.

Afterwards I made my way to the pepperland where I joined in the watching of most of “The Devil’s Rejects” which was not so bad as one would think it to be, as it was written and directed by Rob Zombie I believe. A bit gory and violent though for my tastes.

The morning of our trek to PD began well enough. After numerous short delays, all necessary, especially the oil change, our humble party of four, whom I dubbed the amazateers began our excursion to the poultry filled town of Versailles, Ohio. The trip was relatively uneventful, and the highlight was Jason attempting to expand our horizons on the depths and lengths to which impromptu fictional narrative could be taken.

Upon our arrival to the fields I was delighted to see Tazo, Ian, and Jeff followed very shortly by Trudy and High School. Never ones to dilly dally we hastened to erect our tents and when Whit and Russell arrived, we made our way to the fair to get our first savory slices of their world famous chicken. It was delicious. Upon our return we commenced Schtick playing and my team did fairly well, though we were admittedly more experienced. My favorite personal maneuver was when I crept along the edge of the pond behind our opponents, and waited for them to forget about me ( which given our current state was about 1 min) I then emerged from behind a tent and laid the disc in the goal. A bit cheap, but oh well.

Saturday morning started off with a thud as the weather was rainy, a bit cool, and a hair windy. So our first two games were a little trying at times. We played fairly well, but our lack of cuts held us back, but we managed to win one game. It was a much better experience for me in terms of playing, than mars last year. I’m not in a whole lot better shape now, but at least I’ve played a fair amount of ultimate recently, which enabled me to play fairly steady offense after the weather improved and satisfactory defense. One of our woman, Jen Shannon, made two amazing layout catches on offense. Probably the most startling athletic plays I’ve ever seen by a woman. I believe that she caught both on on the edge of her fingers after some crazy contortions. Sunday we found ourselves in the C bracket and won our first after being down 6-5 and lost our second after being up 6-5. Not a bad weekend, could have done better probably, but I loved the sideline banter and motivational speeches supplied by my teammates. It was fantastic to play with such good women, we often played three of the four guys back as handlers and just had the women get open and score upfield.

Pretty good weekend, I’m really looking forward to Mars and its own brand of hijinks. I’m going to try and do a few sprint workouts between now and then, so I’ll probably be amazing. I’m looking forward to my soon to be amazingness.

The New Toy

2006-06-02T18:58:00.000-05:00

So I am writing this entry on the train on the labtop that my company has thoughtfully provided me with. It’s a Dell Latitude D810, which Akira thought was a nice machine, and it does seem to be. The train was delayed 7 minutes due to a “customer dispute.” Word has it that it was a pair of long-separated-by-the-Atlantic sisters who came to blows over whether scones or toast were the proper receptacle in which to enjoy Jam. The past sentence was obviously a fallacy, but then again, why hide from my mendacious nature.

Memorial Day weekend was enjoyable; Rachael, Ethan, Alison, and myself journeyed out to western Illinois where we enjoyed my Aunt’s chalet. It was a delightful time with much scurrying about the woods (and away from lightning), some superior cooking, and Ethan and I trying to catch a fish with some chicken wire, two sticks, and French toast. As the reader might expect, we were unsuccessful in our attempts but I like to think that our methodology improved throughout the course of our time out there.

On Monday I snuck into the CUSL summer league hat tournament, and played neither well nor poorly. We then went to take a dip in lake Michigan and Rachael quite gamely completely emerged herself in Lake Michigan for what I believe was her first full fresh water submersion, very exciting. The water though, was a bit cool to the touch, but refreshing because of it. It felt afterwards like I had taken a 4 hr nap, but after 30 minutes I felt like I needed a 4 hr nap, which to avoid any undue alertion (definitely not a word but was the first to come to mind) is my perpetual state of being.

After the lake we went to jason’s place where we grilled through the rain on Jason’s new grill. At the cookout a friend and former co-worker from Maine showed up and informed me that another good friend and co-worker from Maine was moving to Chicago in about a day.

Well the next day several of us chanced rainy perdition for $.25 beers at the horseshoe in Lincoln Square, Claire and I got there about 1.5 hrs before anyone else and we talked for some time, which was good, as beforehand we had never really talked. Anyway, people showed up, the BBQ sauce there is spectacular, as are the falling off the bones ribs, and the rock band wasn’t bad. Jason labeled it his new favorite bar in Chicago, but he’s rather impressionable, though experienced in the bar realm. Bryan, the food, brownies, and ice cream was very clutch when I got back.

On Wednesday I got a call and ventured south on Sacramento to meet up with my two friends from maine. Though I got the address walk and peddled for about 30 minutes between 2600 and 2300 blocks knowing it was on one of those two and ended in a one, or at least I was pretty sure. Eventually my intuitive prowess though saved me and I realized that she probably lived near the house that had a car with Ohio plates outside of it. The conversation with the guy on the first floor went as follows.
Me: did you happen to notice a young woman moving in on this street in the past day or two?
Him: no, can’t say that I have. What’s her name.
Me: Melissa Simon.
Him: no, haven’t heard of her.
Me: really b/c I think that’s her car out front and I think the address ended in a 1, which this house happens to do.
Him: Oh, you know what, yesterday a girl moved in upstairs into my land lady’s place to sublease.
Me: hmmmm…that sounds like it just might be my friend, could you take a look?
Him: sure.

I was rather bemused at the fact that he couldn’t think of anyone moving in and then a minute later recollected that someone had indeed moved into his building the day before.

I enjoyed a fine dinner and was really glad that the one friend has moved here and I got to see the other before she began her formal architectural training.

Well that’s about it for the week, I have some sort of weekend plan thing arranged, but it’s a little undecided when and how I’ll get to everything. Oh and my jaw hurts. Last night I was walking into the living room and opened my mouth and my jaw, right near my ear, popped, like people cracking their fingers. Its been hurting a little all day. Anyway, that’s all I got at the minute as I head back to my place.

yeah, thats a stupid idea

2006-05-14T18:55:00.000-05:00

So I suppose 8 days between posts is better than 30, but its still not ideal obviously, oh well, maybe I flatter myself in supposing that people still read this. Anyway, into the recent developments of my life. So yesterday after winning both spring league games, most of my team went to Hot Doug's. Calling Hot Doug's a hot dog stand is like saying that cheese is enjoyable to eat, its true, but it doesn't really emody the experience that is possible when you eat there. I had the game of the week, Wild-Boar Sausage and split a duck sausage with foie gras with Mr. Cho. They were both very very good. Incidentally, foie gras consumption within chicago city limits will soon be illegal, and while I have no particular attachment to the food, it bothers me. Oh, we also split fries that were deep-fried in duck fat. Delicious. Its at the corner of california and roscoe if anyone's interested. Though be warned, upon arrival expect to wait at least 30 minutes before ordering no matter when you show up. Its hours are also rather narrow, 1030-4 closed on sunday. After that I played my 3rd Settlers of Catan game of the weekend with kevin, thor, and liz. After Kevin and I dropped the first two to the two newbies, I was pleased to put my whoop-ass hat back on and managed 6 points on my final turn to win the game. I was quite pleased. If you haven't played settlers you should know that its a pretty sweet board game, and that according to one Ben Grubb, apparently its all the rage with the UChicago Econ department's professors. Making its nobel prize winner:player ratio, surprisingly high I'm sure, at least in chicago. Allison can you ask Ethan to attain confirmation or refutation of this tidbit? I'm curious.

Today on my way to play ultimate I'm pretty sure I walked by the Governor's house. As suddenly I found myself in the midst of athletic looking gentlemen in suits, with ear pieces in their ears. It really tickles me that I live in the same neighborhood as the Governator. (After Schwarzenegger [or however you spell his name] I admit that I have less reverence for the office, and the same thing could be said about the presidency after watching ronald reagen act the drunken fool in Dark Victory). On the train on the way down I had a fellow come up and ask me for directions to Union Station. After informing him of the route I would take he then proceeded to kindly inform me of a thought he had recently. It went like this, "So I had an idea recently, I used to think that people throwing pennies on the ground was wasteful. But then I thought hey, we got the copper from the earth in the first place, so in a way we're returning it to the earth, which is a good thing, so maybe throwing pennies on the ground is a good thing." I, politely trying to fein interest, swallowed what I really thought and just said, hmmm thats interesting and then promptly resumed reading my book. I don't know, I guess its not the most wacky thought out there, but it bothered me. He looked like a sensible person too, oh well. It did get me thinking though if it was worth it to pick up pennies. I decided though that if you assumed you could pick up 2 a second, that makes $1.20 in a minute which I believe translates into $72/ hour. Not too shabby, the problem I suppose is the job security. Anyway, that's all I got for my now abbreviated readership today.

I've been away

2006-05-04T22:03:00.000-05:00

So to put an end to the slow spreading awareness among my friends, through no fault of their own, I will now update this space on the more notable details of my life.

1. I have a job, it pays me money, I wish it paid me more. I'm an analyst at a used truck finance company. There's not a whole lot to say about it at the moment.

2. I have a room, it even has 4 walls as opposed to spilling over into the living room or into another guy's bedroom as some of my more absurd living arrangements have been, well, arranged for lack of a thesaurus. My roommates are bryan and kevin, with rick and akira receiving an honorary designation. Not a bad place, though one can hear most things from upstairs, like alarm clocks, dogs, african tribal music, and so on.

As I write this i can lay claim to something that amuses me greatly. I am currently on the #1 ranked open ultimate team in the nation after going 7-0 after winning a mediocre -team laden tournament in st louis. I'll probably keep playing with the team and so get to witness our slow steady decline to the middle of the rankings or our unforgettable undefeated run to glory. Either way I promise to stay the same person.

So based on the above I have new concerns, I worry about where dry cleaning is and how exactly one irons: a bit prosaic I suppose, but one tires of the constant freedom of leisure as well. The new neighborhood, which shall remain nameless as I'm not exactly sure which one it is, (probably albany park, but who's heard of that) is very exciting. The Reader printed up reviews of all the restaurants in the area about a week after we moved in, and I must say that I'm very enthused about the range of culinary options nearby. There are also about 20 taco/burrito/hot dog joins within a half mile, its my goal to figure out which is the best. The mexican bakery 2 blocks away is also a huge plus.

I'll try to be a bit more regular in my future postings. Admittedly, it shouldn't be hard.

Cheers.

Dead Men see no Ghost Dogs

2006-04-03T18:55:00.000-05:00

Saturday's sprin league games went rather well. We allowed a combined 3 points to be scored on us and I got the satisfaction of beating some illinois players, who I never was able to beat in college. Karma was maintained as the two teams I was pulling for in the tourney, GM and LSU were ousted. Yes I know I made a big tadoo about supporting UCLA in my last post, but once George had no chance at glory, I ceased in my support of a southern california based team.

Have seen a few offbeat movies recently. Dead Man and Ghost Dog most notably. They were both very fun movies to watch. The first stars Johnny Depp as a misplaced accountant in the wild west, who utters an amazing bad ass line before he shoots one particular character. Ghost Dog stars Forest Whitaker as an urban samurai, need I say more. I also saw A History of Violence and The WeatherMan, both of which I enjoyed, though AHOV I think is easily the superior of the two.

That's about it for now, I wish I had a little more whimsy in my present mood but a man shouldn't force what he can't feel. And so there it is.

gent 1: And what of this new High Commissioner of sport? --Gent 2: I just hope he outlaws ice dancing.

2006-03-23T17:22:00.000-06:00

As my own NCAA tourney bracket now lies dead, only good to remind me why I don't gamble, I am excited to find that I have found a new part for me to play in this madness that consumes us in march, that of a cheerleader. Specifically a cheerleader for UCLA. I do not do this out of a slavish devotion to the doctrines of Mr. Wooden or for Lew Alcindor's halcyon hardwood days or even, as strange as it seems in retrospect, because of a strange fondess for Bill Walton and all that he represents. I do it rather for a friend. George, I wish you the best of luck in your quest for the post of High Commissioner, I'm sure the money will aid in that pursuit. For those who don't know, which is probably about everyone, George Sullivan, my roommate from school is currently tied for second in the ESPN Tournament Challenge. If he wins, he gets $10K. Not a bad deal. Though George, while I salute your prescience in seeing Bradley's 2 victories, I am nonplussed by your filling out five brackets. (this is admittedly hearsay, though from a trusted source) I would call you out on this point of honor except that your barbossa bracket (not to mention the name of your 2nd ranked entry) is also kicking the shit out of my own humbled entry and not even the snoggle of pitt will change that now. I just hope that I don't prove the cooler to your dual-woman-on-arm-throwing-7s-at-the-bellagio run of luck. Go University of California at Los Angeles; go for George.

Internet Explorer sunk under me twice

2006-03-16T20:00:00.000-06:00

So I had just about finished a post and then the damn browser closed on me. Sadly I don't have the energy to rewrite the whole thing so I'll just have to hit a few high points.

Congrats to Jayadev. Had the first hangover in a while this morning after being part of the roving celebration. Piece almost felt very much like a neighborhood bar with various people dropping in independently of one other, or at least coming separately and at different times if they were part of the same group. I thought it lent the evening a very spontaneous feel that seemed to keep things fresh.

The nerdiest conversation of the night by far was regarding why all the planets in the solar system, save pluto, are in the same plane. I was quite interested as I had wondered about that recently, and was quite satisfied with Colin's angular momentum answer. This came up because we were trying to figure out which McDonalds on earth GoogleMars would supply directions to as the closest for someone on Mars. My guess is that on average the the winner would be a location in Quito, Ecuador.

Dash it all

it happened again. God Damn Internet Explorer, I'm not writing the last paragraph again, fortunately I had saved everything above. The gist of it was I feel like my writing has suffered because of a lack of honesty or at least bravado. This has been caused by diminished self-esteem arising from my current lack of employment. I've realized that good writing, at least for me, takes courage because you're submitting yourself to the judgement, censure, disapprobation of others. that's about it. I'll try to post a little more frequently.

Oh and my bracket has already gone to shit. (currently bottom 20%) I was hoping for a little more trash-talking on the pheonix insurretion bulletin board but so far no one has responded to my post. Oh well, maybe they're too embarrassed for me to lampoon my pre-madness boasts.

The past few days

2006-03-03T17:53:00.000-06:00

Perhaps my least ambitious post title to date, oh well.

Wednesday went to a job interview in vernon hills at a food manufacturer. I left a fair amount of time for getting lost and that's exactly what I did. Google maps steered me wrong replacing a left with a right and after 20 minutes and consulting a map that might be as old as me I was able to find the correct road again and proceed on. I then had another unfortunate detour when I mistook corporate woodlands parkway for corporate woods parkway. (they are separated by only about 200 yds) Seriously, who puts two streets with those names in even the remote vicinity of each other. It boggled my mind. Fortunately I was able to figure it out and arrived for the interview exactly 2 minutes early. Long story short, was offered the job, would be working in the Q + A lab to test samples coming off the line and also would work in and learn the operations side of the enterprise. Didn't sound like a bad gig, pay is ok, I may even take it.

Thursday Rachael had off from work and we decided to try for the Adobo Grill for lunch followed by a matinee of Tristram Shandy. Unfortunately the Grill isn't open for lunch and piper's alley wasn't showing that particular cock and bull story until 5. So we meandered around old town and had lunch at O'Briens, our decision being handedly made for us by virtue of that restaurant actually being open. We enjoyed some non-traditional irish food, (toasted pita chips covered with various cheeses, tomato, artichokes, and tomato in addition to sandwiches) and then headed over to cold stone for dessert. We were their 2nd customers in the 1.5 hrs they'd been open, though in summer you can't get into the place so I guess they're doing ok. We enjoyed some white choclate ice cream with heath and peanut butter cups: pretty good stuff. After conversing for an hour about the differences between American and European restaurant culture, we realized we were really close to a free zoo. So we walked over, passing near the spot where the last surviving member of the boston tea party is buried, I can picture him at the age of 115 knocking over cups of tea screaming "down with english taxation" and then promptly falling asleep mummering to himself.

The zoo was actually pretty fun. We checked out the ape house and watched several young gorillas at play for a while. At the monkey house I was enthralled watching an adolescent member of the Cercopithecus neglectus species (De Brazza's monkey) repeatedly run and jump onto to an elder's back before jumping again for a swinging rope, much to the perturbation of his trampoline. We also checked out the reptile house and the large predatory cats. The lions were especially active and rachael was a bit worried that they were eyeing her in particular as their future comestible of choice. All in all, how can you go wrong with a free zoo with no crowds when you happen to be in the neighborhood. After all of this we went and saw Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.

I had read several good reviews and was excited to see it. I was not disappointed, though about a 1/3 of the way through they almost entirely abandon showing the movie based the book and it turns into a movie about the making of the movie. I am sure that somewhere various postmodern enthusiasts are glad and aghast at this step depending on their level of pretension. Rachael liked it as well despite never reading the book and I think that anyone should be able to do the same, its just a very fun and funny movie. The dialogue between the 2 co-stars shown during the ending credits I found especially funny.

This afternoon I had another job interview, this time with a trading company in the loop. It went ok, I think I did fairly well, but my sense is that I didn't impress them enough to get the job. Oh well, I'll find out next week sometime. The high point for me was getting to take the Wonderlic Test, which is somewhat well-known from its use in the NFL combine. Last week I even spent a for minutes taking a gander at a sample test that ESPN page 2 had on its website. Well I was very amused when one of the questions from the sample test wound up on the real test. I got it right. I think I scored somewhere in the mid-30s, my guess being 33-34, out of 50 which puts me somewhat closer to harvard educated punters (50) than BCS Championship MVPs from UT. (6, supposedly) Tonight its off to test wine for a wedding and play some settlers.

Something I came across in the times

2006-02-27T10:57:00.000-06:00

Kumquats, which are not citrus fruits but belong to another genus, originated in China and have been cultivated across Asia for centuries. They inspired some unorthodox grafting techniques: in "The Oxford Companion to Food," Alan Davidson cites this bit of instruction from the "Book of Nabatean Agriculture," a 10th-century Iraqi text: "The branch which is to be grafted must be in the hand of a beautiful damsel, whilst a male person has disgraceful and unnatural sexual intercourse with her; during intercourse the woman grafts the branch into the tree."

Modern growers have streamlined the cultivation process somewhat.

fo(ol)rmal pictures

2006-02-27T10:19:00.000-06:00

Some pictures from the foolormal and the DG formal parties. There was quite a divide in style between the two events. Also, I'm just a little disappointed that none of the foolormal pictures did full justice to the sky blue pants I was wearing, but oh well. Here are some photos.

The man who couldn't bleed

2006-02-24T11:08:00.000-06:00

So I'm going to try and post. Several things, most good, have happened over the last week but I fear that my negligence and the irreparable damages of time to memory may hinder my telling of them. But enough disclaiming.

Last thursday I had an appointment to donate platelets. After all the preliminaries had been completed the nurse stuck the needle in my vein and and nothing happened. After checking all the tubes, pressure dealys, and other things the situation was not remedied. So they stuck me again, no result. They attributed my lack of bleeding to my blood rapidly coagulating at the tip of the needle. The funny thing about the experience was that they showed more concern about me after I wasn't able to give blood than when I had given it successfully. Was sort of a bizarre experience.

Another little amusing episode that happened last week was walking into the reg with rachael. She managed to drop her ID, library card, and credit card on the tiled ground and while she ineffectively grasped at the ID I picked up the other two. Was really amusing because of the number of people walking by as she couldn't pick her ID up because it was too flush with the floor. Eventually I tried and was also met with abject failure. Finally I picked it up using the knife I found to slide under it and lift it. So far the knife has been used to cut string, lift up an ID, and cut bread, which was unsuprisingly difficult as the blade is only 1.5" long at most. I've got a running list in my head of the its various uses and it appears that its not worthwhile to carry around, but nonetheless I now feel naked without it.

More than 2 weeks ago I went to Victory's banner with rachael and rose. its a breakfast place in Roscoe village that is run by followers of a man named Sri Chinmoy. (I believe that's his name) The food was almost enough to make me give up secular ambition and follow Sri in the pursuit of his spiritual goals but I managed to resist the urge, my thoughts and worries are with rachael though as I fear the influence of good french toast upon her. Some details about the place that amused me were the shelves of books written by Sri, one called Beyond Within, I think outside or without was what he was going for there. Also the looping video of him lifting planes, helicopters, firemen, and automobiles 2-3 inches off the ground. I was astonished at his consistency in lifting objects varying from 1900# to 27,000# between 2-3 inches. Still, the chai was divine.

Last weekend I embarked on a trip to the wisconsin dells. Drove up with King and along the way had dinner with his parents and his healthy and mentally together 91 year old grandmother. In the dells we had some good times and made some memories. The list includes:

Top Gun drinking game: very fun, liked the rule addition of having to drink when inter-male emotional bonding occurs. Also we each got a call sign. Cho was our Maverick because of his stature and movie star appearance. Cougar was a surpisingly involved call sign.

Twirly Tornado water ride: Suprisingly fun, even on repeated descents, bryan almost killed cho and I felt like I was going to fall off every time. We also played 4 on 4 basketball in a pool. Was a lot of fun, the hoop was the perfect height to make me look ridiculous as I tried to dunk on it.

The food: Pizza I made turned out pretty well, Bryan's cooking though drew no end of deserving accolades. The smoked pork pulled sandwiches were ridiculously good, and the breakfast casseroles were top-notch.

Charades and Celebrities were played as was the train game, all very fun activities.

Caps: Don't play against Chuck in Caps, Lost 11-3 and then 11-4 or 5. I scored 3 each game. Don't play chuck, the inevitability of your defeat weighs on you after about 4 rounds of shooting.

The Great Clock: I was very happy that Thor came down with me so we could check out the Great Clock dealy in the main lobby. Its about 30 feet high and 20 feet wide. At 10 in the am an animatronic show began that was disturbing. First various woodland creatures owl, squirrel, beaver, and turtle talk about being called by the great wolf. Then an Indian maiden and french fur trapper (the beaver was remarkably composed with his arrival) come and are instructed in song by the animals about the "Rhytmn of nature." Ghastly stuff. Thor noticed that the spires on top of the clock with acorns right under them were remarkably phallic, I wholeheartedly agreed. It was an amazing 15 minutes. I reccomend everyone check it out drunk next year.

Drunkenness: Outright inebriation was relatively rare, though I vacillated between 1/4 and 1/2 drunk for most of the weekend. I also was unfortunately That Guy as I spilled beverages twice. I must learn to keep my gesticulations in check.

All in all good time. And sally pointed out that we managed to avoid talking about ultimate for the entire time.

Tues/Wed Watched harold and maude as well as The life aquatic. Both starring Bud Court as harold and bond company stooge respectively. I was surprised at the fact that I bought the intergenerational romance between harold and maude, early 20s and nearly 80. I suppose there is hope for love of older women.

Last night went to Gene and georgetti's to see Whitney with russell, yamaguchi, abando, king, and gunderson. Very good time over very good food. There's not much to say as probably about half of this blog's regular readership was present, but we all laughed really hard 4 or 5 times. Thanks again Whit.

On the way to restaraunt bumped into a really good friend from junior high and high school. Talked for a few minutes, forgot to get his contact info. Oh well, that's why someone invented Google.

Good News and Bad

2006-02-21T17:19:00.000-06:00

Its funny how sometimes good and bad news can come at the same time. For now I'll only recount the good: congratulations to Rachael for getting into the Latin American Studies program.

I'll probably leave a much longer post later today or tomorrow regarding my recent activities and hijinks.

Eternal Glory is finally mine

2006-02-13T13:46:00.000-06:00

So we won the tournament this past weekend, but before we get to that I would like to mention something regarding george's comment on the previous post. He mentioned the virgin mary grilled cheese sandwich, which is funny because last tuesday I was talking about the very same sandwich with lyrica and jason. Its just funny to me that it came up twice, and now I feel somewhat stupid for not connecting Turin with its famous shroud, a bit of an oversight on my part.

Friday night watched the concluding 4 episodes to AD with eric, chuck, chuck's sister, and rick. Very enjoyable episodes, I'm glad they tied everything together at the end so that you're left with a feeling of satisfaction at the conclusion. Eric even made some choclate frozen bananas for us that were quite good. Saturday morning we left for Knox and halfway there we got onto a patch of slick highway. Across the lanes we saw an accident where a SUV had probably slid into the rear left trailer wheels of a semi and whose front half was destroyed, the semi's trailer was across most of the two lanes and traffic was stopped. As we were driving by the car 50 yards ahead of us went into an uncontrolled spin out that took about 8 seconds and wound up facing the road from the edge, as we passed a couple of seconds later we noticed the guy still had his cellphone pressed to his ear. We passed some other cars that were off the highway, all in the other lanes, and we came upon an inverted white van in the median. Jake did a good job driving us through it, was a tense 10 minutes. We were going something like 20 mph through most of it.

Eventually we made it and yes we did win the knox tournament and had some very closely contested games along the way. WE played under the names Oojah and Oojamaflip. We took 10 people and went 2-2 on saturday. Losing to knox 8-11 and knox alums 11-12 after being up 11-9 on the alums before we lost it down the stretch. The next day we beat meddling kids 13-12 after being up 10-6 and 12-10 I believe, this was a particularly satisfying win as they beat us something like 4 times last summer. We then beat knox 11-6 and then knox alums 13-12 in the final. Was a bit of a tough tournament physically because we only had 1 female sub and 2 male subs. So down the stretch I think fatigue played a big part in allowing the other teams back into the game. Its kind of bizarre playing indoors since it skews the game heavily in favor of the offense. I played fairly well, had 2 really bad plays near the end of the knox alum and meddling kids game but overall my play was about all I could hope for, given my fitness and level of practice right now. This was only the second non-hat tournament (I believe I had something like a 18 game winning streak in hat games) that I've won, the other being a nasty 9s tourney at MSU. I know at least one person on the team for whom it was their first tournament win ever. Its funny how concentrated tournament wins are in ultimate. I'd venture a guess that something like 33% or more of people who have played regularly in college have never won a tournament of any kind. And that might be a lot higher. Was also the first tournament since about my freshman year that I played entirely sans ankle brace. Its nice to have two fully functional ankles to play on. So yeah, pretty fun weekend, even had some pretty good mexican food sat. night and a great breakfast sun. morning.

One last try at eternal glory.

2006-02-10T14:24:00.000-06:00

So this weekend I'm headed out to scenic galesburg illinois in my last bid to win the annual indoor tournament hosted there by Knox college. I've been two other times and managed to lose in the finals each time, if memory serves correctly. This year the format is especially sweet as we don't have a game between 530 tomorrow evening and sunday at noon, possibly later. This means drinking and good times hopefully.

Tonight I'm headed up to the north side to watch the final 4 episodes of arrested development. They are being aired opposite the opening ceremonies of the winter olympics in Turin (a place I don't believe I'd heard of before the present games) which is what normal god-fearing americans will be watching I suppose. Its hard to believe that after this the show will probably be gone forever. There are rumors that showtime might pick it up but I am giving it up for dead tonight. I just hope it goes out in a manner befitting to its life: with crude wonderful character-driven humor and the best props ever to grace the small screen; (stair car, lincoln car, segway, banana stand, and of course the corn-baller) while America watches beret bedecked corporate spokesman wannabes parade around and preach to us about the eternal purity of sport, at least until the next judging scandal. Normally I'm not this bitter towards our olympic heroes, but I'm not feeling very accomodating at the moment.

Been enjoying netflix recently. Wathced "Dial M for Murder" and "The Big Sleep." M was the better movie overall, but TBS had some great dialogue interspersed throughout the most confusing plot I've encountered in recent history. Also watched "Junior Bonner" recently which is a Steve McQueen rodeo flick, Jason has recently been trumpeting the idea that we should all ask ourselves "WWSMD?" or What Would Steve McQueen Do when confronted with life's little obstacles. Its certainly not the worst of philosophies.

Have also started reading "Middlemarch" by George Eliot. I've enjoyed it so far and rather than read in my standard pedal to the metal fashion, I'm actually taking it slow and tackling it in 10-15 page increments, we'll see how that turns out. Gave platelets yesterday and will leave here shortly to get my comped burger and fries that comes with my particular species of do-gooderism. I can really see myself developing a pavlovian response to needles in association with good cheeseburgers. Oddly, when all is said and done, that will probably be counted among my more normal psychological quirks, or at least this readership can hope so, it will certainly keep things interesting.

WHAT'S JOE SAYING NOW?
Yesterday I was telling eric, jason and colin's roommate, about the words oojah and oojamaflip, when he asked me if I knew the word onanism. Apparently it comes from a man named Onan in the bible who displeased God. Should read genesis 38:6-10 if you want his story. Sounds like in life he really got the short end of the stick, and then in death his legacy is less than ideal. Got to love that old testament god. Anyway, at Jimmy's Eric and I indulged our dark sides with many off-colour jokes on this theme, which led to other off-colour jokes, none of them fit for a family website. Some other fun words I came across randomly.

termagant: A violent, overbearing, turbulent, brawling, quarrelsome woman; a virago, shrew, vixen. (Now the ordinary sense.) though its first definition in the OED is also interesting: christians accused muslims of worshipping a deity called Termagant who was supposed to be evil.

teratology: Biol. The study of monstrosities or abnormal formations in animals or plants. Was more amusing in webster's where they left it solely as the study of monsters but whatever.

The goings ons and a new installment of what I'm saying now

2006-02-05T14:28:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I went up to the north and clybourn stop of the red line to have lunch with my brother, father, and stepmom. We went to a mexican place called Uncle Julio's. I ordered frog legs. Once I saw them on the menu I decided I had to try them and they were certainly interesting. Sort of a gamey chicken tasting meat with a hint of the sea I thought. They brought them out still whole on the leg so it looked like I had 3 severed lower frog sections on my plate. They were ok but I'm not going to start patrolling the edges of marshes and streams to catch my own quite yet. The rest of the our party, who ordered more traditional mexican dishes also enjoyed their meals.

After lunch I chatted with my brother for 30 minutes outside on a corner and then walked over to borders with the intention of writing two letters. Sally, former nemesis currently mr. briefcase player and legal scholar, was sitting in the very seat I was pining to get. We talked for ten minutes about life, I walked around a bit, and when she kindly gave it to me when she left. Its a good thing too because about three minutes later I spotted Kevin Cho headed down the escalator. I start waving and he gets a really weird look on his face as he's trying to figure out who I am and why is he always subject to these strange events. As he's about to disappear from view though he manages to elucidate who I am even as I'm beginning to wonder if its really kevin cho. He came up and we had a nice rambling conversation about life for thirty minutes before he left and I got back to my correspondence.

Upon leaving borders I decided that it would be cool to just walk around, this led to me walking from north and clybourn to the drake hotel, over to navy pier where I found a sweet pocket knife lying on the ground, and took in the great tourist kitsch that is navy pier. I was debating whether or not I should try to sneak onto the ferris wheel but decided against it as I didn't want to freeze to death though I could have used the paper I was carrying stuff my clothes as insulation if the ferris wheel happened to stop with me at the top. And though I love a good movie reenactment (in this case the day after tomorrow) I decided that furtive ferris wheel rides are in the end probably not as fun as just getting warm.

I went back to hyde park and met up with rose, rachael, a non-tormey megan, and friends for some salsa dancing in Ida Noyes. I was very impressed by the uniform skill of the participants, but managed to learn some elementary manuevers with the great and well-appreciated help of n.t. megan.

This morning woke up and watched the movie shane, with rachael and I making snide comments about the celibate well-shaven lifestyle of the title hero at the end and having a very short argument about whether or not he died at the end, I think he did. Rachael is too good to me as a roommate. While watching the movie we got to pause for leek, potato, and asparagus soup with homemade rustic wheat bread (made with a sponge, rachael was particularly pleased about that) and then she took some of the fabulous pizza dough we made ("Best Recipe 8-hour rise recipe) and made a dessert pizza with strawberries, cream cheese, a little powdered sugar, and the version of whipped cream that comes about from actually whipping cream. It was heaven.

So I cut myself shaving yesterday. I wish this event was unique but the truth is it isn't. I really need to start shaving better, because I can't go on like this. (sorry to subject the reading public to this but I thought that a direct admission of the problem would help bring about some change)

I had lunch with nadine the other day, which was nice because I got a chance to catch up with her, and on friday got a call from an old friend that I haven't spoken to in about a year and had a nice talk with her. Feeling pretty good about life at the moment, wish some things were different but hey that's par for the course I suppose.

Now for another installment of What's Joe Saying Now. Its been a while but I came upon a particularly good word while perusing the dictionary this morning. (yes I do that) The word is oojamaflip. Before I define it I just learned something interesting while looking it up again to get the word right. In rachael's OED dictionary its there, but its not in the online dictionary and a similar but different word has the verbatical definition. Anyway here it is according to both

oojamaflip = A thing whose name one cannot remember, does not know, or does not wish to mention; (by extension) a useful implement, a gadget. Also: (Mil. slang) a sauce or custard.

oojah = A thing whose name one cannot remember, does not know, or does not wish to mention; (by extension) a useful implement, a gadget. Also: (Mil. slang) a sauce or custard.

though in rachael's dictionary the sauce or custard was called whipped eggs with sugar. So for instance He-who-must-not-be-named in the popular harry potter books is an oojah. but in that case he's not whipped eggs with sugar. Oojamaflip does seem to exist online but where listed it seems to be used as a replacement for widget or thing-a-ma-jig. I think if anyone reading this is going to start a new ultimate team they should call it oojah or oojamaflip, at least publicly, the condition of course is that I have to be invited to play on it. The uncertainty of whether it should be oojah or oojamaflip will only enhance the joke since we don't know ourselves what it should be be called. We could call it oojah or oojamaflip?, or ooo for short. Fantastic.

Disclaimer: I wrote the below and now I don't know what I think of it, it might just be really boring and I suspect I'm wrong, feel free to stop reading now.

Another thing I'm wondering about is the word "sorry." When someone says that I often take it as an admission of error, the one who says it would like to take back what they did, but it also is often used in the sense of, "I'm sorry this had to happen", meaning whatever happened is unfortunate for you and I feel bad but I would do it again because its the way things have to be. Seeking to remedy my understanding I looked it up and both definitions are present which isn't surprising but it seems like the two definitions can mean two very different things in the same context. The question of degree is important because the difference is whether the person would go back and change something given the chance. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, it just seems like when using the word you can't tell the depths to which someone is sorry unless they go on, which leads to confusion. Oh well, its still no excuse for the athlete's apology (something so regular and widespread it should get its own definition soon) of I'm sorry other people may have been offended by my actions. The classic non-apology.

46% of people need to read the constitution

2006-02-01T16:05:00.000-06:00

Saw a poll on cnn.com today asking if visitors to the house and senate galleries should be permitted to wear t-shirts with political messages. An astounding, to my mind, 46% of respondents said no, they should not be allowed to do so. Because the last place we want to permit freedom of expression is in the heart of our own "free" country. I simply can't believe this number, 43,000+ people think that we should be censored in what we can say in the hallways of our own government. WTF!! Am I missing something, was there an incident during the state of the union address? I think I'm going to start a t-shirt company that says "Fuck you all, and doubly so if you object to my saying it," or, "F*#$ you all for censoring my right to write Fuck!" I haven't decided. I know the profanity is unbecoming, this is after all a family safe space (for the record, the past clause is written with irony), but its terrifying to me that people are so worried about symbols that they debase the principals behind them.

Getting over a cold, hopefully lots of ultimate and raquetball gets it out of the ol' body.

Measuring Implicit Bias

2006-01-28T12:32:00.000-06:00

Interesting website. Article in slate talks about it. Measures your implicit bias towards various groups based on ethnicity, weight, age, sexualtiy, and whether or not they are abraham linocln or president bush. Worth going to.

test at

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.jsp

slate article is at

http://www.slate.com/id/2134921/?nav=tap3

Went to hothouse last night for first time, saw senegal hip hop group Daar J. I enjoyed the show. Was funny because pauline showed up, she plays ultimate, and I also bumped into dan benjamin there, was startled by the seemingly positive correlation between ultimate players and senegal hip hop groups.

"Someone else's fingerprints are all over this science fair project!" Joe breathlessly shouted over the bored children at the award ceremony.

2006-01-25T13:43:00.000-06:00

So another spam post on the comments (how few and far between are genuine comments, however as good writing no doubt stirs up interesting discourse, perhaps I am to blame) which remarked that my blog was "inquisitive" and that I should check out his on penny investments. Jerk doesn't seem to know that I don't have pennies to invest or that inquisitive is probably the wrong adjective to use in describing this blog. Half-thought out almost-licentious story telling is closer to the truth I'd say.

Last night listened to the album "Courier" by Richard Schindell which I've grown quite fond of since getting it a month ago. This morning I went and helped judge the 3-4 grade science fair at the school where Rob Walsh is a teacher. Was sort of fun getting the kids to explain their projects which varied from the quite lame to a few that they actually got into. My favorite investigated the relative clarity of fingerprints on cold versus room temperature glasses.

On the job searching front some decent news. Apparently the US government or some section thereof is slightly intrigued at the prospect of hiring me so I've got to fax my transcripts to the man or something. Also got an interview type thing monday for various non-academic lab positions in the chicago area.

Bumped into Peggy on my ingress of the library and she informed me that the chinese new year is sunday. Apparently this is a big deal in china as I almost reported in yesterday's post. (something like 120 million people travel that weekend in china, most apparently in so-crowded-its-difficult-to-reach-the-bathroom trains, hence a direct effect on adult diaper sales. Now that's love of family.) She then informed me that its the year of the dog. To which I happily exclaimed, "I'm a dog!" (this amused an elderly woman standing behind peggy) But then peggy warned me that being a dog isn't necessarily lucky. I don't know what that's about, once every 12 years its my year and its supposed to bring me bad luck? What's up with that. Though I have a certain abstract cultural respect for the idea that someone's "special" year isn't necessarily a good thing. Oh well, I'm not surprised, its just my luck that I'd happen to be born in a year that brings bad luck to you later in life. How is that for the prophecy shaping future events for you? Peggy also clued me in to this senegalese hip-hop group that will be performing at the hothouse on friday. In that moment I realized that I love hip-hop groups from senegal so I may just go to that.

Two real posts in as many days, I hope I don't spoil y'all.

potpourri

2006-01-24T14:20:00.000-06:00

Last night Ethan came over and we played some settlers of catan. Its a delightful board game, involving a fair amount of negotiation and strategy, I reccomend people try it. I ate a quick meal at cedar's of lebanon in hyde park. I think they have one of the best deals around with their falafel sandwich, served with a salad and potatoes. only 4.50, how can you go wrong? The answer though appeared to be the slight tinge of green around the edges of the potato slices that indicate sprouting and badness. Still though, excellent sandwich. I may be catching the beginnings of a cold as I feel a little off in the chest, a bit of the old respiratory tract infection or some such might be in my near future, but it will pass in time, just like the popular amazement surrounding the virgin mary cheese sandwich. Speaking of the mother of jesus, I've recently started reading "Naked before God" which Tazo reccomended on his blog some time ago. About someone with cystic fibrosis and diabetes trying to reconcile the daily suffering they endure and his christian beliefs. Maybe its a bit jarring to segue into the book after discussing the sandwich but that's how the old mind works I suppose.

I like living with rachael, we constantly scheme as to what we're going to make to eat. Also, I see us constructing our own version of settler's the next time a slow saturday morning rolls around.

What is about a man in a loincloth?

2006-01-21T07:42:00.000-06:00

I feel like I've started off most of these apologetic, well f__k that! I'm going for needlessly confrontational this morning, or at least for that sentence. I was at the library yesterday then went to see Grizzly Man. The movie was about a man who coming out of alcohol abuse and a nonrewarding life decided to live amongst the grizzly bears in Alaska. I'm not really ruining anything by saying the bears eventually kill him and a young woman in his 13th summer there as the movie states that fact in the opening lines. It contains some of the most incredible footage of dangerous animals that you will ever see. He literally lived amongst them, would touch them, at times challenge them, and genuinely had no fear of them. He was though, a bit of a weird dude, I'd venture in my nonprofessional opinion that he suffered from paranoia (of the park service) and perhaps a little bipolar. He definitely constructed a bizarre identity for himself. He affected the world's worst Australian accent, pretended to be an orphan, and imagined himself a romantic beleaguered hero who was responsible for protecting the bears from poachers and modern man. For all that though a compelling movie at times, very funny in some points, (though at times I thought the audience was laughing at rather than with, typical cynical UofC crowd) and in the end a story about someone who aspired to do great deeds but failed along the way. Probably worth netflixing.

After the movie I went to jason's where I partook in alcohol, food, and good company. In talking to colin he mentioned a restaurant he really likes called victory's banner that intrigued me. Its apparently run by a cult. The money quote was colin saying, "If I were to join a cult, that's definitely the type of cult I'd join. They're into meditation, vegetarianism, and really good french toast." After that we went over to the pepperland. Here's where the night took on a surreal edge, for perhaps everyone but me. Not having a costume, not caring at the moment about PC, being drunk, and having seen it done before I decided to walk around the party in a loincloth, thinking I'd do it for 10 minutes, then change and enjoy the party in civilian clothing. Well after the reaction I got in that first ten minutes, it wasn't coming off. It definitely elicited a great deal of response from almost anyone who saw it. Their looks as they took it in were interesting: eyes growing wider, disbelief, not knowing whether to feel angry or not, acceptance, and finally the desire to touch my ass. I should be fair though and analyze myself if I'm going to analyze others. I'd say I definitely have a touch of exhibitionism in me, without looking it up I'd say that deriving a thrill from the confused and startled faces of others through your appearance, deeds, or words is exhibitionism to some extent. At the same time though, I felt like if I was going to a pepperland party, the only crime would be to half-ass it. Something it turns out that I both did and didn't do.

Just to put something funny up here.

2006-01-20T18:03:00.000-06:00

From the NYT book review of "beyond coincidence"

The award for the most painful coincidence in recorded history must go to the poet Simon Armitage, who chanced upon a used copy of a book of his poems in a trash bin outside a thrift store. On the title page was the following inscription, in his own handwriting: "To Mum and Dad."

MLK day

2006-01-16T17:35:00.000-06:00

In a bitter irony today I was walking with rachael from our south shore apartment to Hyde Park when we were accosted from across 67th street by some teenage boys who erroneously assumed that our relationship was more intimate than it is, and informed me that I should stay with my own kind. The irony of course being that they had the day off from school to honor a man who said

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama...will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

It should be noted this is the first time I've been made to feel uncomfortable since living where I presently do. Incidentally the NYT has a very good Op-Ed today on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. by Taylor Branch.

Fun playing ultimate again

2006-01-09T17:13:00.000-06:00

So I just went to webwalking.com/googlemap where you can use google maps to plot out how far various runs are and found out that my long run last week was 8.5 miles. Its a pretty cool program and anyone who runs and is curious about how far their distances are should check it out.

On saturday I went and finally got a cellphone. The number is 773 633 6441 for anyone who might feel disposed to call me. After getting it I walked to millenium park and met up with my family, who were ice skating. I walked around the park with them afterwards and had lunch. It was a fun little visit. After that went back to hyde park and watched the football with george, allison, ethan, rose and rachael. We also played some settlers of catan and I won the first game quite handedly but gave a less stirring showing in the second game. After that went over to the pepperland for some dancing at a communal birthday party. Sunday I had brunch with LYRICA HAMMANN, jason, and rob. Was fun, and afterwards we went to a ultimate pickup game on the northside. The pickup was probably among the most fun times I've ever had, not at a tournament, playing ultimate. The fields were slightly uneven and muddy but it was warm enough that playing without gloves wasn't a problem, and eventually something like 35 people were there so we split into two games for an hour or so. The level of play was fairly high, about that of a really good spring league game, and it didn't descend into a boring huck fest. Was cool to play with and against Raz and Lyrica again for the first time in several years. Afterwards Raz and I went to Bryan Kings for cincinnati style chili, a lot of asshole at which in the first round of games I was president for all but 1 turn, and good conversation. Crashed there and watched venckman, stantz, and egan thwart Gozor's bid to destroy New York by becoming a 200 ft marshmellow. Good movie.

new years, football and such

2006-01-05T17:32:00.000-06:00

So I finally feel like I'm back in chicago, when I was here before it always had a bit of the setting up then leaving for a week feel, which is unsurprising as indeed, that's what it was. For whatever reason my posting here has lapsed. This might be due to several factors, I don't feel as irreverant and whimsical, much of my time is spent walking, perhaps a touch of the doldrums from a never-ending gray sky, and maybe its simply laziness. Oh well, I'll try to deal with a few things that have happened.

On Christmas morning I opened a Christmas Card, as promised, from the woman I gave the book to on the bus. I was emotionally touched that she carried through and olfactorily (word?, oed confirms that it is) touched by a heady perfume that permanently wafts from the letter. I'm still debating whether or not to reply but I think that I may just leave the experience as is rather than carrying it onto the next episode.

New Year's: I started in Hyde Park but migrated northwards to akira's place, arriving 5 minutes ere the passing of the year. Notable events included Jaeger shots with jason, seeing a number of people that I haven't in some time, giving kevin cho a beer he failed to remember, and coming back to win a great victory in beer pong with thor. Limited dancing, but a good time, was glad I went up there and was touched by Akira's kind words for me at the onset of the new year.

Yesterday I ran downtown to the Verizon store, was a bit of a hike as I'm not in tip-top shape but slow and steady got me there fortunately. My quadriceps are a bit sore and I have a vaguely uncomfortable feeling on the outside of my right foot when I undergo bipedal locomotion.

College Football National Championship was watched at Eric's after spending most of the day cooking with bryan and watching Firefly episodes. Firefly was an good show, which was cancelled by the same people who are discontinuing Arrested Development, I don't think they realize how close this is making me to giving up TV aside from Bear football games and any future impending messages of doom from our (un)duly elected commander and chief. Saw Raz there, was amused that Kevin didn't remember me from New Years and mistakenly called Kevin by Raz's name. Raz then kindly informed me that Kevin was from East Asia and he was from Southeast Asia, after receiving this easy reference point I had no trouble. Watching the game was entertaining not only because it was an excellent athletic contest, but also due to the fact that we drank any time a phrase was uttered by the announcers that could be taken for sexual innuendo (tautology?).

One of my new year's resolutions was to write more, along with that I've been thinking about posting more thought out pieces here, generally apolitical (as no further addition need be made to the current political shoutspace on the internet). I don't know why I feel the need to warn anyone but there it is, it probably won't come to pass. In short I will be the boy who cried sheep.

A trip down memory lane

2005-12-24T01:07:00.000-06:00

So I just got back from hanging out with some close high school friends, specifically those of us who made up the Frugal Actors' Guild. We went to a bar that was different, had a lot of techno going on the speakers but no dance floor, a bit confusing. Then we proceeded over to a friend's house and watched our two very minor motion pictures "When babysitting goes awry" and the commentary for the DVD of "Mission Imbecile." I was reminded of how bad an actor I am, which is partially due to the fact that whenever I'm on camera I adopt a bad british accent, I don't know why, it just happens. I think the best part was in the MI commentary when my friend Scott said of a rather suggestively dressed Deb, "You know, we should do an interview with Deb's pants." That killed me. Maybe not very funny perhaps to those who haven't seen it, or even to those who have, but she was wearing these very tight silver pants and, well, it was just spot on. Also the great line, "It's like herdin' turtles," ahh good stuff. In retrospect part of my bad acting may be due to the fact that I was wearing a winnie the pooh costume. Oh well, I've probably said too much, but wow, tonight really took me back. Also my best friend from junior high/high school told a story of videotaping a friend's wedding reception and uttering these immortal alcohol inspired lines, "When I first met ____ and _____ I thought they were brother and sister, but was relieved to find out that they're really cousins." (just for the sake of clarity I should mention that the couple were not actually cousins) Sorry if this was uninteresting to everyone who visits here regularly. ta.

Wisconsin

2005-12-23T20:08:00.000-06:00

Just got back from Wisconsin. Had a decent time celebrating christmas with my dad, stepmom, and stepbrothers. Went sledding down a rather slick hill, which by virtue of its slickness, was a beast to steer on and led to much about-facing, twirling, and emergency bail outs. Good times, was remarkable though that a good deal of skill entered into the thing as I could very seldom go down as straight and fast as my brother andy. Oh well. Went to the bucks-spurs game which was fun. Went into overtime, bucks won on a 0.7 sec remaing inbounds play of lobbing it to bogut who put it in. now back in illinois with the other immediate family. Not much to say, Going to hang out with friends from high school in a little bit. Good Christmas, Hanukkah, and new years everyone.

I suppose I can receive a kiss and tell...

2005-12-16T16:07:00.000-06:00

So this past monday, I embarked to the bus stop on my way to watch the new Narnia movie with bryan and akira, which was enjoyable but not nearly as good as the LOTR. On my way I chanced upon some free books outside of Powell's and picked up a copy of Norton's Anthology of American Short Fiction. Some time later I found myself headed downtown on Bus no. 6. There I asked the elderly woman next to me what the last stop was on Michigan before the 6 turned away from the lake. She replied with words that I failed to comprehend, but after doing so she noticed the book on my lap and asked if I was a writer. I confessed that I do dabble a bit with the writing but no, as of now no one pays me to write. She then expressed curiousity in the book itself and asked to leaf through it, a request I could do no other than acquiesce to. She was greatly interested in it and asked if she could buy it from me. I then had one of my passing bouts, thankfully short, of magnanimity and informed her that she could have it at the same price I did, namely for free. She was delighted to hear this and took down an address where she could send me a christmas card, and then proceeded to give me a light peck upon the cheek. We sat in silence for some time and then she informed me that she liked to write, had even written upon the state of sex for women after menopause, to which I had no response. She then grew a little sullen and confidentially asked me, "Joe, is the reason that you gave me the book because you don't know how to read?" This took me quite aback and I replied that no, I could in fact read, mumbling something under my breath to the effect of, "Actually that's why I picked it up in the first place." She got off soon after and I may be one card the richer come Christmas morning. Ahhh the 6. Its good to be back in Chicago.

Fare the well, great white north

2005-12-10T20:03:00.000-06:00

So last night I went to Gastov's, a german eatery and bar in minnesota. The Hefe Wizen was boundlessly brilliant. It tasted like a fall day - crisp, clear, fields of wheat in the background, and the suggestion of lemon, delicious. I would be severely remiss however if I failed t note the particular vessel in which it was served, a two liter glass boot with the inscription, "Ein Bier, das Man(actually the german equivalent) mit freunden trinkt." Roughly, one beer and a man makes friends. Lyrica, clarification? The rules of the boat were as follwos: could not put it down, toe must be pointing out, you must tap it when you pass it, if it splashes you must drink again (note: this was actually quite the danger in the midregions of the glass as air would rise to the "toe" causing a gurgling sound [very startling when not expected] and if the level was dropped abruptly the bubble would race out, taking beer with it and shooting a drop or two on some poor sap's [my own] mug), and most importantly the second-to-last person to imbibe had to buy the next one. We had 5 if I recollect correctly. For dinner we ordered a dish that was supposedly for 3 but I think could serve 6-7 with ease, really just a collection of meats with red cabbage and veggies under them somewhere. After the food we tried some snuff, it tasted(?) like Vicks. I of course fouled up the delivery of it into my nose and had a brown spot at the tip of my nose until a kind neighbor, in-between low-level hysterics, informed me of the exact nature of my appearance. We finished it all off with a round of apple schnapps like licour, (sp?) which I now believe is the perfect way to end any meal. They of course had an accordian player who was also named Joe! How...not that uncommon, but he played a beautously bawdy song for us and let me subject the rest of the table to my take on percussion with the stick, which was made up of a small drum, cowbell, bells, and a cymbal on top.

The conversation made very very happy Charlie informed me that I would not be overse to a go at the Nero Wolfe series. This statement made me positively bounce with joy as I've been a fan of these books since george introduced me to them. Apparently Charlie and his roommate have formed a local NW appreciation society, it reportedly hopes to meet on the roof of the liquor store behind their house. I have realized of late that I am particularly fond of the Nero or Mencken type of character that is not ashamed to seek their own comfort, has a cynical view of humanity while haveing a well-developed sense of personal morality, and is wickedly funny.

After dinner we went downstairs to the bar and 2+ hours of polka dancing. One gentleman of 72 winters was quite the thing, bedecked in black trousers, a blue shirt, and red suspenders who had his run wih most of the young ladies within a step or two of the dance floor. He was naturally, quite the polka dancer, and I tried to study his movements to pick up a thing or two.

Gastov's in short: Excellent beer, fantastic beer, german food, snuff to your satisfaction, and learn the polka while you're there.

This past week I reread the first 3 books in the Aubrey/Maturin or Master and Commander series. I now feel these books are a-tip-toe above anything else as far as enjoyable series books go. They have it all with their hilarious banter, thrilling naval action scenes, a sloth, espionage, women (at times), and the sheer volume of their collected adventures which will keep you in reading material for some time. The only possible bug-a-boo is that O'Brien is not shy with the naval or early 1800s English jaron. It's qite thick at times but with application and digilence you may hope to understand what the weather-gauge, mizzenmast, and laudanum are; I myself almost know what the weather-gauge is, or at least I understand the importance of having it in any naval action. In all earnestness though, I reccomend them to any landlubber whoever hoped, or didn't even know they hoped, to raise their blue flag at the mizzen.

So as the title of this post implies I have left MN and am back in Chicago. I took the train which wound up being a 9 hour journey. The scenery was quite nice, especially as we followed the Mississippi into La Crosse, the bluffs and the eagles I saw were very striking. Also we wound up being quite the attraction ourselves. They were fixing a bridge in Milwaukee which means we had to take a detour down a different rail line. For some reason this elicited great excitement in local locomotive appreciation chapters. When we made the detour there we no less than 20 people there videotaping and taking pictures of it, and along the way I saw another 10 people taking pictures of us. I don't know if this was the first time a passenger train had gone down that line in 50 years but some people were doing all they could to document it. Anyway, I have no plans except dinner club on Monday the next few days so if anyone has any ideas, let me know. Cheers.

This is just to say

2005-12-04T18:56:00.000-06:00

That yesterday I punctured myself and drew blood while cooking. Specifically, with pasta, angel hair, it hurt a lot.

An interesting tidbit

2005-12-03T19:04:00.000-06:00

Was just reading the NYT and learned an interesting fact: the celebration of Christmas was banned in Massachusetts from 1659 to 1681. For more check out below.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/opinion/04sun3.html?hp

I also learned from ESPN today that a US Senator is trying to start an investigation into the BCS and its supposed lack of fairness.

Today I went with Joel and found Ice Lake, which might be the most diminuitive lake in a state that claims 10K of them. I say found because its approaches are well-guarded by wetlands and all shapes and sizes of flying biting insects in the non-wintry months. After walking its circumference I surmised that its square footage was around 1000 sq. feet. Which in my book makes it a permanent puddle rather than a geographically interesting body of water, certainly not a lake.

Also we've started playing table tennis with two collapsible rectangular tables Its quite enjoyable as you now have a front edge to contend with that can make amusing things happen like popping the ball into the air just out of reach or hitting the front edge of your opponent's table only to have the ball bounce back to your own.

So I'm gonna be rockin' pretty hard to public television tonight as they are broadcasting a springstein concert from 1975 London. Though as much as I love the boss I think I've got to get back to the big city.

2005-12-01T20:27:00.000-06:00

Some random things:

Finally saw Ong Bak:Thai Warrior. I enjoyed parts of it immensely. It looked like he could have possibly done all/most the acrobatics sans wires, which if he did is incredible. I would highly recommend the movie for anyone who likes martial arts stuff.

Just reread Master and Commander. Love that book, parts of it are pretty dense with nautical explanations and such but I think is worth it. The books are surprisingly all very funny in addition to everything else you'd expect and so I don't think anyone who reads will be disappointed, for a second opinion ask mr cho.

And finally, don't feel like writing much tonight, I think that I will be back in chicago next saturday in the afternoon sometime, this plan is hinges on amtrak running on time, so of course I'll be thrilled if I'm only 1 hour later than expected. Not sure if I'll go to suburbs or southside first but any who read this can expect me at dinner club that monday.

My friday night

2005-11-19T02:06:00.000-06:00

So tonight began with great hope. We were going to a place in minneapolis called Gustav's(?-may not actually be called this but some part of it is? I'm sorry I know that's confusing) where reportedly they have polka music and they serve beer in glass boots and the second to last person to finish the beer has to buy the next one. I, to the great annoyance of the girl organizing the trip, kept calling it frauhaus, as I thought a german whorehouse by that name would be pretty sweet. Anyway, after I discovered that the polka at its basic level is a souped up version of the waltz I was very pumped and excited to go. Of course as the non-drowzy reader may suspect by now, this is not what wound up happening.

The car broke down about 6 miles from our point of origin and about 34 miles from our intended destination along highway 65. After playing extended versions of zoom schwartz perfigliano and ink pink we decided that we should hike back up the highway to a bar and have fun there. We saw a traffic light in the distance and hoped that it could salvage the remnant of our friday night. Four of us began our hike with great hope that the evening could be saved, and not only because we were in a dancing mood, and had a large square of delicious home-baked focacia (I'm sorry but correct spelling is unknown to me at present). Several of us had to go to the bathroom so we went to the hunter's inn first and had a beer. A strange man grabbed my female friend on the sides and said hi on his way out, it was that kind of place. We decided that we should press on to fatboys; it is sad that this became our city-on-a-hill so to speak as its a rather upscale biker bar that because of the price of the bikes on display I am hesitant to believe that many of the genuine cowboys of the highway visit very often. We arrived and quietly sipped our beers as the DJ attempted to coax people to the dance floor with heavy metal and other painful melodies. Eventually music more suitable to my style of dancing was played and I ventured to the dance floor.

For the first time in my life within 20 minutes of stepping on the dance floor I totally owned it. While I'm hesitant to toot my own horn I was startled by the number of women checking out my moves as my hips gyrated in sync with the music (thanks charity) and my contorted facial expressions showed my expressions of joy from both dancing and drinking. Granted I was only up against 25-35 year old white men from minnesota, not really on the cutting edge of dance moves, but hey I'm no great talent myself. I think the night hit its apex when I waltzed with a married woman named Joy; fortunately her husband was not in attendance. Another highlight was looking back and seeing an older gentleman in biker apparel conversing with my two friends, I was later to learn that he was inviting them both to Amsterdam for a wild time and seemed to express his interest in both of them, I think my friends were more amused than anything, which is good. Anyway I spent a fun 2.5 hrs dancing before we decided to head back. Sadly my closing game is still more like a Farnsworth (former unsuccessful closer/middle reliever for the Cubs) than a rivera (the closer for the yankees for those who don't follow the sport regularly) and I am back here alone, which is why I'm writing now I suppose.

This past week was good, cut down trees, closed down a dirt road to the great consternation of the locals (but hey, they shouldn't dump their old sofas, treadmills, and most strangely; their kilns there) and got a headache from a touch too much sharpie fumes, frankly thats a pretty good trifecta right there. I will close with two comments. First BJoyful which happens to be a pretty sweet license plate and also the inspiration to my dancing, and secondly I am drunk, eric I hope this post measures up. Finally, since I find myself long-winded and with a third comment, feel free to add your heckles and commentary here. I am, at least for the short-term, still your humble correspondent north of the twin cities metropolitan area and the king of fatboy's, if only for 30 minutes.

Misplaced items and a city that won't stay dead

2005-11-10T07:53:00.000-06:00

So I was a touch forgetful in recalling my texas experience. Two minor things I would like to note. We were on a road that was under construction and there was a large hole on the other side where there once was a lane with 4 construction workers in it. Three of the four were wearing white cowboy hats as opposed to the more traditional hardhat. That was a welcome to texas moment. The other was my attendance at my young cousin's football practice, he's 9, and watching the 6 dads direct their sons in the fundamentals of life's most important game. The next morning we went to one of his contests. It was a thriller and I say that in all sincerity. They were down by two scores but came back to win with a pass and a snazzy reverse play that really fooled the other team. Apparently they had only been scored on once all season prior to this game. The quarterback/safety on the other team was an animal. He was quite fast and a sure tackler. By the carnage he was wrecking he was like an urlacher or ray lewis out there, though smaller in stature, so it was actually a little jarring when he made a tackle near me and I could see that he was a sandy haired kid with freckles.

Onto Pheonix:
We arrived friday and went to a nice mexican cantina in Scottsdale for the rehearsal dinner. We had a bit of a medical emergency when my aunt bit her tongue and the blood wouldn't stop oozing out for some time. Also when we finished supping my uncle noticed a powerful little sports car pulled up next to the cantina: a ferrari. However, what made it especially interesting was the fact that the hood on the aft mounted engine was clear, so you could see directly into the inner workings of the V22 or whatever it was. The wedding went well. Since it was at a baseball park I was hopeful that they would incorporate more baseball things into the ceremony. I was picturing my uncle signalling to the bullpen for the right-hander and having my cousin driven in on the cart. Or unshelled peanuts being available during the wedding with the options of throwing the shells at the wedding party as they left, I imagine its better for the birds than rice; not so sadly, the wedding incorporated none of these elements. My brother and I did manage to tear up the dance floor though that evening and drew rave reviews. I should also mention that earlier that day I watched the 45+ world series, San Jose won. I think the highlight was when they announced an attendance of 48: that includes those of us who were helping set up for the wedding.

In other news my dad's cat is now on the feline version of Prozac. Apparently the cat is depressed; I thought that was funny until I wrote the previous clause, now I think its just sad, rest assured though I will not fall into the trap of taking prozac myself to deal with a depressed cat on prozac, that would be nutty. The other item of animal news is that when I got to my mom's house I saw a rather realistic looking 'coon tail in the carhouse. Apparently my stepdad has taken to collecting the 'coon tails and the attached fur that he finds in the woods behind my house, or the street outside, and has some future plans for them that may or may not involve a hat; I never realized that he had a bit of a habberdasher in him. (it should be noted that my mother strenuously objects to the whole project)

Well I went back to Chicago after being in pheonix for 2 days, hung out with jesus as promised and played some beer die. Brunch with Nadine and friend the next morning, still love salonica's. Went up to kings and caught up on Lost and AD, bryan informed me that they are cancelling AD: I have given up on the american people. Went with Bryan, Rachael McCarthy, Akira, and Eleanor to a spanish place and then to Darwin's for drinks. Eleanor who was a member of SuperSnatch when Akira and Rachael were still students was and presumably still is one of the most polite and considerate people I've met in a while. Was a good time, went back and played some scattegories with tony, bryan, and rachael; that was good fun. Tony also gave me some warm apparel he apparently has no further need for. One of the items had a hole in the sleeve, this will come up later.

So I took Amtrak back to MN with a delay in arrival of only 75 min, not bad for Amtrak. I decided that this time I would try to get more of the train experience and so I had dinner in the dining car, the beef pot pie was pretty good. I ate with a gentleman in a catholic seminary and a couple headed to the Mayo clinic to make sure the husband's cancer was still in remission. Apparently the Mayo clinic helped him when other's thought he was terminal; he was very keen on the Mayo. We discussed religion primarily. Afterwards I watched batman begins in the observation car.

Upon my arrival in the twin cities I was picked up by a friend and we were supposed to meet another friend at a bar called nye's. Nye's was a very cool mix of polka, las vegas karaoke lounge (if such a thing still exists or ever did), and college basement party. Quite the range of clientele as well with every thing from college students to evening dressed ladies and gentlemen, to men in suits. We did not find my friend.

Lastly last night those of us still here went to a local bar called the Vanishing Point where we played pool and danced, I did more of the latter than the former. I should note that is when I discovered that I had sewn the seam on the wrong side of the shirt Tony had given me so now the underside of that sleeve looks somewhat ridiculous. I was somewhat embarrassed but others were impressed that I had tried to sew anything. I danced a lot, worked on a little break dancing, lost a dance off, danced more, and in general had a good time.

Today it was in the high 30s, raining, and I worked outside. It wasn't too bad though as we kept warm by putting in a new firebreak which required a lot of sawing, axe swinging, chainsawing, hauling out stumps with a truck, digging out and cutting up stumps, and apparently breaking a lot of axes. We broke 1 maul,1 double headed axe, and two firemen axes. At the end we were trying to dislodge a particularly large stump and I suggested those swingin' give it some oomph; the oomph cost us a maul and one of the fire axes, but on the plus side you can now wiggle the stump, which was honestly quite the achievement though it might seem small.

That's it for tonight, except that I ate potato-leek soup while watching jack nicholson and art garfunkel act, sadly for art his acting didn't amount to much when he parted with nicholson. Wasn't a bad movie, was called Carnal Knowledge. Well that's it for now, sorry it took a while to add anything. Was good to see everyone, and enjoy winter's opening salvo when it hits you in a day or so, its snowing here right now.

The Tejas Experience

2005-10-31T08:16:00.000-06:00

So, last monday eve my father picked me up and I helped him work a food show in Minneapolis tuesday. This was my 3rd food show, second that I've helped at, and it was a little eye-opening. About 200 booths hand out samples of food to entice restaurant owners to buy their company's products, its pretty simple. The food trends toward the easy to prepare and good tasting, meaning deep-fried, fatty, or a delicious combination of both. After being there I'm impressed by how little most run of the mill restaurants actually do in the way of preparation. I would venture that most of the appetizers, a lot of the non-meat portion of the meal, almost all sauces and dressings, and many of the desserts are not actually creations of the restaurant at all but of regional food distributors. I worked primarily on selling salad dressing. I should mention that oil, salad dressing, and gravy provided a good chunk of the finances that allowed me to attend college, and since nursing provided the other major portion I like to feel that it preserves the yin-yang balance in my life. It was kind of funny actually because I believe I was a better food salesman at the tender age of eleven when I was working gravy. I had a pretty good pitch, "Hey mister! you want to try some gravy? its delicious." It somehow worked, my pitch this time was a little subdued. There were two minor highlights of the show, the first was selling about 200 tubs of shortening to the mexican restaurant that does the $.50 tacos that I mentioned semi-recently. Its good to know that they go through loads and loads of the cheap stuff. The other was that in a universe-makes-sense kind of a thing, the hottest girl at the show was selling the sweetest product: ice cream. In other news I really like to invert words like ice cream, or popcorn into creamed-ice and corned-pop, it just amuses me for unknown reasons.

The next day found me in a plane headed south to houston. Milwaukee's "favorite" prognosticator of meteorlogical events was with us to cheer on his hometown houston astros. I was happy to see the white sox win though I generally kept my peace, with the exception of some vigorous fist pumping, when the white sox did well as I was surrounded by starry-eyed astro fans. We were down there for my stepmother's father's 75 b-day party. I'm fairly close to him and so was glad I could make it down. Aside from the rather touching birthday celebrations the other highlight of the trip was the second coming of the whiner bowl. years ago when I was nine(?) we played a game of football with all my brothers and uncles. In retrospect it was funny because all the youngsters started crying at some point. The game culminated with me hiding one of my uncles favorite hats behind a electrical power dealy because I was angry with him. There was less crying this time around but we still managed to have a good time.

Since houston i've been in hyde park the last few days staying and drinking at jason's. Yesterday he and I made a declicious lunch of pita bread, bacon, tofu cooked in bacon grease, bell peppers, hummus, brie, olives, and a type of cheese that I can't remember, it was delicious. Played some ultimate, though I didn't play particularly well, and hung out. I'm off to the city of the rebirthing bird tomorrow for a wedding that apparently will be at Hohokam Park which is where the cubs go every spring to train for a season of broken hearts and dreams. Hopefully the wedding can alter the juju of the place.

More pictures and recent events

2005-10-24T12:40:00.000-05:00

So I hope everyone enjoyed the above, the snake was a rattler, the plant was a jack-in-the-pulpit I believe, and the random brown 'burb is brown burby and was extensively talked about in an earlier post. I should clarify though that it is not me taking these pictures, but rather other employees of the area, I like to think I would take pictures if I had a camera, so suffice to say that these are the pictures I would take if I could.

The previous week was fun. Had to fill out four separate timesheets as I was being paid through four different grants for various work. That was entertaining, I can see why accountants are needed now. This past week we started clearing pines, oaks, and brush in some of the old fields to help them remain fields rather than early successional forest. This involved a lot of sawing, clearing trees, and a class on the theory of chainsaw use. While this was interesting and I did use the chainsaw briefly I don't forsee myself using it very much if at all in the future. Frankly because its a little scary and for a few other reasons. Anyway saturday I went over to someone's house for part III of helping him put up a fence for his horses, sheep, and very aggressive (at least with the horses) geese. I used a drill there that was probably designed and manufactured when dual dorsal fins on chevies were in vogue and with the amount of stainless steel it had on it, it weighed about as much as one of those cars did. So saturday night my right forearm was really sore and tired. I couldn't even hold up a book and read it with both hands.

Sunday I spent most of the day reading, making cornbread (something I love doing because its easy, good, and almost good for you) , packing, and walking around the woods with a fellow named Joel. Now Joel is really into the outdoors and plants and such things so it was cool to hike with him. We tried out some wild wintergreen mint, hiked through a golden swampy tamarack and cedar bog, picked some labrador tea (it's a plant), and smoked cigars on the bank of cedar creek and talked about life. While talking about life a walking stick crawled up on his thigh which of course is really cool. He mentioned that since dragonflys landing on you are a sign of fertility he wondered what the walking stick was. I told him that the walking stick on his thigh was a sign of fertility. We then rode our sweet bikes back and talked about how you would fight a bear with a sword, though he stipulated that he wouldn't fight it unless he was protecting someone: Joel's quite noble. We then got back and discovered that a badminton net had been erected in our abscence so we played. I should emphasize that again we were playing badminton five minutes after having a conversation about fighting bear's with swords. We then made labrador tea while watching the early and middle innings of the White Sox game. The tea tasted quite unique and good, though this afternoon joel used the word "carpet" in trying to describe its taste to someone; I have no idea what he meant by that.

To those astute ones who wondered in the last paragraph what I was packing for, well I'll explain. My father is currently inbound to pick me up, I'll work a food show with him around the twin cities tomorrow and then fly off to houston for my grandfather's 75th b-day. Then I will return to the milwaukee-chicago metro area for a couple days and then I'm bound for pheonix for my cousin's wedding. Depending what day I get back ( I can't recall at the moment) I may hang around chicago for a few days before coming back up here to continue to help with restoring old fields, putting in fire roads, and helping with the savannah restoration. If anyone really cares my chart of movement goes as follows MN->WI->TX->WI->IL->AZ->IL->MN.

Finally Bryan I just got through reading Snow Crash, I enjoyed the beginning and middle, was a little confused by the whole lingual/physical/computer virus thing and Sumeria but overall enjoyed it. Also Eric, are you really done with UPA sanctioned ultimate because in my random perusings of various utlimate-themed blogs I find your evidence of your recent visits? I refer to postings on Jim P's and some-tall-skinny-kid's blogs. Or as you briefly mentioned in your own web journal, is this just a general interest in ultimate theory or the happenings and goings-on of the sport? Anyway that's all I got except that I really smell like pine right now and everyone should go to dinner club. Lyrica I hope your enjoying Chi-town.

Photos from the creek

2005-10-17T21:30:00.000-05:00

Thought I'd try to give Eric an image of fall amongst other things.

With apologies to easya, I'm sober...oh well.

2005-10-16T18:53:00.000-05:00

So back from the chippewa forest. The leaves changing colors, the weather, and the work made the trip quite enjoyable. Although it was predominantly a coniferous forest there was still a quite a bit of coloration to be seen and enjoyed. In one section it was particularly nice because oaks, maples, birches, and aspen were changing to orange, red, and yellow beneath a canopy of dark green pines. It looked like an abstract representation of a forest fire. Also this morning there was a hard frost and white trim formed around a lot of the ground vegetation which gave it an almost magical or fairy tale aspect. Keeping with the fall theme we drove through a lot of tamarack forests on the way back, which is a conifer that loses its needles, but first they change to a stunning gold color, whenever these were interspersed with still-green-evergreens it looked like what I imagine lambeau field does on 8 sundays of the year.

For lunch the first day we ate near Lake Winnebegoshish or something like that which is actually part of the mississippi river and at one point we saw two bald eagles flying overhead calling to one another in cries that seemed a little high-pitched for such stately birds. We also saw one on the side of the road pecking at a dead porcupine, its funny how porcupines and eagles take the place of racoons and crows up there.

We stayed at the Gosh Dam motel which was adjacent to the Gosh Dam bar, which is where we took our meals and recreation. Saw the last 5 minutes of the USC-ND game and was a little disappointed, bryan please extend my condolences to the brothers, I imagine carlos would take it particularly hard, or at least kind of hard for a few hours. Then watched the south siders inch closer to the WS.

The bar was crowded with grouse hunters. It was sort of disconcerting to be working in the woods while hearing shotgun blasts every few minutes, some far and some near, but I took comfort in my orange vest and that I wouldn't leave any orphans in the care of the state. Our first night there three of us got the question, "So y'all up here for grouse or fish or both?" To which we responded with some sort of gibberish about resin bags in stockings, nitrogen and saplings, I didn't really understand it myself. After this incident I, familiar with these situations from eating out at ultimate tournaments, decided we should change our story. We were now first-time hunters; with guns bought in warba (pop. 187 whose major commercial enterprises centered around guns, liquor, and leather); hoping to shoot birds, with the follow up query, "do you know any good spots." Sadly we never got to play out this fiction as no one else cared what we were doing, oh well.

Before we headed back we took a side trip to the Lost Forty Acres, which is a plot of forest that since its initial surveyors listed the area as underwater, managed to escape the woodsmans' axe. It was filled with enormous white and red pines whose size in my experience was only dwarfed by the redwoods. Sort of daunting to think how much lumber was taken out of the north woods of this country knowing that norm now was the exception back then. Was enlightening to be in that after walking and working in secondary forest all year. They were probably around 200 feet high, I sadly tried to estimate their height by imagining high up them I could throw a disc, and were said to be ~400 years old. Was also cool because only the second time in my life I've been over the Laurentian Divide, which means if I went tubing on a river I'd wind up in the artic ocean rather than the seas I and my readership are more familiar with. There was also a good deal of balsam fir there which reminded me of maine and my balsam fir story.

So it was my first day of work in maine and a fellow named ben was showing me the differences between red spruce and balsam fir, the two coniferst that we most often measured. He explained that balsam fir has nodes or warts on the side that are filled with sap, he then demonstrated with his thumbnail how if you punctured them sap would squirt out. The effect of this was that a gob of sap shot right into his eye and caused him no small amount of discomfort. Now I was standing there trying to not laugh too hysterically because I had only met ben a few days before, but that was hands down one of the funniest things I think I've ever seen happen to someone.

Anyway, hope this didn't bore anyone to tears. As far as any sort of return to Chicago it will probably be sooner rather than later, though I'm not sure myself yet when it will be.

headin' north

2005-10-14T16:27:00.000-05:00

So I'm headed to the chippewa national forest this weekend to pull pantyhose out of the ground among other things. I've been well recently, played yahtzee last night and did some shots of baileys while makin' pizza. Monday I should hopefully get a bottle of wine that I helped crush the cherries and grapes for so that's exciting, will have to break that out at some sort of social dinner event. And in the wha'ts joe saying department the word leptodactylous has been getting some play around here. It means having fine, slender digits. I may, or may not have a prize for the first person to use this as a pickup line. well gotta go cheers.

DC isn't dead yet

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

Just wanted to give a shout out to those who partake in dinner club part deux, and mad props to rachael for getting it started again. I'll be ok though, while you enjoy delicious home-cooked food in celebration of columbus being lucky and canadians giving thanks for whatever it is they can give thanks for, I'll be enjoying subpar $.50 tacos in great abundance. The cheapness makes them good.

Sat. mornin'

2005-10-08T12:59:00.000-05:00

So this morning was interesting. Woke up and walked to the lab where the resident naturalist was smoking rather furiously. This isn't abnormal or unexpected as he was giving a public tour and he seems to not like large groups of strange people. He expressed concern over the fact that there were several senior citizens in the group and as his planned tour called for walking 4 miles he asked me if I wouldn't mind taking some people on a smaller walk to cedar bog lake. Initially this caused a wave of trepidation to fall over me, as I've only been to the bog lake twice and the second time couldn't find the trail there for 10 minutes, I would also be ill-equipped to answer specific questions about the trail, like "what's that plant?". But for all that I said "yes, i'll do it." So myself and 5 happy adventurers went off on our journey, and it wasn't that bad. I only had to say, "you know, I'm sure what that is," or "I don't know" about 10 times. The toughest question I got being, "so labrador tea, I noticed you have it here, is it unusual to have it in bogs this far south?" yeah, I didn't have much of an answer to that one. But the tour turned out ok, I mumbled things about islands of mature trees and told my eagle and otter stories, and one woman talked at length about her fears of global warming and such. It wasn't too bad.

Got back and had cholestoral for breakfast in the form of 3 eggs and andouille sausage, then noticed a group of people in a red van. Apparently some student taught college course that will spend the night, though I won't be able to interact with them much as I'm going to mccallister college tonight to see some friends. I then went and walked my supervisor's dog nolly, threw sticks in the air to it, and tried unsuccessfully to make her stop eating grass.

Well that's it for this morning, I know that recently I said I would post more, but instead went the akira route of telling people I would post more and then did almost nothing at all for 2 weeks. Also former denizens of harper house will be pleased to hear that I spyed RA-extradonaire Mary Geherz in the twin cities marathon last weekend at mile 24, so we can assume that she finished. She seemed healthy though tired, though that might be the marathon's influence. I actually saw her a few weeks ago on I-94 on my way down to CHC. So hopefully we'll be able to catch up sometime and discuss things as they stand in our respective lives.

A friends art part deux

2005-10-03T16:50:00.000-05:00

This one is called Assumption and shows Mary ascending into heaven. I should note that what makes these really cool is the fine detail, like the fact that the moon is made of cheese, which you'll probably need to go to his website to see. Again the artist is Dan Mitsui and his website can be found here http://danielmitsui.tripod.com/

a friend's art,

2005-10-03T16:26:00.000-05:00

Above is a friend's art from highschool. It is called Chi-Ro Monogram and when I first saw it I spent 15 minutes looking at it to get all the fine detail work. I thought initially the the large X symbol might be an ascending dove. My friend Dan mitsui, and the artist, pointed out that is in fact just the symbol Chi or the greek letter for X, which just goes to show again that I'm an idiot. Anyway, if you want to look at more, buy, or whatever go here http://danielmitsui.tripod.com/

Mmmmm...soup.

2005-09-28T21:20:00.000-05:00

So I made tomato soup, the same recipe that colin used for those who were/are involved in Dinner Club, it turned out very well except I saw the word "stock" and thought "broth" and so added the wrong kind of liquid, though even if I had caught this ahead of time it would not have mattered as I have no stock. I'm excited to try out a yellow-split-pea and andouille(sp?) sausage recipe in the next few days. Its good that I'm getting into soups as the weather has turned a wee bit chilly recently and hot food is very welcome in the old stomach. Ahhh...I can't wait to make all kinds of one-pot concoctions.

So this past weekend was amazingly boring, don't know when the last time I was that bored but thank god its over. The only thing of note I did was read Richard III. If you want to know how to curse read that play. In order to make this weekend exciting I've decided to go and stay in the cities, I don't know how or with who yet but I'm really up for anything and need a little adventure. Hopefully I'll have a good post ready with all sorts of weird sidebars and such, I'll just stay here and read.

In other news I'm continually amazed by Arrested Development, if you're not watching this show you really need to. Its just amazing, even if you don't like TV, buying consumer goods, or any element of popular culture this 30 minutes is worth your time. To those who do watch it I've been laughing at Buster's invisible hand waving for two days now.

I've also recently joined the facebook universe. Its kind of scary as I can now easily reconnect with high school friends and meet others who share similar interests or characteristics, like having an adam's apple. I don't know if I'm ready for that. If/when I go back to chicago I may take advantage of some of those options.

The attempted pirate post

2005-09-19T20:47:00.000-05:00

So I promised I would post more regularly and so here is a post. I would first like to apologize to teammates of mine on Jobbers. Though sectionals will undoubtedly be over by the time you read this I would like to admit my error and poor judgement in talking about clambake and more specifically my desire to go there rather than regionals in my previous post. I think that I was still a little frustrated from my play at tune-up and was excited at the idea of going to clambake though I sort of always knew I would not really go. Anyhoo I'm sorry if I marginalized anyone on the team by what I wrote, I guess therein are the dangers of blogging while slightly inebriated.

Well after that rather sober note I'll get on to the happenings and goings-on of the past week. Monday while listening to the radio I learned that it was national talk like a pirate day. I actually tried to post in pirate prose. My attempt was rather lacking but the short aborted attempt is reprinted here for your enjoyment.

T'is morning while listenin' to the radio me be, I was remembered of the meaty meaning of this day. Tis a day for speech not unlike pirate and so I, so unable to write in a normal voice, on any other eve, will try my hand at speech resembling more a barge's raider than a man of thought and opinion well-conceived. I should note that while this is a day for pirate speech I found myself reading shakespeare, so if my prose seems more like (though not as good) as the later rather than the former, know that I tried though not too well. Also I should admit that the extent to which my thought and opinion is well-conceived is very debatable. Yestermorn ere my booty was won Keep your thoughts clean I spied in me box of letters from seas afar a letter from the new hampshire state. It was the reply to a note I had sribbled some ports past from a wrench I use the term loosley here as she is a retired schoolteacher I met while landlubbing through the eastern states. It caused a moment tender in this young cur's heart and gave me delinquencies pause as I learned what had occurred to her since our chance meeting much water under the bow ago. Ok I can't do this.

Well there you have it, I guess I unlike twain don't really have an ear for the language, and I should furtherly suppose that our differences in writing ability don't end there.

Incidentally, reading about shakespeare, actually an article about vulgarity in the NYT, the past week I learned in interesting tidbit. The play title "Much Ado About Nothing" is a bit of wordplay that could sound like "Much Ado About an-o-thing" the 0-thing apparently being a bawdy reference to female genitalia. That William was rather clever.

Yesterday I went to the same fellow's house as I did last friday to help put up a fence for his 2-1/2 horses, one of them full-grown is about the size of a large heavily muscled dog, which was fun. As we were putting up one section the neighbor's eight horses sauntered over to see what all the fuss, hammering, and oath-generating was about. In those numbers, standing near them in their natural fenced-in element was quite remarkable.. Afterwards we enjoyed an old-speckled hen beer which I believe jason or zahlen spoke to the merits of some time ago and with whom I concur. We then proceeded to the local tavern where much to my liking they had unlimited popped corn, though judging from the floor around the bar area they keep the hoover corporation in the black. We ordered the fish-fry and were not disappointed.

Finally, about 5 months after my own arrival and 1 month after the majority of interns left, we got our presumably last intern arrival of the year. His name is nathaniel, though he goes by natty and graduated from oberlin college a little more than a year ago. When I asked, "Did you know Lyrica?" He replied, "Lyrica Hammann?" So Lyrica, or any other oberlin educated reader of these humble pages, if you would like to pass along convey any message I would be happy to do so.

Well that 'bout wraps her up. Its off to pancake making and then possibly an extended sojourn to the allison savannah, its a nature conservancy owned savannah that abuts our property, and while there the other day I was struck by its amazingly high degree of awesomeness. Anyway ta ta.

roofin' man tunes up? not really.

2005-09-17T22:19:00.000-05:00

Ok so I gotta clear the air. When I went to chicago this past weekend apparently a number of people thought I was drunk every time I posted to this space. Despite the fact that I am drunk right now (4 labatt blues) that is simply not the case. I'm actually sober most of the time. But enough of that.

Tuneup, or to the newer generation CHC (chicago heavyweight championships, though now its more of a middleweight), was just ok. In fact it was pretty bad. I played the worst I have at a serious tournament since probably my freshman year of college and our team despite playing well at times, never really started to click. It was a frustrating weekend as far as ultimate is concerned. However, ultimate has recently become a vehicle with which to see friends as 90% of my current friends play ultimate to some extent, rather than an end to itself. I got to see Lyrica for the first time in a year, which was totally sweet, as she's totally cool and moving to chi-town soon, which is all the more incentive to go back there because its one more totally righteous and fun-living individual. I also got to see kevin and george. He was an especially fine see as he's leaving the country, along with nate (though he's embarking for deutschland), for the greater part of a year for london to study polysci at the london school of economics. He's an inteligent man and a wonderful human being, we talked about books, betrand russell, and the decline of page2 on espn as an entertaining media source; really a classic joe/george conversation with both the highbrow and the low all intertwined and such, we only lacked a new personal best record for spyhunter to bring up. I also saw trudy (I'll email I promise though you probably won't read this), rose, eric, julia, josie, erica, and others. I think I may have more to post here about that weekend, but I'll leave that to more sober times.

So yesterday I went to help a full-time type from here tear down a fence at his place so he could put in a better fence to keep in his horses. It should be noted he has quite the personal zoo, including a slumbering feline that got quite indignant when I started peeing in front of it. I managed to test his electric fence twice. It apparently conducts quite well through both the work glove I was wearing and the metal posts that I was carrying which grazed it. Sort of made my arm go numb. Not bad work. Today I helped another guy from here, jim, put a new roof on a house he bought to fix and resell. With 5 of us it took 13 hours and he'll probably put in another 3 tomorrow to finish it. It was rather satisfying work as you got instant gratification and the sense of having done something noble (namely putting a roof over someone's head) not to mention being well paid, fed, and beered. So now I could almost roof on my own, a scary thought. Afterwards we started telling stories about this and past years at the creek. The funniest ones included someone "lubricating" root samples with WD-40 and the resident chemist and sometimes roofer nearly having to kill him, but restraining himself to a "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" which was pretty understated when you consider the question of why anyone would think that roots need to be lubricated. Other ones included the girl who not only couldn't get hot water in the shower (she was used to two knobs rather than one) but who didn't bring this up in conversation with anyone else for 3 weeks before bringing it to Jim the facilities guy, this especially boggled people because she never wondered how her roomates could steam up the bathroom with cold water. The other good one is the guy who borrowed a screw gun, brought it back 30 seconds later and said, "Can you give me the other screw gun, this is the one that unscrews screws," not realizing that there's a rather nifty switch which toggles the function between unscrewing and screwing on one gun. Yes we get some interesting types around here, though to be fair I myself once walked into a mirror, you might ask why didn't I see myself, and the answer is I'm a narcissist and would be inexorably drawn to any image of myself. It should also be noted that Jim spent $100 dollars on a nail gun. This is the single best investment anyone could make if they roof their own house, outside of the actually roofing material of course, It probably saved about 15 man hours and if you ever get the safety off, can really keep the neighborhood kids at bay. This might be a good point to just reiterate the fact that I'm evil. The house he bought incidentally was about the worst in terms of fixer-upper I have ever seen. The previous owners had just destroyed the interior walls, floors, bathrooms, and anything else they reasonably could. To give the reader an idea they fixed holes in the wall with newspaper and duct tape and I think one load bearing structure looked a lot like paper-machie (sorry for the spelling and yes that was a poor joke), just abysmal.

In other news this week my friend EB departed south to go home from here. She was one of the good ones and we'll all miss her. Especially those of us who egged her on in her baking habit, its wonderful getting home-baked cookies in the morning what can I say, she was also just genuinely happy most of the time, even when she recently floated the burb' in a in a huge puddle up to its bumpers.

The last bit of news is that steve, the WD-40 on roots hating chemist also plays ultimate. He invited me to play in maine at clambake with a lot of the guys I played with from 2 years ago. I decided to decline because of the expense and because its the same weekend as regionals and although my attendence in the UPA series is still in the air, I'm not keen on ditching my chicago friends and go to maine. It is however clambake, and when will I ever get another chance is what I ask myself. I guess I'll have to trust to fate and to the fact that I suck at the moment. If however any readers of this space are going and would voice there profund approval to my attendence, who knows, I might be swayed, it is supposed to be a pretty sweet party. I'll probably amend this post tomorrow with more details about my triumphant return to chicago.

Wooooo! I wrote the above last night and when I went to post it I got an error message and it seemed everything had been deleted, this made me so angry I had to go to sleep. I'll try to post more regularly in the near future, sorry for the delay.

"The Good Land"

2005-08-31T21:27:00.000-05:00

So last wednesday I headed south on a strange and wonderful journey that would eventually find me at my father's house in Waukesha that very evening. There I saw my stepmom's parents who are my only living grandparents and whom I had not seen in two years. I had several conversations with them over the next few days and while sitting and discussing things with my grandfather he asked me two, rather pointed questions. The first was, "So what are you going to do with your life?" To which I replied that I didn't know. The second, asked in almost an accusatory tone was, "So you're not married yet?" I admitted that I was not as of yet, though someday hoped to be.

On friday jason, sasha, and wrenn picked me up and we proceeded to Josie's residence in milwaukee. There Jason and I discussed life over 2 liters of jobber juice (~300 ml of gin to 700ml of gatorade) Some highlights that night and morning were watching two squirrels have sex, catching snippets of a man's sex life as he discussed them on the phone as we tried to sleep, and a rather voyeuristic moment when I looked across the street and realized there was a naked woman by the window. This led jason and I to wondering what made voyeurism so interesting. After thinking about it a little my answer is as follows, when you watch someone and they think no one's watching you can catch a glimpse of the unguarded self. You can see how a person acts when they feel safe from social censure. How odd that moments like that so-often end with nose-picking. I suppose I should note that I think my take on voyeurism at the time we were drunk was shall we say, less cliched but more because-she's-naked-damnit oriented in its arguments.

Saturday morning we arrived at the fields right about the time the games were slated to begin and I saw rachael and rob whom I had not seen in some time, which made me very glad. Being hungover on saturday was an odd way to start a tournament but it seemed to work out ok, I also had that odd sense of superiority to everyone else at the field who was feeling fresh and youthful; the new mantra or shall we say guiding principle adopted that morning was that you could not win the party saturday night if you weren't hung over saturday morning. We finished 0-4 on saturday but we lost 3 of those games by a combined 4 points, which was a little frustrating. The Jobbers is an interesting team. I feel that we have a discrepancy on the way certain people view the team. I just want to have a good time and winning is secondary to that, hence I don't really live and die with every play on the field, don't take speeches too seriously, and wonder where my sippy beer is. I felt that on the whole the team felt this way and as a result we played really well at the beginnings of games because we were pretty loose. This is opposed to my college teams that opened games poorly. Now though, we get this O'shit thing, like we're tied with CLX at 5-5, or we're up 7-2 against a team that's probably on the same level as us, we must be good, we should start trying and it all goes to hell. Where as in college, being down took the pressure off and we either played respectable the rest of the game, stormed back and lost when it got close again, or very rarely came back and won. I feel if we could just hang loose more we'd do better. I don't know how to do that. The answer though probably is not trying to catch a quick 30 second standing nap on the line, like I was trying to on saturday when I started to feel a little funny from the gin. The other thing I didn't like was too much sideline assistance, specifically what I should do with the disc every time I catch it.

I bumped into kevin tucker on saturday and after the games we joined my family for the brewers game where we got complimentary Bob Ueker russian dolls. That was pretty sweet. We then managed to beat kevin's team the next morning and then we won our last game as well, we finished 13th which means we were at least even with our intial seeding. I also saw some polo, it looked like a really large version of a little kids' soccer game where they all follow the ball around the field.

Then an uneventful trip back here. Not a bad few days, hopefully I can get down for CHC and we can improve a little from cooler.

Since writing the above I attended the Great Minnesota Get Together, which in other states is called the "state fair" I believe. Was interesting to see some of the exhibits, though the orchid and bonzai exhibits deserve special mention. The food was crazy, they must have had about 200 food vendors there. I ate a scotch egg on a stick which I couldn't pass up after hearing of Raz's ill-fated encounter with them. For those who don't know, a scotch egg is a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage and cooked (read deep-fried) to "perfection", Raz threw up on a bet to eat five of them. I also had a belgium waffle dipped in choclate with whip cream and sprinkles on a stick and some delicious deep fried cheese curds. Incidentally the "on a stick" selling point extended to everything there for sale practically: pickles, origami, t-shirts, and so on. Well that's all I got for this entry. Ciao babes.

A few things forgotten on the way to the post button.

2005-08-22T17:39:00.000-05:00

So two more minor points from the weekend. When we went grocery shopping to get stuff for the carrot cake and some homemade overly large squash ravioli 2 interesting things happened. The first was that the young, socially awkward, clerk at wal-mart put his foot in his mouth. Charlie and a girl EB were buying some food and the clerk asked if EB was Charlie's Mom. Charlie, a bit taken back, responded with "What?" The clerk than guessed "girlfriend" which is sadly not correct either. Charlie informed the young clerk that guessing whether or not a young woman is a young man's mother is probably an ill-considered approach to small-talk and the woman in particular don't care for it. The clerk than said, "Oh, so you know about woman do you?" To which Charlie replied, "well obviously one of us doesn't." I was amused by the whole thing, especially since the kid looked down his nose at me when I bought a plain red ball, and especially in combination with toothpaste. As if getting a toy ball and colgate toothpaste marked me as a deviant or social pariah. I can't help but think what he would have said if I got some condoms and a red ball. But walmart probably doesn't sell condoms so its a mute point.

The second thing was a signal from God but I don't know what it means. We pulled into a parking lot where there were two shopping cart return dealys across the parking lane from eachother. As we pull in, a cart in the near one is pushed back by the wind, swings around 180 degrees and crosses the parking lane and situates itself in the middle of the other return dealy. I think that this description doesn't really do the thing justice. Oh well, there it is.

How far is heaven?

2005-08-21T20:48:00.000-05:00

The answer = 1 keg

Sorry I am q uite drunk at the momebnbt.

As the astute reader will no doubt have noticed I misspelled some words in the previous line and I make no proclamations of spelling error free in the next bit.

So last tuesday I didn't quite do total justice to that post. In addition to ross breaking down the door and having to get a new one he did another fun thing. He hiked up his shorts so it looked like he was wearing a large black diaper. At this point Charlie hid on the stairs and tried to pretend he was my conciousness and adivise me to listen to what ross was saying. This involved much confusion on my part as I tried to understand charlie without looking at him (he would hide below the wall of the staircase if I looked that way and declare it was very hard to be my concious with me always looking at him) but he proclaimed I should listen to the man with the black diaper --so I did and he advised me to not dance with the woman with large breasts because she was a temptress and would not follow up on what she seemed to offer. To this I had to reply that I already knew this fact and it did not faze me at that particular moment in time becasue I just wanted to tdance. But on to this weekend.

Friday night after work we went to "famous dave's" and got some fucking BBQ meat and enjoyed it. After this we got a keg of beer for about 6 people. We drank well on friday night. With keg stands, the introduction of beer die, and other hilarities of joy and good cheer. On saturday we began the drink early. We constructed an effigy of Bathtub Jim (a man my good friend from louisiana came up with as he tried to say bathtub gin), drank a lot and then took the keg and had a parade around various important things dressed as indians. At one point I took my clothes off and paraded about sort of leading the expedition if you will, but that is another matter, we fucking rocked with a parade aboard a mechanical beast of burden and had a lot of fun. So we had the parade but I should mention that before the parade we smashed choke cherries to help a coworker make choke cherry wine of which he promises to send this humble scribe a bottle. So we had lots of read cheery juice, I smeared this all over my skin to make it more indian like for the parade, incidentally I apologize for the lack of PC in this post, b ut it is unavoidable as I have done a lot of things this weekend that are not PC.

So we started to watch Strangebrew that night and I fell asleep. today I woke up and we fucking went tubign but I should mention what happened saturday in the early morning as it is a federal offense. As charlie and I discussed the history of recent civilization, others, shall we say more given to sexual intercourse than scholarly discourse ( they didnb't go the tue U of C after all), persons took the mail box and hid it in one of the buildings. It was a delicious manuever as I saw it the next morning and the mail box sort of dominated the living room, what with it not supposed to be there and all. but on with the tubing., We took a lot of the leftover beer, perhaps 3 gallons worth and went tubing down the rum river, I wish I was making that up, it took about 2.29 hours but we finished the beer and had a good time getting back. We then have spaghetti and sausage with carrot cake that I helped prepare and was amazing succulent in its tastefulness. Than I drunk and several others scared away the more religiously orientated , though I learned in retriospect that it was another much more than myself. we than proceeded to throw kitchen steak knives at a melon on the belief that whomever stuck it would be the most soberest to drive us to fatboys, the neighbory watery hole, but when charlie sank the knife through both melons we decided not to go as he was quite drunk and frankly the moment had passed. They are now watching ET.

Some things that I forgot to mention. earlier in the summer charlie found a blue hat that says the name Reichel Korfmann on it. This is hilarious for reasons that probably don't need to be explained. Ross and I have subsequently found blue hats that say lester and thor respectively so we are now lester and thor koffman. We adoptede a girl nicknamed EB as our mother and formed the korfmann clan. It was this clan that went tubing. Being thor kormann has proven to be very exhilirating. Well I am drunk and will post this, if I have said anything offensive I hope you will forgive me, if I have not than I hope you will forgive me anyway. I'll probably edit to some degree tomorrow but in any case I've got to go and watch the movie. Cheers and hopes that random fresh donuts find you in your daily adventures, Joe.

Hello this is the postcript. I forgot to mention that we all found rather affordably priced used suits this weekend and are wearing them at the moment. I hope to wear this jacket to cooler if I can get the stains off it. Hoppe to see many of the readers of this space in a week, if not fuck you, I'm kidding of course, I love all of you, as few readers as I have now. Ta ta

joe "fuc'ing drun'" lit'e

incidentally the title of this post referecnes a pretty good song that ross has. I believe it's called heaven but in any case it's quite good and I liek the tnaeme. What a fabulous weekend honestly, I couldn't be happier. Ta ta, see you bitches in a week or more, depending if you play on jobbers or not.

2005-08-14T21:23:00.000-05:00

So last week was interesting. We have been taking root samples at work which involves taking a 4.5 ft long metal bar, pounding it into the earth, and then extricating it by whatever means necessary but basically limited to pulling up really hard and twisting. This led to a rather hysterical, in retrospect, accident where keith, while using a handle connected to the top of the bar by a pin, (sorry I can't describe that better, basically imagine a removable crossbar like the top line on the "T" that is connected to the "l" part by a pin) broke the pin while pulling up really hard. This led to him punching himself hard enough in the face that it required four stitches.

So the family came up and we spent the weekend at St. Croix state park which is a decent campground. Basically did a lot of camp cooking, canoing down the st. croix, and riding bikes to a beach and having a picnic. I think everyone had a good time, was good to see caitlin and sean that at 6 and 10 are growing as fast as kudzu to use a floral cliche, and of course the ol' stepdad, mother and bro. Andy and I came back to the creek friday night to party at the dome. Was a good time, with much dancing and a group streaking event that involved at least 5 first time streakers. That was fun. I don't know if everyone was certain we were going to do it, but I admire their courage at not shirking even after a naked me confronted them with the terrible reality of what they were about to do. Was definitely the longest streak in my life, I think I ran/walked about 3/4 of a mile. That was fun.

So its now two days after the above was written and several things of note have happened. The first is that two people built a huge city out of mud that has canals, palaces, condominiums, a soap factory, a hydroelectric damn, and so on. The best part about it is that in order to have more "canal front property" they ran the water initially through a pvc pipe that was bridged over a different part of the canal. Effectively forming a long huge oval in which to further develop the site. I'll try to post a photo in the future.

Then there was tonight. It was Robyn's last day here and several others are leaving in the near future. We decided to have a few drinks, although i should note that since I am sick with a cold, that effectively meant most people aside from myself. It was quite fun with random dancing and such but got taken a little too far and now a door is broken. We'll see how that plays out. In any case that's all I got for now.

Books, discs, and an oddly placed can of beer

2005-08-04T18:05:00.000-05:00

So admittedly it's been a very long time since I posted. Numerous things have happened, not all good, but surely not all bad. Rather than rack my brain for week old memories I'll try to focus on more recent activities and goings-on.

I'm reading Eats, shoots & leaves at the moment which is a book about punctuation. I first heard of it from Alison who was one of my many patient paper editors in college, and picked it up at a demi-used book shop in uptown, Minneapolis. So while I may now butcher my sentences as badly as before, at least now it is more ironic that I am doing so. Another book I picked up at the store was Our Gang which is a satirical work by Phillip Roth about the Nixon administration, or the Tricky admin. as it is called in the book, and tries to make light of all the subtle contradictory stances taken by tricky to be politically expedient rather than morally congruent. This includes him thinking about the political ramifications about giving the right-to-vote to the unborn, but then debating whether or not to arrest than shoot or just shoot the boy scouts who are protesting him, because they think he promotes sex by his defense of the unborns' rights and is a sensualist. I also picked up The Best Recipe and Democracy in America to help both my cooking and my historical sense of whom I am cooking for.

Went and played disc golf at a real course with real golfing discs today for the second time in my life. Did ok, on a 12 hole course the first round I was 10 over par with two pars and the second I was 2 over par with 3 birdies and 4 pars. I believe that my play steadily improved as I learned how to compensate for the under-stability of the discs and drive them straight and the fact that the second round I was quite drunk-at a new personal best of 2 beers-and grunted a lot more when driving the disc. On the way back I purchased two whole chickens.

One of these chickens is currently being grilled in a unique, to this writer at least, manner. We rubbed oil, adrien's seasoning mix and Dijon mustard around it, under the skin and in the cavity and then put a half-full beer can up its arse and set it on the grill. This is called a "beer-can chicken" and supposedly is quite good. For those who worry that we are using good beer you can be rest assured that its only gloeck's. A brand that costs two dollars less per 24 pack than the next cheapest case. For all that though it isn't that bad.

The Odyssey

2005-07-19T04:53:00.000-05:00

So before I begin describing the past events I would just like to say that it is currently 4:53 in the am on tuesday morning and I have not slept in 21 hours. I should also warn the reader that this will be a very long post

We will begin a week ago with the bethel minnesota bar scene. So after work myself another dude and 5 chicks head out to wreck havoc on the local watering holes. Our first stop is the dugout where we enjoy $7 pitchers of miller lite and watch the regulars play bingo around the bar. There were two highlights, both involving meat. The first was the larry burger. I ate half of someone's and it was incredible rivalled only by the billy goat double cheese in the category of unbelievably good tavern burgers. The second was when a man walked in with a cardboard box filled with a potpurri of meat products and anounced 1 for $2 or 3 for $5. Curious I looked at some sliced meat and found it to be the most suspect looking grey meat I have ever seen. All in all good place, if I don't crash hard following work today I will enjoy one for dinner I'm sure. Upon leaving the dugout we strolled on down to the vanishing point, which was interesting as it had younger customers, all men I believe and one attractive barmaid. We saddled up and discovered that beer could be had for $1 a glass. Not bad. Played a little pool, and I actually played remarkably well for me. Especially when I had caroline line up my shots and I subsequently hit the ball without looking where anything would go, was 2/2 in fact. The barmaid was funny as she gave us 30 free plays on the jukebox in an obvious attempt to keep the young women around and gave us the rundown on their various weekly specials. Not a bad night, didn't get very drunk at all and had some good talking with charlie and caroline, and then with everyone while playing pool.

We will now jump ahead to the really big shew (or show to those who don't know of ed sullivan's show). The talent show to be more exact. On thursday we had half a day and then after various games and such a talent show was put on. I demurred from displaying any talent but the quality of the acts was by no means meager because of my absence. The first talent was a bet rather than a talent. The lousiana fellow Ross (I will discuss him much more to come) had a bet that he could drink a gallon of milk in an hour without throwing up. We decided this would provide the perfect backdrop for the show. His strategy was interesting; he chugged a lot of milk early on and used a sort of direct and simple logic, which was that because cake made him thirsty for milk, whenever he got stuck he would have some cake. The other acts were good. A fellow named kyle (who incidentally plays for sub zero) sang and played the guitar for a song he had written called room for improvement. It was funny to look around and see all the young ladies in attendance studiously paying attention to what was a quite decent performance. The piece de resistance of the show though was our resident lesbian kathy dressing as a man and putting on a sort of strip show dealy. She painted on a goatee and had various costumes picked out and ready for use in her two different dressing rooms (I'm still not sure why she needed both of them). This was possibly the most surreal experience of my life. Kathy is very upfront about her sexual orientation, and I personally have no issue with it, but it was a little bizarre to sit and watch her go through her performance, which was admittedly not too bad, because it had this sort of "YOU WILL BE COMFORTABLE WITH THIS" vibe. At random times she would try to draw audience members into the show with mixed results. But the best was when she tried to get Ross into the show (I should mention that there has been a bit of tension there) and he twenty minutes into a gallon of milk demurred muttering rather loudly "Milk". The crescendo of the show was at the end when Kathy and several others were line dancing in front and I sort of realized the absolute surrealness. You had a tame (not taken too far) strip show going on that had gone into the realm of country line dancing acted out by a lesbian posing as a man who at this point was wearing a white sleeveless shirt (one vulgar term for it is wife-beater) that shall we say wasn't quite thick enough, in front of an audience that was unsettled to various degrees, all with Ross on the side really suffering through the milk. I nearly lost it when all the individual elements sort of came together in my head and shed many tears laughing at the absurdity of it all. I really wish I could convey what I felt better. Anyway by the end of the show and around the 40 minute mark Ross went outside to try and throw up with about a 1/3 of the gallon left. I followed and was treated to an amazing sight. Ross who is about 210 pounds was grasping with two hands a small sapling for support that was nearly buckling from the weight and yelling at the milk demon to get out. Sort of a self-exorcism. Phrases commonly used were "Get Out of Me!" and "It hurts bad!" with the truest louisianan accent you could ever wish for.

Ross never did throw up and we subsequently all piled in 2 suburbans and 2 minivans and headed for the black hills. The trip out there was relatively uneventful, but in the end we arrived in the Sheridan Lake area at 430 in the morning and after many attempts to find everyone else our car just crashed at squirrel campground, was quite nice to feel the cool air and the smell of the pines, not to mention being able to see the milky way. Charlie (the able dancer from before who I mentioned) and I chose not to sleep and read by the dock of the marina for a while, watched the sunrise from the hill, and went searching again for everyone else at 630 in the morning. We didn't find them. When we got back we had breakfast and noticed one of the fans go by. After blocking off their way back we met Jared our boss and then the door to the minivan opened and Ross still in his sleeping bag with sunglasses yelled, "Where the hell ya'all been?" This was funny not only because of Ross but because he had obviously been awakened by Jared at an early hour to go looking for someone or something, a theme that would be repeated every morning of the trip.

So I enjoyed Friday on essentially zero sleep, I caught about 40 4 second naps in the car on the way as I'd lean on my hand, fall asleep, my hand would fall away, and I'd awaken as my head suddenly dropped. They say that not sleeping is like having a .08 blood alcohol level, they do not lie. This wasn't a problem in general except when we went to Rapid City. I should note that while people in Florence may say that they "live in the shadow of the dome" (which is a dome to the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore) but Rapid City denizens can claim to "live in the shadow of the big brontasaurus statue on a hill" We were treated to a lecture by the forest service in a large air conditioned garage, and while it was interesting, going into the history, ecology, and management of the black hills I discovered an interesting phenomenon. While I was for the most part awake, there was about 5 minutes where for whatever reason blood was diverted from my brain to a different region of my body. Rather than being an exciting sensation it just made me really, really tired. I was quite relieved when it went away. In the end I was up for about 43 hours straight without any sleep more than 10 minutes, and no more than 15 minutes total.

The next day, Saturday, we went and saw crazy horse, was cool but at this point not really worth the price of admission, went to Sylvan lake which was just about the coolest lake I've been to. Has lots (I originally spelled lots as louds) of climbable rock both in and around the lake. You can jump off any number of ledges ranging from 7 ft. (what I did) to perhaps 30 ft. (what other people did). We then went the needles which are huge stones that tower above the rode. I climbed one in flipflops in what would be a weekend of poor footwear choices. Amidst all the phalluses there was one monolith that was actually yonic in nature, which was refreshing. We continued went up to a lookout where the white suburban that I rode in and drove wouldn't start. Jared the amazingly astute person that he is removed the gas cap and put it back on and then the car started, apparently vapor lock. We continued onto windcave which is the 3rd largest, and possibly soon to be 2nd because they keep discovering new passages, in the states and is where the local native people believed bison emanated from. We then drove the wildlife loop in custer state park and saw many bison, praire dogs, and where I started feeling a little sick. Then the white burb died. We were going downhill without brakes for a moment until the driver shifted back into drive from neutral and finally got it stopped. I was rather out of it and climbed up the hill to meditate. We finally got out of there 3.5 hours later after we towed the burb to a ranger's station where it got towed. I meditated to help clear my head, but still had to endure a rather unfortunate dinner at pizza hut because all the other eateries were closed by then.

I should note here, that while I have slept and it is 4 days later, I am quite drunk and waiting for a man known as golden bear or magnum to pick me up, I am not a male prostitute.

So with the burb broke down and pizza hut in my gut I went to sleep. Ross had some memorable quotes the following morning, I should note that he had at least 3 beers by 1130 and I had one, anyway the quotes, "desperate times call for desperate drinking," "We have to be like Indians, can't count on our cell phones, burbs, marshmellows, cooking oil, and I can't believe its not butter whipped," later he would claim that Burt Reynolds would be the 5th man on mt. rushmore and related the history of the mountain. Essentially it was that 100 million years ago the indians carved our forefathers into this rock. How did they know ?!?!?!?! Ross is awesome. He's been whoopin' and callin' since he came out of the womb. anyway while everyone else was at mt. rushmore and sylvan lake for a second time charlie and I hung out with his cousins. We went to the hole in the wall, which is an abandoned(?) mining operation (lithium?) that was pretty cool. Went through a short tunnel and then came to a whole in the ground that was 100 ft of rock to the surface on all sides. The water looked about as inviting as any I've ever seen but I wasn't going near it, nor would I eat the wild raspberries growing all around in fear of contamination. After that we went to Hippie Hole where I jumped off a 15-18ft high rock into water. It was a delight. The scariest part was climbing the rope ladder back up to the rock, it was actually much scarier then the actual jumping which I did three times.

The next and last day we went to Dakota point where there were more cliffs to jump off. It took me a while to work up the courage but eventually I jumped off a 20-25 ft rock into the water, was long enough to have an O Shit moment on the way down. I did that twice. After that we waited around, got the white burb back, broken fuel line apparently. Got back to MN on tuesday at 415am and I stayed up the whole 40 something hours a second time which was a little nuts. Starting singing upbeat positive songs about dracula and having to live because we're all gonna die while working the next day. In any event, jayadev and brody should be here soon to pick me up, but until then its lots of water. Hopefully the tourney goes ok. Drinking tonight was fun. I am as always, you're drunken reporter in a random minnesota field -joe little

OH one more thought. At mars while drunk on the way to the airport(?) I was in shotgun and decided to pretend drive drunk to see if I could do it. Driving drunk I learned is a bad idea, but what I really messed up in was trying to change the radio station while pretending to drive. Bad idea. Let this be a lesson to any who drive after drinking or tired. Let the radio be and focus on the road. This has been a public service message from yours truly, I hope I didn't say anything stupid but if I did I'm sure I'll hear about it. ta ta

Time to cowboy up and head up to the ol rodeo

2005-07-10T12:20:00.000-05:00

So the week since mars has been interesting.I only got about 5-6 hours of sleep a night and the unsurprising result was that I felt tired all the time during the day. This culminated in my going to bed at 830 on friday. I slept 3 hours woke up, decided to look around and see if anyone was doing anything, drinking or otherwise, but instead didn't see anyone around anywhere and saw a car wrapped in saran wrap and another in toilet paper in the parking lot. Later I would learn these were the result of someone's first power hour. I went to bed an hour later and now I think I'm finally caught up on sleep.

Saw What's Up Tiger Lily on saturday morning, which is a woody allen film. He bought the rights to a particularly godawful japanese spy-thriller movie and dubbed in his own english dialogue. Its rather comical. Last night I also went to the 29th annual isanti rodeo which was a fun time. Although I must sadly report that the wireless microphone has killed the rodeo clown. They kept telling really lame jokes and drawn out skits that really added very little and sometimes distracted and detracted from the more exciting events that were occurring in close proximity to them. Saw bareback and saddle buck riding, steer wrestling and tying, team roping, barrel-riding (for the cowgirls) and the piece de resistance bull riding. The others were interesting, though I enjoyed the riding more than the roping and such, but the bull riding is really quite amazing. Only 3-4 riders managed to stay on the full 8 seconds, and even though I was a little bit removed from the action, the sight of a bull bucking is just about the scariest thing I've ever seen an animal do.. They have enormous amounts of mass and athleticism. Two riders got hurt while riding, On one of them the bull sort of half-rolled over him and it looked like he got stepped on as well, as they helped him off it looked like he had a broken arm or some ribs, was quite scary when it happened, especially as there was one moment right after when the rider was thrown where you could tell the situation was out of hand as the bull was bucking madly near the rider and everyone in the ring was going after the bull to get it away from him. everyone consisted of two cowboys on horseback trying to lasso the bull, and two real (unmiked) rodeo clowns trying to get in front of the bull and distract it from the rider, one of those clowns, incidentally the one in the long denim skirt, was pretty bad ass as I think at one point, in a different rider's attempt, he sort of jumped into the bull's side or sort of half on the bull, to get it away from a fallen rider, I don't remember exactly how it happened as it was pretty fast, but that was my general impression. The rider's incidentally had knee pads on beneath their chaps, all were wearing flak vests, and the ones who weren't criminally insane had on helmets, though criminally insane in this case is relative because I don't think an entirely rational person climbs onto a bull in the first place, much less after its been irritated.

3 days later, I was wearing a salt lick

2005-07-05T20:28:00.000-05:00

Mars: planet, god, candy bar company, and ultimate tourney/scene of debauchery and mischief.

I arrived pretty much on time in pittsburg after a 3 hour layover at Detroit Municipal Airport that I took advantage of to catch up on some correspondence. I was supposed to wait for bryan and cho to get in but as luck would have it, and BK and KC would have none of it, their flight was delayed until 200am. Fortunately farseeing bryan king had alerted mina and carl to this development and after waiting for a long delayed mr. eric abando our happy foursome proceeded to our hotel where I enjoyed a dinner of jerky, apple, and water before collapsing at 1230am EDST.

Saturday we went 1-2. Losing to some people from michigan and to Duck Xing rather badly. There were no amazing things of note except we won our first game 15-9 after being down at half 4-8. I, out of shape and practice, played mediocre at best with no true inspiring plays but some occasional sound dump, swing, and repeat. The cast of characters on our team was Akira, Eric Abando, Eric Guajardo(spelling?) whom gwen mistakenly called GuaHardOn all weekend up to monday morning (it was hilarious when she finally realized that was not the correct pronunciation of his name), bryan, kevin, josh, late arriving but still tall leo, whitney, carl, scully, Roo, trudy (arrived late sat. evening from a wedding and left early on monday to go hang out with sex-starved sailors in the middle of the pacific for sixteen days), gwen, mina, kate (whitney's girl), amy (akira's girl), racheal, Kim, and the newest member of Tea and Strumpets lil'lyla who at 22 years younger than myself ran away with the youth crown. Very sweet baby, for the most part never cried and was entertaining to play with and watch on the sideline. Kim incidentally is the most amazing beer shotgunner I've ever seen. She beat out a gentleman who goes by the name of Iron and I assume its because of his proclivity to consume lots of beer in short durations of time. This was one game after she shotgunned 2 beers with whitney to decide pull and jerseys (the other squad wrote down who they thought would win since they couldn't muster up the courage/feck to compete). Also saw nadine, yaya, and wiggles at the field. Was pretty cool to see them and would have loved to attend the dance party and night time festivities but no one was ever sober enough to drive me back, and unfortunately there wasn't in my opinion a critical mass of people camping.

The food situation was good. Had bob evan's once and denny's twice for breakfast. Denny's incidentally seems to be ashamed of their grand slam breakfast and hides it in very small type on the bottom right of their menus. I missed it the first day, but enjoyed it thoroughly on the second. Had church brewworks for dinner on saturday. Still my favorite brewery/restaurant combo beating out the great dane. Amazing food, try the buffalo loaf and the perogies as an appetizer, the beer is good although as I arrived quite drunk I didn't partake this year, and some amazing malted cinnamon ice cream. The next night ate at Don Pablo's. The food was a major disappointment with undercooked rice, a really bad beef enchilada although the chicken and cheese were satisfactory, but the place was slightly redeemed with a very good but not strong mango margarita, and the fact that they gave us lots of raw material to construct an intricate system of pipes and suck points to connect the drinks of 5 different people, although it proved unsuccessful as the suction mechanisms (my lungs) were a little underpowered. Kevin and Abando then tried to have straw intercourse with eric trying to stick his 3 connected straws into the end of kevin's 4 connected straws. After some good-natured-heckling eric started beating me with his straw penis, but stopped after my protestations.

Copious amounts of beer schtick was played on saturday and sunday. I was not the dominating offensive juggernaut of yesteryear but had a lot of fun and even saw some new beer schtick strategies develop, the fantasy players of note were kim and bryan on offense, and eric guaHardOn on defense. Speaking of silly games the showcase game between O-Pig and Duck-Xing of which thor, liz, and a man named hummer are a part of was most entertaining. Whitney was the unofficial duck-Xing cheerleader, throwing the crowd beer, wrestling a foam finger, and trying to sneak on a point with the aforementioned didget and an official duck-xing jersey (he was sadly unsuccessful). Bryan was hilarious when he tried to deliver a beer to thor but wound up slipping and falling down the hill on his ass. The half-time show was great, and this humble scribe was even a part of it, with a full scale dodge ball contest breaking out between duck xing and T&S with friends. The people who were more drunk, us, lost badly, but I feel we also won in a different more subtle way. Kate also ordered a pizza to the fields which is one of the greatest clutch tourney moves of all time in my opinion.

After dodgeball we went back to the hotel where we entered the hot tub and swimming pool, I broke rule 3 since I was a wee bit intoxicated, but had a lot of fun throwing balls at whitney, kevin, and others with the notable exception of the young mother and toddler-daughter whom I almost hit while trying to deflect a ball off the one cho was holding into whitney's face. The lifeguard was pretty passive and I imagine amused by all of this. Later after Don Pablo's Trudy, Abando, and I went to bryan's room and immediately began playing the hotel lava floor game that every 4 year old in the western world has played. Eric showed some impressive climbing ability and I took a short nap atop the tv cabinet. Later fell asleep on bed/island after certain happenings and goings on that at this point I won't go into.

Sunday we went 2-1. I played slightly better, but not great, we used force middle to great and sometimes amusing effect, played a bit of waa I finished second which keeps in line with my being one of the great circle games players of all time, if there is ever a hall-of-fame for splat I think my face will grace the door, incidentally I think the modesty hall of fame would also probably induct me.

Saturday night after brewworks the elevators were supossedly not working, after climbing eleven flights of stairs while drunk we discovered that none of the lights in our room would turn on. Despite the fact that the TV and clock were working. I wondered for a time who was the idiot who wired the tv and clock to one fuse and all the lights to a separate one. Only later did we figure out that guaHardOn who had been left unattended for a time earlier in our room had unscrewed all the lights in the room, even the 10 or so above the mirror in the bathroom, a very good prank I have to admit.

So I consumed a lot of beer and even the occasional bitch pop over the weekend. I even utilized the sippy beer strategy which is to break open a beer during half of the first game, usually 1130 or so, and just sip at it over the next few games with 1 or 2 other people, abando was also a fan. This dramatically increased heckling capability and general relaxation levels, I reccomend it. This may have contributed to what I alluded to in this post's title. I was wearing a black scandal jersey which after a day was coated in white blotches that was salt I had sweated out. This wasn't a health issue as I drank a fine combination of water, gatorade, and sippy beer (iron city is good stuff in bottle form) but on the back it created a really cool almost symmetric pattern about my shoulder blades. If you imagine the underarmour logo in the top middle as the moon, Kevin pointed out that the stains looked a lot like the outline of clouds on full moon night. It was beautiful. The sippy beer also helps one come up with cheers, after bryan pointed out that if you could dodge a wrench you could dodge a ball, I mentioned that if you could catch the clap you probably could catch a disc. After we all mentioned this loudly in cheering form one woman on the other team remarked that she was probably safe from the clap.

One other brief note, I got to match up against the teacher himself, Jim Parinella. He scored on me. I knew he was fast, but he's actually really quite fast for a man his age and size, not to mention his rather extensive and profitable knowledge of the game. This was in our last game on Monday in the B finals. We finished 10th out of 28-32 teams? and 5-4 which was a better place than last year, but a worse overall recored (last year we were 6-2).

All in all fun time and tourney, and if I may be so bold it even had a rather well defined shape.

birthday pizza mars

2005-06-30T20:16:00.000-05:00

So its been a bit of time between posts. Last saturday we had an 80s party round these parts. Was at a house a little bit down the ol' country road and we travelled there in perhaps the greatest caravan I've ever been a part of. After numerous visits to athrift store where for 5 bucks you can buy a bag and leave with it filled with clothes, we were attired in our finest 80s apparel and proceeding to the house via bicycle, a very 80s mode of transportation for me. Was a lot of fun dancing for 4 hrs and such. Fans of my original style of dancing will be disappointed to hear that I lost in the balloting for best male dancer to charlie who is a mild-mannered plant phylogenist by a day and a smooth dancing, wise cracking artful dodger type by night. I was wearing a sweet gray jacket (think rain man) which was purchased for 2 dollars, a red hawaiian shirt, 2 watches, and a necktie. That night at the stroke of midnight I was transformed as if by magic, or by cultural and legal convention, into a 23 year old. When I arose from my slumber the following morning made some buttermilk pancakes for myself, opened a package from the family with books and season 1 of arrested development, a highly acclaimed television show that is still profitably underwhelming, and several nice cards. Kevin also very thoughtfully sent me a disc for my birthday which I was immediately enamored with as it has the chinese zodiac on it, providing an easy reference for whenever I forget that I'm a dog. Sort of had a quiet sunday which was good then threw a roast in the oven at 150 and went to watch the beginnings of Batman, I think my favorite comic book movie to date if only for the use of the word spelunking, and the ninjas, though there is much more to enjoy than those two items. When I returned the roast was not burnt or otherwise inedible and I enjoyed it that night and every ensuing supper for the past four days.

Now for some bad news. I'm afraid that my attendance at sandblast is in jeopardy. The powers that be have decided that the very same weekend as chicago's premier annual beach tournament would be a good time for everyone here to enjoy a subsidized trip to the black hills of south dakota. I would still like to go to chicago, but any method of transporting myself across space to get there is now in doubt. Of course if I could move to and fro in 4 dimensions with facility equal to my powers in the first three this would prove a trivial obstacle. I'll look into arranging spatial transport upon my return from Mars but at this point my probability of attendance has dipped considerably. This is a great disappointment as in addition to the regulars zahlen, tazo, lyrica, josie, Tea & Strumpet types, and other notables will be there.

So I'm beginning to look forward to Mars more and more, to the uninitiated and those wondering how I can manage the logistics of coming back from there but cannot get to chicago this is a 3 day ultimate tourney in pittsburgh in addition to being a heavenly body, and today I got really excited when I saw the full roster of people going. Get to play with a lot of friends from chicago and Josh and/or Gwen, depending which is looking after their toddler on any given point. Its also abando's return to grass which should be interesting and fun.

So at the top of my list of things to do when I get back from Pennsylvania is to once again begin looking for a job in earnest. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions feel free to contact me with them. I am at this point willing to do just about anything except I'd like to avoid sales of any kind. I also like to think and research stuff. As anyone can see from that last sentence I'm also an excellent communicator.

other less meaningful things that have happened are, I had my first cup of coffee in a year and a half and it was quite good after 3 spoonfuls of sugar, enjoyed it while watching arrested development, I'm feeling a little jittery at the moment. I named my 6 week old basil plant Basil, it is sort of like a pet, I feel a genuine sense of joy whenever I interract with him and I bring him out for the day and put him away at night, I hope to steadily devour him in the near future. I have 2 pounds of honey and don't use it very often, but i like the taste, has anyone made candy with honey? How hard/easy is it? recipes? The spurs won the championship, I am very happy about this as I root for them as long as they don't play the bulls due to very fond childhood memories associated with them. That's about it. oh yeah. In intern news here last friday night a comical series of events played themselves out. A girl got quite drunk and had a meaningful conversation with a fellow about wanting a relationship, sadly he didn't see things the way she did. Later, wanting to speak to him more she went to his tent. he was not there. She decided to wait for him. She began to feel sick and proceeded to throw up inside his tent. this led to a mad dash of trying to warn him about the tent, which was a moot point as he had left the creek for the cities since talking to her. I was witness to the great moment on monday when he asked her if she had in fact thrown up in his tent, which he was 100% certain had happened because some thoughtful amateur historian had taken pictures of the aftermath, and she with a face closer in colour to red than not admitted to having done it. He took it rather well both when he became aware of the fact and later when he asked her about it, and to her expressed his happiness that she was none the worse for the amount of drinking she had done and that he wasn't angry about the episode at all since she of course had cleaned it up the next morning. In addition to the throwing up there was someone on the roof of a building threatening to pee on passer-bys. Good times, good times.

In what's joe saying, when I just looked up how to spell passer-bys (don't know if I got it right) came across passepartout, which is a person that can go anywhere, or a thing given to a person that allows them to go anywhere. I also believe its the same spelling as the servant to phineas fogg. while I haven't used it yet, I am certain that I soon will.

Finally here is the pizza recipe that Kevin asked for courtesy of Rose.
1 T active dry yeast
1 1/2 c warm water
1/4 c nonfat dry milk
2 t table salt or 1 T coarse salt
1/4 c olive oil
2/3 c wheat
2-2 1/2 c white flr
cornmeal if you've got it to sprinkle on heavy cookie sheet

1. Dissolve yeast completely in 1/2 c water in lg bowl. Stir
milk, salt, and rest of h2o together (I use 1/4 c reg warm
milk and 3/4 c h2o for this part), then pour over yeast.

2. Add and stir to mix: oil, wheat flr, and ~ 2 c white flr.
Place on lightly flr'd surface, while you wash out, oil
bowl. Knead lighlty just a few m, just til smooth, adding a
lil flr if necessary. Place in bowl, cover w/ plastic wrap,
let rise while you go do something else (at least 1 h), til
it's 2x size.

3. It'll lk real spongy and oily when you tk it out
of the bowl, so mk sure your hands, the surf, rolling pin are
all well-flr'd. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

4. Divide dough into 2-4 pcs. Knead LIGHTLY, no where near
as much as we did for AB's, ~ 3-8 m, til dough is just smooth
and not sticky, sprinkling on more flr as you go along to kp
from sticking.

5. Flatten w/ rolling pin, coaxing it out from center towards
edges. Get it as thin/even as possible, concentrating on
areas that remain thick by twirling w/ your fists. Haven't
gotten much ht on the twirl, but it does get to be real thin.

6. Place on flr'd or cornmeal'd heavy cookie sheet, sprinkle
w/ toppings, and bake ~ 12 m. EN-JOY!

Superior Success!

2005-06-20T20:29:00.000-05:00

So the first bit of news which corresponds to the second word of the title for this post is that I have finally made good pizza. I baked up a batch from a recipe that Rose sent me that was lifted from the Bread Book, made it and after making the first one good but not quite crispy enough, the second was cooked very close to the form of an ideal pizza, at least for me. Was thin, crispy, with garlic, tomatoes but no sauce, farmer's cheese, gorgonzola cheese, parmesan cheese, olive oil, and italian seasoning toppings. My sole new year's resolution was to make good pizza dough by the end of the year on a consistent basis. I feel that I can now do that. So I'm quite happy. Thanks again Rose for the recipe. I'm very excited by this. Tomorrow, more pizza as its the solsitce and I'm making a "sun" pizza to celebrate.

The second bit of news which references more the first word in the title is that I went backpacking along the north shore of superior this weekend with robyn, caroline, and EB who are 3 of my coworkers here. We left directly after work friday and passed through duluth on our way to the superior hiking trail just north of that. Was very impressive, especially for midwest hiking. We hiked along split rock river, which looked very much like a serious river with rapids, sizable waterfalls, and cliffs of varying sizes on either side. There was also some hiking along a ridge with a delicious view of Lake Superior, and some actual hills that at times reminded me of the appalachian trail. Incidentally many of my thoughts returned to thinking of the AT and all the adventures that happened along it. Some of the notable things found, said, or otherwise experienced were
Columbine flower, quite picturesque, hangs upside down with a beautiful combination of yellow and pink.

piliated woodpecker, thought it was a raven at first, large bird, makes a loud booming sound in its hunt for bugs on dead trees, picture woody woodpecker.

Mud, lots of it. Never fell though which boggled my own expectations as I'm known to those who hike with me as a bit of a faller. Reminded me of vermud.

Split Rock, its a duolith. Incidentally duolith doesn't exist as a word but to me it really should be.

Lots of lil debbies star burst cookies as snacks along with copious although not secret recipe gorp. Thought of Kevin every time I ate a lil debbies.

What was either the worlds largest and scientifically undescribed hummingbird or possibly a kingfisher. I'm leaning towards hummingbird.

two intersecting flows of water that in their conjugation formed a diamond checker board pattern. Imagine a checkerboard turned 45 degrees to either side. Was a quite beautiful demonstration of constructive and destructive wave interference, or something of that nature.

An event during saturday's dinner where restarting up the MSR stove caused the flames to momentarily flap against the side of the MSR fuel canister. This prompted a short but lively discussion if we were in danger. I replied that it was unlikely because the canister was most likely fireproof. Robyn in her best alabama and not too far from evanglical voice said, "Well if it does blow its good-bye beans, and hello Jaisus."

Finally, trying to bearbag on friday was quite the adventure. Not quite as bad kevin as when I tried to throw the frisbee with the rope tied to it through the notch in the tree, but we spent a good 15 minutes doing the following. untangling rope, finding tree with limb 25 ft up, throwing rope up only 10-12 ft, trying again at caroline's insistence despite my protestations that it was impossible, repeat above steps 2 more times. Finally I just climbed a pine and hung the bags. Which of course did nothing as regards to bears since they're more able climbers than myself, but I feel that it should at least be attempted, one of those its the principal that counts things.

My little brother sean just got his cast-off but made an interesting discovery when it was on, he discovered that since he couldn't run, if he just jogged the mile run at sports camp rather than start off sprinting he could finish ahead of a lot of the other kids because they got tired earlier. This fascinated him apparently. My brother Andy went sky-diving for his 20th birthday and discovered that if you fall from a plane its a lot of fun. I worry about that one a little. Just Kidding of course, anyway got to go and do stuff but hopefully loyal readers aren't too disappointed with this entry. I feel like I'm doing more interesting things but not writing about them as well. Maybe I should just start a policy of posting more when drunk.

an interesting sidenote. Was at oed.com today checking out words, yes I do that, and came across an appeal for written proof of the word mullet pre-1994. They were also asking for other words but that I thought was the funniest and most topical.

you can comment now without logging in

2005-06-15T22:04:00.000-05:00

So After realizing that people had to sign up to post I think I've fixed it so people can comment without having to sign up or anything. I also fixed the date and time. Soon I may add a link, oh what a happy day that will be. Not much to report for today except I got a poem in the mail and had breakfast for dinner. Which streak of 4 consecutive days of pancakes alive.

Spivek revisited, mathematicians please pardon the spelling

2005-06-13T21:52:00.000-05:00

So I was prompted to finally write this new entry after visiting cnn.com and seeing something that made me laugh out loud, it was the headline "Paris Hilton to retire in two years" I think as far as commentary goes, this falls under the too easy heading.

So recent news, recent news...walking schtick (sans beer but hopefully this will be amended in the future) was introduced here last week and I think was received most excellently. My team came from down 18-21 to win 25-21. Was pretty sweet. On saturday we had a color party where people living in different buildings came as one color and brought a beverage in that color. I went as yellow and brought beer and had some lemon rum kept in reserve in case things got nuts. Was a lot of fun, danced quite a bit, finally demonstrated the blue-footed boobie dance to narrow acclaim and was not the guy still passed out on the couch at noon the next day from way too much whiskey. I think the lesson there is when you see someone drinking and dancing with a bottle of whiskey in hand and you see the same thing more than 30 minutes later, intervention may be good. I was hoping to come in a yellow tracksuit/jumpsuit straight out of Bruce Lee's unfinished opus Game of Death, or more recently displayed by Uma Thurman in the movie where she tries to kill someone named william

sorry got to save this draft and return, insane rain storm at moment.

but instead bought a plain yellow t-shirt, brought a permanent sharpie, and let people draw yellow things on me. Said a runner from McCallister by way of Somalia drew a yellow eyeless pig on the front, which a certain Calculus book written by Spivek is dedicated to. I should note its donated to yellow pig, and not the yellow pig that would someday be drawn on my shirt. Other things drawn included a rather fancy sun, a banana (nonphallic in nature), some lyrics about the banana, some XOXOs, and the words mellow yellow with what looks like an arrow drawn to my ass. I'm not sure what amy intended with that. In the interests however, of being able to wear the shirt in public I think I will amend that entry to the mellow yellow brick road and instead of an arrow have cobblestone road leading in the general direction of my buttocks. Ok enough on that topic.

While my night was definitely fun someone else here who goes by the name of Charlie had an interesting one as well. Apparently he woke up on the living room floor of some woman's apartment he didn't know. After gathering himself into an erect posture he went to the kitchen and said the following to the two people there, "I don't want to be rude, but can you tell me where I am." He has a touch of the dry wit, which is my brand of humor so we've hit it off well.

Other news, other news.

In the natural world I've seen a jack-in-the-pulpit which is not a jackrabbit in church. But rather a very odd looking plant. Since I can't describe hopefully the following address works
http://2bnthewild.com/plants/H46.htm
(Someday I'll have to learn how to actually use the internet and such and hyperlink that)
also today while working in the plots we were constantly surrounded by about 100 dragonflies that were hovering around at all times. They've always been one of my favorite insect types and it was cool to see them.

in culinary news I had a potsticker cookoff with anna, the young woman who is both a groundfloor jobber and an honoray member of the dinner club for making sushi rolls for our car ride to madison, that was awesome. We both fared well, the audience decided they were a little too different to choose which was best. My own sense is that her's were consistently better but the ones I had done well were their equal and depending on the taster could be considered tastier. Was a lot of fun to cook with someone again, especially as we had an improntu dance party while cleaning afterwards. Went and saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith following that, was pretty good. Maybe not theater good, but entertaining. Then we came back and had strawberry rhubarb pie and vanilla-choclate ice cream. The pie was very commendable. Commendable incidentally is a funny word to me, because it praises something by saying that it is worthy of praise. A sort of self-criticism on praise-giving if you will. Anyway I saw some weird things in the remains after it had melted. First I saw lucifer descending into hell. However, upon reversing the plate 180 degrees I instead saw the back of a woman with the wind in her hair, gazing across a white sand beach into a magnificent sunset. A much better image, tainted only by the fact that the woman had quite the goiter problem. So let this be a lesson to use more iodine people.

In health news I've started to look into getting health insurance and am not very pleased with the initial, very perfunctory findings. Anyone have suggestions of how to go about this?

Well that's it for now, hope all are safe, sound, and had fun at any poultry festival they may have attended over the weekend. Cheerio.

The mad city

2005-06-05T21:53:00.000-05:00

So friday after work keith, anna, and myself departed minnesota for the green fields of madison. We arrived about the same time as jason, colin, and john did closely followed by josh, jesus, and biz. Several beers, two bottles of very good strawberry wine later, and after the inception of jobber juice jesus was baptized by john in a fountain.

In the actual tournament we tied our first game. won our second and third. lost to memorial high school in the fourth. I was pretty impressed by them. Although I'll never be able to live down the fact that I lost to a high school team. Athletically we were probably about equal, they were perhaps a little better, but i'm holding onto my dignity by assuming they've been practicing for months. Playing as and with the Jobbers at the first tournament was fun. I feel like different people on the team have slightly different expectations but it should work itself out in time, hopefully. I played alright, all my hucks were slightly off but still had a pretty good percentage caught by very able receivers. I thought my defense was pretty good when I had wind but a lot of the basics, like backhands or not throwing 20 ft push passes and high release forehands seem to have been lost.

that evening after the great dane, try the crop circle wheat, and good byes to everyone but especially yujuan who I may not see again unless she happens to visit Chicago the same time I'm there in the next year we retired to keith's apartment. There we proceeded to someone's 21st birthday party. Was good, everyone seemed nice, but I was pretty beat from playing 5 games and drinking the night before. Made an early night of it and saw the movie kinsey back at keith's. Interesting movie.

Upon my successful return there were seven new people working here, one of which was Ross. I walked into the kitchen and knew within 5 seconds he was from louisiana. The first clue was the accent, the second was the louisiana tech shirt, and the third was that he was attentively stirring a roux in a pan, an obvious initial step towards gumbo production. The gumbo was good, on monday spent half an hour finding a plot of trees where we needed to pull tags and when we got there realized there was no way we could do it as is. So we hiked back 15 minutes to the car to aquire DEET and after copious spraying we were able to venture where non-chemica-odorized men fear to tred and did the work. Was quite nice though hiking around in a large open meadow and forest for an hour.

Found out this morning that my cousin just gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Luke. I'm very excited for the new family as my cousin and her husband are both really good people, I essentially got aquainted with them over last thanksgiving, and I'm sure will make great parents. So I need to get a letter in the mail soon to congratulate them.

And now for a new addition to what's joe saying now. The new phrase of choice is "I'm sweatier than a whore in church." Heard it from someone today out in the savannahs, I like it. The hunter s thompson book continues to amuse, especially his advice to an aspiring writer to avoid time-consuming tasks like mowing the law, he suggests finding a wounded deer, nurse it back to health and tether it to a post in the middle of your lawn. Speaking of deer, I've seen 2 fawns in 2 days. They are quite adurable as they scamper away from humans half-scared to death.

memorial day

2005-05-30T22:24:00.000-05:00

So on sunday I went for a run, and as I was feeling a cramp I decided to walk and inspect the small graveyard that was on the side of the road. I like graveyards, something about them is so interesting and soothing to me, soothing might be an odd word but I never feel stressed when I walk around a cemetary, maybe I'm a touch ghoulish. So anyway a few things were striking to me, first that these good minnesota methodists were pretty long-lived, most seemed to die in late seventies at least, and saw a lot that were high eighties and nineties. Most be something in the air. The other thing was the large percentage of monuments that mentioned military service and veteran status. Only one of the men had died during war years, but it was very interesting to me that among the few things people mentioned on a tombstone; birth, death, parent, marriage date, that almost all the graves that had veteran markers put in for memorial day also had something on the monument itself about their service, generally just war, what branch of service, and what rank they held. It got me to thinking that the people who went overseas to fight for the US sacrificed quite a lot and saw things that I don't think anyone can really imagine without having been there themselves. It really defined and shaped their lives, something that they were proud of and definitely worthy of respect and thanks. Anyway, it was a pretty alright cemetary.

On M. day ten of us drove up the creek a ways with some canoes and canoed our way back down. This was very entertaining to me. There is a fellow named Said here who grew up in East Africa, Sudan for a time I think and elsewhere, anyway he had never been in a canoe before. The way things fell out was that he was paddling in the rear of the canoe I was in. The creek was fairly narrow and was quite entertaining as initially we proceded to hit each bank after the other for a time as Said got the hang of it. We also were grounded on numerous sand bars on the trip, at which one of us would get out and in water that might be touching the middle of our calves push the canoe through. We were on it about 2 hrs. Was fun just spending a sunny warm day alternately floating on and pushing a canoe down the ol' creek.

In nature news, or rather unnatural news, I forgot to mention that about a week and half ago I was at a place here they call the gates of hell because of the innumerable saplings there that are hard to walk through, poke you in the face, and are filled with bugs and saw something out of the blair witch movie. I looked up and saw a muskrat (could only tell because of the tail) that was completely eviscerated and hanging from a tree by its foot that was caught in the notch of a branch and the trunk. Was quite scary. Either a raptor dropped it as it flew overhead or somebody put it there. I'm still a little freaked out about it.

Recently I've been reading the early correspondence of hunter s thompson. Its pretty entertaining reading and i've gotten as far as his time in the air force and early experiences in new york city. His application letters to newspapers are also very funny to me, in one of them he pretends to be a drug dealer on madison ave that was beaten by a policeman because the policeman didn't see the article that the city wasn't arresting drug dealers there anymore. In another he writes to the san juan paper and tells them all that is wrong with american journalism and why he is the antidote. The letter in response to this was hilarious and hunter took it less than kindly. Oh well, good book, makes me want to read some of his "real" work some time.

In summer ulty tourney news: I plan on attending the one day thing in madison. Hopefully will be much fun. however, I think I will have to miss Poultry days as the expense and distance is rather large in light of the fact that I will be attending Mars over 4th of july weekend. Oh yeah! and then definitely the tourney in blaine, assuming the jobbers come, and possibly sandblast. All in all, hopefully a fun summer of coed ultimate, just what i wanted.

Things that tickle in the woods

2005-05-26T22:04:00.000-05:00

So avid readers of this space may have noticed that I have been somewhat tardy in posting and responding to direct attempts at communication. This was due to my excursion sunday night to upstate MN where I worked in the Chippewa National Forest. It was really quite splendid hanging out in the pine forest all day and doing a seedling census. Was all mindless manual labour for the most part but I enjoyed it very much. I even managed to have one or two interesting things happen to me up there. I was running after our first full day of work, during which we had spotted two bald eagles flying, and I noticed ahead in the woods that two eagles crossed paths as they took off into the air. I ran in that direction and watched an eagle soar above me for a time and then I heard a noise. Turning around I saw the following; a bald eagle fly by at eye level about 10 yards away from me. Followed by an even larger bird, which I believe was a golden eagle, followed by a bald eagle, follwed by another golden eagle, followed by a third bald eagle. It was amazing watching birds that large fly that close. The final tally of eagles seen so far for those keeping track at home is bald eagles 9, golden eagles(?) 2. I even saw a large feather close by although I can't be positive that it belonged to either eagle species.
So while the work was enjoyable and the avian wildlife was stunning, there was a small winkle in this idyllic locale in the north woods. Ticks, mainly wood ticks, but the occasional deer tick that is the transmitter of lyme disease. I found much fewer on me then some other people did, and took a lot of precautions, but its amazing how you can find them on your clothes even after being out of the woods for an hour. So I did a lot of tick checks when I wasn't looking at the sky or saplings. Its funny, after a while you think that every little prickle of the skin might be a tick, so you check, and then you realize it was just a ghost tick. Well hopefully I don't come down with lyme disease, though I think I'll be ok, i never saw a deer tick on me and was pretty careful about checking routinely through the day.
So the last thing in the woods doesn't really tickle, but on wednesday it rained all day. It alternated between a steady drizzle and some serious water fall and we worked about 7 hours outside in it. I had my full set of raingear but by the end I was basically wet through and through anyway. It felt like I was swimming in my rainjacket. Actually it was odd, I didn't feel wet persay so much as incredibly damp, there's a fine distinction there apparently, or at least for me.
In gastronomical news there have been some recent developments. I found and consumed some morel mushrooms while at Chippewa. They were good, I don't think that they were earth shatteringly good, but then again the two times I had them I slightly undercooked the first one, and someone else overcooked the second. Unfortunately, this fell one short of a goldilockian experience, and the just right morel remains untried and my fungal fascination, unfulfilled. This morning I attempted to make some buttermilk pancakes, and while I executed the recipe expertly in the past with a hangover and at the slight expense of two fuses, this morning they wound up rather insipid. I made the amateur error of forgetting the salt until I had already combined the dry and the wet. When I added the salt to that and stirred it in, I crossed the divide between a mixed and an over mixed batter. Properly seasoned but texturely, a disappointment, however I now have flatjacks that I'll be able to be consume all weekend which I suppose is good.
So of the numerous people that are living here now there is one who shares a slight but interesting quirk in his surname with myself. That's right, Joe Little has met Sean Small. We only need a martin short, tommy midget, or a dorris diminutive and then the triad of weeness will be complete.

Nero investigates a hangin'

2005-05-18T17:11:00.000-05:00

So I happened to chance across a copy of The Golden Spiders a book by a fellow named Rex Stout that is part of a series of books that chronicle the cases of Nero Wolfe Private Eye. Except Mr. Wolfe is exceptionally private and will very rarely leave his own home where he has quite the orchird collection. The books are written from a Mr. Archie Goodwin's perspective who is NW's helper if you will as he does all the legwork in actually collecting evidence and talking to people. He's sort of a young humphrey bogart type, equally good with the ladies, a line, or a punch to the jaw. My old roomie george introduced me to these books. They are to anyone who likes detective novels, and maybe even to those who don't, quite good, funny and worth reading. I often find myself reading passages from the books wishing that I could write as mr stout does. Anyway in my opinion they are well worth your time to check out. The first one is called fer-de-lance.

I had a little scare last week. I was lifting the garage door on the main workshop here and I saw a pair of pants with boots on the end dangling from the ceiling about 1.5 feet above the ground. My first thought was, "Oh my god Jim (the fellow who works in there) has hung himself!!" However, I continued to lift the door I found, much to my happy surprise, that it just was hanging waders, rather than a hanging corpse. Waders apparently help fisherman by allowing them to immerse themselves, or wade, into the water and cast from there, rather than from on a perfectly sound and dry shore. Anyway caused a little bit of a fright but I'm ok now.

On the internet I recently found the website for a show called comedy college that has 30 min shows about old comics. The show on bob newhart was quite good, I also liked the mel brooks and carl reiner show, and finally the songs of Tom Lehrer a comic for 2 years and a math professor for 40 (I'm really hoping that Jayadev follows that career path), who came up with the following. So let's act with agility / while we still have facility / for we'll soon reach senility / and lose the ability, good advice perhaps not so great pickup line.

Finally I heard on NPR today that the US army has something called the Adam Smith operation going on in iraq. The idea is to teach basic business skills to help the iraqi economy along, and to start a pin factory.

unleashed colour

2005-05-15T11:20:00.000-05:00

So I went and saw Unleashed recently. It dealt with the classic themes of family, identity, and the saving power of music. It also had a well-developed subplot about the heroe's day jobs as an enforcer for the criminal element and member of the underground fight scene. This did not however, distract too much from the larger themes that the movie explored. It also had some great comic relief when the hero tried on a succession of ridiculous hats. They did a great job casting the lead actor as I don't think many other actors, have the necessary range to excel in the dramatic moments with a dexterity equal only to their actual physical dexterity. All in all I give it a B, and a 3.5 in my personal rating system. My rating system is the number of years that will elapse before I anticipate a willingness to watch it again, you could also call it a rewatchability index I suppose. To give a sense of scale, anchorman has a 1, unforgiven has a .5, and Ecks versus Sever has an infinite value.

So now that all the leaves have come out and assumed their more or less greenish hue that they will have until they fall in autumn I would like to point out something I observed while living here this spring. Its the great variety of colour that you get in the spring with the trees budding that while being unequal to the striking contrasts and range of fall is pleasing in its own right. Here you have an intersection of deciduous and coniferous trees, and the coniferous are all generally a dark green. The paper birch come in very early with a brilliant green, while the oak are sort of a duller more sedated green. The maple on the other hand are earl- on reddish in their colour, and there is another tree here, which regrettably and to my temporary shame I do not know the name of, that is a very striking pink. It makes for a colorful back drop, that was especially striking one morning when I went running close to sunup and was struck by the interplay of the light on a stand of mixed-species.

I wish to extend my congratulations here to mr. kevin cho on what I understand is a recent promotion, and to mr. akira yamaguchi on dating someone I know only as AE. While I may know this person they are not immediately coming to mind. The only AE I can presently think of is amelia earhardt, but I'm confident that the logisitical and temporal challenges of dating her are beyond even Akira's resources.

There are now some other people living here now that have arrived in the past 3-4 days, this is a net postive development as I have been be able to talk to more people but will eventually come at the expense of having to wear clothes in the morning on my way to the shower.

Finally, was watching some highlights of the daily show and they uttered the word chanteuse, which means a female singer of popular songs, and was used in reference to the cheerleaders' sexual suggestiveness act (not actual bill name) in texas. Just another reason to watch that show, you learn some really cool words. As a brief aside when I looked up chanteuse a I came across chantepleure which apparently means to sing in this world and weep in the next, or alternating joy and sorrow. Incidentally I suppose I should mention that I also subscribe to a word-a-day email thing that sends me other cool words. As it turns out I'm a bit of a vocab geek, though sadly one without the ability to come up with a better word than geek, or to pronounce anything correctly for that matter. My old roomie george had a rule in fact. In the event that there were two theories on how to pronounce a word, he would ask me to say it and then go with the alternate pronunciation. I believe this had a success rate of about 80-90%.

Mail call and my resolution of the terrible omens I saw

2005-05-11T18:05:00.000-05:00

So yesterday I received a postcard from LH up in Belfast Maine. I must say that Belfast looks very much like the country from which it acquired its name, or at least its tourism board may want you to think that. From what I could see in 4 color pictures, Belfast has a comely green knoll that overlooks the sail-boat-filled waters of the Atlantic and abuts its historic red brick commercial district. Man they should pay me for this stuff. I always feel good when I get tangible evidence that someone thinks I'm at least worth the price of postage, I suppose I'm somewhat shallow in that regard, or at least the little things in life make me happy. If anyone else would like to send me any letters or physical objects my address is Cedar Creek Natural History Area 2660 fawn lake dr. bethel MN 55005, and there's no reason that physical objects shouldn't include your lovely selves. Stop by any time over the summer, and please note to those of you who might take a road trip from Chicago to see the Corn Palace in beautiful Mitchell, SD; that bethel would only be about a 2.5 hr side trip so the least you could do is come on by. (Note: I used a semi-colon above, because I got winded rereading that last sentence and it makes me look oh so sophisticated to the ignorant, and only at the expense of looking like an idiot to those who know when and how to use the ; . I guess I'll take that trade)

In behavioral science news I've noticed an interesting phenonmenon. I haven't seen a lot of women in the past four weeks. Sure I go to town occasionally and see them strolling about and such, but generally day in and day out I work and interact only with those who in no way could be mistaken for members of the fairer sex. Normally I am, as I suppose most men are, somewhat furtive in my appreciation of the opposite sex when I come upon them in my daily affairs. Now not so much, I tend to stare much more openly at strange women. Also as a corrolary to this effect, is the fact that of every woman I see motoring along the road at 50-60 mphs while I'm running, I think about 2/3 are attractive from what I can make out through the windshield of their pickup truck. Now not to be cruel, but this percentage just can't be right unless I've stumbled into some fairy tale land where all the women who drive pickup trucks are beautiful. My money though is on, as always, me being wrong.

Lately I've been listening and watching a fair amount of publicly supported media. Yesterday I happened to find at the far end of the dial a public radio station that plays music all day without annoying commercials, and the music is for the most part pretty good, although at times, seemingly random. For instance, when my alarm went off this morning the radio station was playing a song in french, which at 600 am sounded great. three hours later they played a cajun/acadian? song about getting dressed. It sounded like it was also in french but I really couldn't tell except I heard the word for pants, culotte. Later in the day a band called British Sea Power got air time. Its all very confusing to me. But in general, npr and public radio, good stuff. No way I'm giving them money though, or at least my money.

I think that Eric supplied me with the key piece of the puzzle to my omens, for those who don't read the commentary, he mentioned that snakes also are symbolic of knowledge. My new interpretation is that the death of knowledge, or the end of learning leads to war or conflict. I don't know what to do now, my life has changed. I suddenly feel good that we have someone with a postgraduate degree in the white house. Ok, that was a cheap shot. In anti-me news it turns out I'm poor, don't floss as much as I should, am in worse shape then our 50+ year commander-in-chief, and could not ever get elected president.

Finally, I recently received an email that indicates I am now known as "dearest" joe little in some social circles. I don't know how to take that exactly, but its certainly not the first in a long list of epithets. I'm sure many of you are already aware of this but I went to high school with another joe little who was slightly different from me. This led to me being known as little JL, smart JL, clean JL, and so on and so forth. I also had the nickname Thunder in high school for no reason whatsoever except my best friend started calling me that. All this is to say that I'm very flattered by the new version and I hope to see all of you who hold me in such regard very soon.

Omens? and strawberry wine

2005-05-09T19:43:00.000-05:00

So my trip to the farmer's market was interesting. I rode one of the bike's available to me here and suffered, hyperbolically speaking, a profound case of saddle soreness not 5 min. out, The fit of the bike was a touch off and I'm quite generous when I say that the seat was inadequately conformed to my person. En route I passed one farm on the way that inspired me to pen some verse, which I will not however post in this space because my poetry is laughably bad, as opposed to my blog writing. *awkward pause* Anyway so I arrived at 3289 285th street 40 minutes after setting out , and there are chickens walking around as opposed to being frozen and stacked in orderly packages. My suspicions were soon confirmed when I bumped into Dave, who was in the opening acts of revving up a chainsaw when he spied me. (note: I metaphorically rather than literally bumped into him, as a general rule I don't go "bumping into" men who are or about to be engaged in the operation of a chainsaw) He informed me that I was not at a farmer's market but rather a tree farm, (it seemed obvious upon looking around after the fact). Apparently his wife beverly helps run the market and the address I had was her contact info rather than the address of the market. Apparently she was at the moment helping out at a yard sale one farm back the way I came. I returned to that farm met her, informed her that I was in fact the nice young man who had called and left a message. Anyway I picked up a small iron skillet (yes!) and a metal rack to cool cookies and support roasts and was informed when I was about to leave that they were on the house. The farmer's market apparently was open, but in cambridge 10 miles north, a distance I dare not attempt on my cycle o'lessthancomfortable. Beverly apparently worked at cedar creek for 26 years so we chatted about that. And Dave her husband was interesting, were-dog and some others have often commented on my soft small hands, Dave was at the other end of the spectrum, I don't know if I've ever met someone that broad-shouldered, and obviously strong at his age of 60+.
On the way back I found the wind in my face. The good news is I never felt a drop of rain, the uncertain news came in the form of two omens. I was riding along and across from the local cemetary I noticed that there was a dead garter snake on the side of the road. I continue to pedal and not 40 feet away from the snake there is a dead dove on the side of the road. So here I am across from a cemetary and I've come upon a dead snake and bird in the space of 3 seconds. I think this is some sort of prophecy or omen, however I am not well versed in the methodology and science of Omen interpretation. So what do you all think it means? Please, I long to hear the informed, uninformed, or misinformed commentary and thought of my audience, as small as that may be ( the audience is small, not the thought. I don't want to accidentally offend anyone here).
Upon my return I made peanut-butter cookies and added about 4x the flour that the recipe required (this unlike most of my cooking/baking recipe diversions was a non-accidental change in the recipe). They turned out great. I then was picked up and taken to a party that steve, known here before as head-fire guy who went to U of Maine for grad school and knows Hash, Tom, Sally, Dan M., and others, was having. They had homemade strawberry wine. It was good, about one below top-shelf good, on a seven-shelved-bookshelf-thing, as was the homemade grape a 4.5/7, although the homemade peach as Steve rather pointedly admitted was a touch flat. I went and saw their wine making operation downstairs, very impressive with all the colorful glass bottles and the enormous 20-30 gallon(?) glass bottle/cauldron/flask? in the middle of the room.
On mother's day while I was contemplating salad, it suddenly dawned on me that I had all the necessary ingredients for a waldorf salad. So I made one and roasted some pork in the Golden Hind fashion (to those who don't know/remember the pork butt was covered with mustard and seasonings before being roasted).
In order to make the waldorf I had to make my own mayonnaise for the second time in my life. I highly recommend this to anyone who hasn't done it as you get to combine those age old enemies, the montisqueus and capulets of the liquid realm (please pardon my probable misspellings ), water and oil. Perhaps this was the meaning of the omens. Two things so unalike in life the peaceful soaring dove and the ground loving sin inducing serpent would be brought together as equals in death, although my mayonnaise didn't die. Well on that happy thought I leave you gentle reader. And please feel free to comment, joke, pontificate, on the omens or on anything either here or to me via email. The major downside to blogging is that its a one-way street and I so long to here the stories of middlebury, beer-die, grad school, work, or the bosses new best-selling book.

God music, fresh food, and bird stuff

2005-05-07T08:27:00.000-05:00

So I'm currently listening to Lystra's Silence new CD Deep Calls to Deep. LS is BK's brother's band and is a christian rock band out west. For the most part I like it, I'm no music critic, what with the tone deafness and all, so I'll leave it at that. I'm at this very moment deciding whether or not to try to get to a farmer's market by bike. Weather report seems to suggest I have a 50% chance of getting dumped on by the angry rain gods, I think I'll try it anyway.
So I saw two great avian behavorial dealys in the past week. In a field I was driving by there was a male turkey "presenting" to two females sadly they just kept on walking by ignoring his invitation to procreate. I couldn't help really but identify with him, how many times have I done the mating dance of the blue-footed booby only to sleep alone that same night? The other great dealy was in one of the rings at the bioCON plots. My boss Jared and I were taking light measurements on the individual plots and this Kildeer was trying to lead us away with the ole "follow me my wing is broken, no don't look over there where my undefended eggs are, I'm over here. Don't I look oh so tasty and my wing is broken I can't run or fly away. *Fluttering sound* Hah! hah! you fool, you came after me and I flew around in circles and you didn't get my eggs or me you're stupid, stupid stupid. Wait, don't go near my eggs, my wing is broken I'm oh so defenseless...ad infinitum"
Well I couldn't help but notice the lack of comment on my Oompa Loompa tournament idea, not to beat what appears to be a very dead horse, but I thought it was a good idea and yet no one what's to touch it for good or ill like its got a bad case of the plague. Oh well, I hope all arrived safe and sound at Middlebury and are at the moment engaged in happy combat with those crazy canadians. I wish I could have gone, but some things in the end just don't make sense. Yesterday afternoon I threw for the first time since I left Chicago. It felt really good. Oh well, the sky is lightening, not lightninging, I think I'm going to make a go at this, although I have no idea what a farmer would have this time of year to sell up here. Winter rye? Last year's tomatos, I'll let you know if I can find it, I drew the world's worst map, this trip could get interesting, but I hope not.

The "burb" and other things

2005-05-03T21:09:00.000-05:00

So I promised a few posts ago a short post about the "burb" or the old 1984ish suburban that is my primary work vehicle around these parts. Well I lied about the short part but as to the burb I've decided to describe this old workhouse as it would effect your senses, should you come upon it.

1. Sight. It is a tan vehicle. In fact tan is the only color for this vehicle inside, outside, and the caked mud in and off it. It is also big. Big and Tan about sums up the grosser obvious elements. Now for the finer detail. The two doors on the driver side look as if a bison rammed them at half-speed. Large wide dents in the middle of each door, if you lock the driver door you must use the key on the outside to unlock it. The windshield has two cracks, one small, one larger and more spider-webby. The larger one was apparently caused when some spatially challenged employees decided to load a canoe into the suburban. Apparently they had it mostly in when they ran up against a clear impermeable membrane. I imagine the conversation went something as follows.
Mikey: Hey Guys hold up, its pressing against the glass.
Bill: Mikey says hole on, its pressing upon the mass.
Berthold: The monkey said, go on, its passing through the morass.
Henrik and Samuel: Ok, here goes. *Crack* Wait, why did we listen to a Monkey?

2.Taste: N/A

3.Touch: Hmm, well the brakes are a bit touchy, don't want to press too hard, and it has no heat, which wouldn't be so much of a problem except its been below freezing at night the last few nights and you can feel the wind on your face with the windows up.
4.Smell: Smells ok. A bit like the out-of-doors.
5. Noises. For starters there are some random odds and ends that are in the bed, plastic buckets, metal flags, and such that roll whenever you turn >60 degrees. This rolling is loud. Sounds as if you were too drop 3 metal pans on the floor together. It sort of scared me the first few times. Something on the bottom, (axle?) also sort of sings a high pitched note whenever you turn. The engine also makes a very sharp sounding we we we we we we sound when on. When you're actually driving there is a general loud roaring sound, coupled with being able to feel wind with the windows up I'm sure. And last but certainly not least. There is no cd, mp3, tape, 8track, or fm radio. There is AM radio. Which means I listen to a lot of conservative talk shows.

Conservative talk shows: Of the three stations I know on AM two are conservative talk, 1280 THE PATRIOT and 1500. I won't say much about them except this one story. A soon-to-be-father called into Mr. Sean Hannity's show as he was walking into the hospital where his wife was giving birth to his first son. He called for the express purpose of telling Sean that his son would NOT!!!! (no-hyberbole in amount of exlamations) be raised as a liberal. I think that no matter what your views, your last conversation before you become a father should not be on the future political orientation of your offspring, at least not on national radio. I know that may clash with a lot of my readers' opinions but I stand by it. In short I like listening to conservative talk radio in about 20-30 minute increments, I find it healthy and relaxing. Also, no matter your views on the man's politics, Rush Limbaugh has one of the greatest radio voices I've ever heard. To this nasal monotone, his voice is like a cooing-deep voiced (contradiction?) siren luring me onto the shoals of far right idealogy.

In other news, I'm not going to Get Ho Get Leid for reasons mentioned elsewhere. This pains me, although slightly less so after no one even commented on my suggestion for the team theme, Going as Oompa Loompas. Granted this would have been a little difficult, but some sort of overall clothing, with orange face paint and green wigs or dye could have pulled it off. And we'd have a ready made song framework to make up any cheer. They're going with some sort of sequined skirt theme, which is good, but not Oompa Loompa Good. Can I get some feedback on this? Why was the Oompa Loompa idea ignored? What do other people think of it? Oh well, perhaps another time. I'm still hoping to catch the spring league tourney in Schill Park, I think I can elevate that to definite if it occurs the same weekend as the $$$$Party$$$$, thats the 21-22 weekend to those who control such things.

What I've been making/eating. So tonight I had Grilled Venison for the first time in my life at the bosses. My bosses name is Jared, nice guy, great guy, he also knows of this so blog any discussion of him by me will have to be relegated to the more secure GhettoBooty listhost. Bambi was well prepared and quite good in both steak and sausage form. It should be noted that Jared shot it himself so it was really quite the home-cooked meal. I made snickerdoodle cookies recently as well. Long time enjoyers of my cookies will be happy to hear that when I made them smaller they tasted better, more evenly cooked and a touch crispy, than my other more normal Leviathan sized products. I've recently invested in dried milk, dried buttermilk, baking soda and baking powder so the baking shall continue. I also haven't given up on wild food. Plan to collect some dandelion, cattail root, and search for some morels this coming weekend.

Finally, a new section of my blog that I'll call "What has Joe been Saying recently?" Don't know how often I'll add to this section, but hopefully quite often. Anyway a recent oft-used choice of words has been. "Slobber the Gloss of (such and such a thing)" This is lifted from Othello where the Duke, after hearing of the Moor's marriage but needing to send him to battle at Cyprus, says, "you must therefore be content to slobber (in ye ole english slubber) the gloss of your new fortunes with this more stubborn and boisterous expedition." So it roughly means to darken the mood or spirit, or at least that's what I think it means.

I guess that's it, wish all who attend Wednesday night tomorrow a happy evening of revelry and remember that if someone should inquire as to who the Duke of New York is, the answer is in fact " You are, A Number One". And that goes for you readers of these humble pages as well.

Service Horible (should be an accent in there somewhere)

2005-04-27T22:46:00.000-05:00

So again I'm drunk, this is usually not the case up here, but as it turns out it was 3 for 1 beer night at the bar my boss and I stopped off on the way from the st. paul campus to here. We were really confused when we ordered 2 MGDs and 6 opened ones were put before us. But we decided hey, if they want to give us 6 drinks who are we to argue, we then went to a table to order some food. We were in between 2 waitresses sections and I was ready to order some tacos anytime they happened to come by, which took a long time. It was more comical than annoying considering the more of my 3 beers I drank the less hungry I became. We even made significant knowing eye contact with the two lasses but to no avail, I corraled a young busgirl and asked her if I could order from her, but she said she'd tell our server, 30 minutes later that server, apparently they use the term loosely, came to our table asking if there had been a receipt left there from the previous occupants, it seemed an odd way to ask if we wanted to order. Long story short we never ordered food, but filled our stomachs with beer, and relished the complete lack of service. I left them a note though that said
"Cincinnatus, empereor of the known world. Retired as a farmer. George Bush a make-believe rancher who would be king. God bless America and well-prepared Fish." It sort of just came to me over time, it really doesn't mean anything and is honestly more critical of GWB than I am usually, but I was drunk and the service was horible (again, spanish version) so someone had to held responsible, even if it involved a low-blow personnal attack on the man who even today said nuculor rather than nuclear power.
By the way after visiting wonkette.com the other day, I don't usually go there but sometimes it can be a good laugh, I was directed to a site that involved a cogent explanation of privatizing social security and anal sex. It was most hilarious. I won't link to it directly because I don't know how (still new to this internet posting thing) and to still have hopes of not offending anyone who reads this who might be a huge ann coulter fan, but if you go to the 26th of April entry for wonkette you should be able to pick it out and link to it.
So I walked in an 160 acre area yesterday that we burned 2 wks ago,. After we burned, the landscape looked like a war zone with the scorched earth and large plumes of smoke. There's already quite a bit of green grass coming out of the ground so it looks like a mosaic of green and black, that coupled with the greenish buds on the darker colored oaks made for some very nice imagery, at least to this observer. We also found a turkey and deer skeleton. The deer was fairly impressive with the entire spinal column intact and what not.
So I understand that tazo has linked his earthlikesky.com blog to mine , this along with bryan's and jayadev's links really puts the pressure on to keep this going and make it interesting. This means tazo is reading my blog though, which is exciting, Tazo I meant to email you the other day but I don't know your email address anymore, does the alumni.uchicago.edu account work? By the way everyone should go to tazo's blog and congratulate him on his soon to be matriculation to medical school. Soon it will be Doctor Tazo. Man its hard to believe that someone who forgot to put the car in park in a chinese fire drill would be responsible for someone's health someday, but here we are, the world truly is a tremendous place.
I guess I shouldn't conduct personal correspondence on my blog, but this whole thing is new to me, like cheesecake to the chinese (note: I assumed here that cheesecake is new to China, it could well be the fact that they invented it for all I know, if any sinophiles wish to correct me please feel free to do so).
So I ordered two books online on Monday, which constituted my first internet transaction in material objects. They were Gamesmanship, the Art of Winning Games without Actually Cheating, and OutLaw Cook, I really had my heart on getting the former until the Seminary Coop emailed me that both were out of print and unobtainable by conventional methods. Hopefully I don't soon become as impotent in the bedroom as I seem to be in the online marketplace. Anyway with that sobering thought, even to me which is notable on 3 for 1 night, I bid you adieu dear online public journal. May you be a written record of why I never should, nor be able to hold public office.

more fauna, maine connections

2005-04-22T20:57:00.000-05:00

So the last few days, a few more prescribed burnings yada yada yada, I'm drunk so this entry may have a different feel. So recent fauna to report to those keeping track at home, I've seen two bull snakes. now the first I was about to walk into this ring of plots to do something as this 5 ft snake slithers out, most fascinating, I immediately looked to see if it has a rattle, it didn't so it can't be venomous right? Well I don't think it is, but today was really windy and I went to pick up a metalish box that had blown away, one wanders how it moved if it was as dense as I claim but no matter, and I get to it about to pick it up and all the sudden the ground moves and all that goes through my mind is snake. It was big, coily, and slithery, most entertaining in retrospect, though the adrenaline pumped rather well at the time. And what other piece of fauna did I see, one bald eagle is the answer, yes that classic piece of american iconography was finally seen by me as I was riding in the "burb" (I'll write a short piece on that later) to the fields. Didn't see it for long but it was sweet what with its soariness and such.
After work today went to a mandatory fire meeting which consisted of everyone who does real work around here, meeting at a bar and cutting loose. Was fun, learned a bit about the people I'm working with, the dirt on the no good bosses and such things as every new employee should be exposed to. The nachos were a little weak but the company and $3 32 ounce Leine's red were good.
So I promised Maine connections, well as it turns out the fire boss guy, Steve actually went to U of Maine to study environmental toxicology for a masters and plays a bit of ultimate. Which means he knows people such as my former boss, and others from up there. That's cool because they were cool and he seems cool so I'm somehow connected in a web of coolness which I hope transfers the cool onto me via the transitive property which is itself cool.
I could probably write more but I'll save you the inner ramblings of the drunk man except to say this. If you happened the catch the initial appearance of Cardinal Ratzinger -> benedict XVI on tv as he spoke to the crowd for the first time you may have caught amongst the flags of many nations (brazil, US, vatican, italian, etc) the TEXAS STATE FLAG. It was awesome, GOD I LOVE TEXAS, AND SHAME ON YOU WHO DON'T, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE! anyway enough beligerence for me, I have to make potatos and kale, Mmmmmmm. Oh yes! one more thing. I was recently reading the book Stalking the wild asparagus, basically about finding and preparing wild food, and I realized I'm in the perfect position to pursue this random interest of mine. So be prepared for my escapades into trying wild food as I find it, or my lack there of (its sometimes hard to follow up on random interests). I figure I'm young, and if I find poisonous food and I eat it, well there's always after I get better. I'm kidding, I'll be dead, no seriously I plan to be careful especially as I t try to ferret out that furtive flavoral fungi, the morel mushroom, yes I've heard talk of its grandeur spread throughout these parts and I plan to find, show (to determine its lack of toxicity). and ingest much to my heart's content, or rather my stomach, I hope it doesn't stop my heart.
Note: I joked a lot about dying from food in the last paragraph (run-on sentence), and it really just isn't that much of a possibility, I hope no one takes my jests seriously, and lets all continue on as we were before.

Mammals

2005-04-18T22:39:00.000-05:00

So Sunday was one of my first off days here, after a lazy morning involving some reading and spy kids 2 I set off in the early afternoon to get a better sense of the place. I first went to cedar bog lake, which is really a big mud puddle. Though I saw my first turtle and a pair of snails, I picked them up and stared at their foot for a while, it was fun. I then crossed the road, a marsh with only minimal wetting of the feet hiked, across biocon (where the experiment is I'll be working on most of the time, through the trees and past grandmother's house, and I found myself at the shores of fish lake, a good deal more picturesque and picnicable than the bog lake.

I sat down to finish a letter, and after a while I look up and there is what I take to be a beaver headed straight at me. It gets on a log 10 feet from me and then swims off. It looked like it had a flat tail, and the second turtle I see is what I think scared it away. I asked the naturalist here about it and he informed me that it was more likely a muskrat then a beaver, dash it all I still haven't seen a wild beaver though I did once incorrectly call a wild frog a beaver, but that was on purpose or at least I told Kevin it was on purpose. However, I'm told beavers can actually be found around here, I'll keep my eyes open.

Hopefully more open then I did for 5 minutes after I saw the muskrat because I looked to my left and 5 ft away is a long rodent like creature. AN OTTER, we both get a good fright as I jump and yelp like I do when I'm scared, and it jumps and swims gracefully through the water, popping up on a log to hiss at me then swam away. Most exciting. This was later followed with what I now realize was a second muskrat siting, this one looked more like a rat than a capable dam engineer, and was a different one from the first, more brown and less grey and a very rat like tail. That's a lot of varmit wild life for half and hour so it seems I picked quite the spot, although it took some getting to.

Some bad news now I'm afraid, at least for all you U of C ulty fans out there. The team got eliminated Sunday at sectionals by western Illinois after narrowly beating indiana and losing to Purdue, each by 1 point. Feel bad for them as I know many 4th and 5th year players had their hearts set on making regionals again. Seemed like a weird season even though I didn't see any of it, playing really well, and really poorly depending on the stars and weather X had 2% or skim for breakfast. I am happy they beat Indiana as I never beat a full strength Indiana team in college, though through the cursed fates Indiana wound up winning the next 3 to take the 5th spot at regionals again. How cruel is fate, apparently you just can't keep a hoosier down , at least lower than 5th place.

Still thinking about the middlebury tourney, Its theoretically doable, but it will take the suspension of my sanity to make it happen. It hinges on 2 amtrak 8 hr train rides, 2 14 hr car rides, one of which most get back to chicago in a no more than 20 hrs after the tourney ends, 3 days of missed work, my boss agreeing to drive me to and fro downtown (although that may work as he has class in st paul mon and wed night) and sally letting me crash at her place. All for a tournament in vermont more in a canadian spirit than american which is good. I get to see Lyrica, josie, sasha, ian and tazo again, not to mention U of C folk. So what does everyone think. Should I do it, am I nuts, or am I just a little too much in love with spring ultimate in the state that conceptualized Mud for me (sorry, inside joke that only one other person will get). The other side is that I want to go to Chicago over memorial day, maybe poultry days, definitely Mars, ahh so many tournaments and so limited in the travel options. Maybe I should take up a minnesota sport like field curling, now that would be sweet.
So apparently I can't write with brevity, which would imply the absence of wit, which means this was doubly painful, my deepest apologies gentle reader(at this point still me) though I think I'll let the world know about this blog tomorrow or wednesday , and then unsolicited political punditry here I COME.

More burning

2005-04-16T15:55:00.000-05:00

So we burned quite a bit of land the last 2 days. Apparently thursday was a local area record of 160 acres, it took about 6 hrs to do, which is a long time to be standing in smoke. It was mostly boring from my end as I was charged with patrolling a stretch of firebreak to make sure the backfire didn't jump. Eventually I was positioned next to a tree that was smoldering a good 20 ft up and given a radio and a water pump pack to deal with it in case embers blew across the road and lit the dry grass which burns suprisingly hot, even if it burns briefly. As I was worried about the tree falling I was a good 30 ft away on the other side of the road. Around this time they lit the headfire (for those who don't know as I didn't, the downwind portions of a plot are burned first along the firebreak, here that means a dirt road, and when that has burned against the wind a good distance out they light a "head fire" which spreads with the wind until it meets up with the backfire and both are extinguished) now the smoke from the head fire was at the time blowing directly into my face causing me to get all teary eyed and basically blind, despite the goggles "they do nothing". At this time embers from the tree jumped the road. I did not see this initially being somewhat blind, but fortunately steve did, steve was the head fire guy, and after drawing my attention we each put out one of the two minor flare ups. At this point steve left to continue to patrolling and I was standing right on top of the extinguished spots suddenly very alert. About 15 seconds later 3 more spot fires flare up within 3-4 seconds of each other. Even being right on top of them I can't get them out fast enough and they combine and start to spread and generate heat at an alarming rate. So there I am, trying to radio for help, flee the very intense heat (basically unbearable for more then 2-3 seconds at 5 feet) work the pump on the water dealy, when I wasn't carrying it (it should have been on my back), to fight the fire all at the same time, and all to ill effect. Fortunately two other people were chopping down a tree about 200 yards away and noticed the situation, they drove the pickup truck with a hose and water tank over quite abruptly (breaking a side mirror in the process) and fortunately with them positioned in the primary direction of spread for the fire and me finally using the pump sprayer with more aplomb than clumsiness we put out the fire. The whole episode lasted about a minute and a half, it took the truck about a minute to get in position after the fire spread, but it was quite the adrenaline rush.
we're burning to restore a savannah (basically grass land intermixed with individual trees, even in minnesota it looks surprisingly like the landscape in all those cool lion videos from africa) I guess savannah used to make up a major part of the state but gave way to affordable tract housing and farms, especially when fire began to be suppressed. Essentially the burns blacken the ground, and eliminates any sort of ground litter, most trees and even very small saplings (anything with a fair amount of water in it) survive. Trees that burn generally have a strip of bark ripped off near the base that allows the fire access to the inner woody material, or so I gathered from 3 days of observation so its not like every tree burns. Anyway, have seen a bit of avian wild life already, numerous cranes, cardinals, blue birds, a dove, several hawks, red-headed woodpeckers and turkeys.
I also ran quite a bit this morning in a very light drizzle, unsure about the distance or exact time but I'd guess it was 6-7 miles in 50-55 minutes. It felt good, was my first decent run in some time..

Cedar Creek

2005-04-13T20:56:00.000-05:00

So, Greyhound from Milwaukee to Minneapolis went ok, no crazies, boring,and an hour late all in all not too bad. On the way to Cedar Creek stopped at a grocery store to buy food. A few quick points,
-I have no car
-The nearest grocery store is far enough away that its a daunting task to get there by any non-motorized means
-The next intern won't be arriving for 3-4 weeks, hopefully by car
-I need to supply myself with a lot of food to last that long, and the kitchen as far as food goes is bare, just some cookware, no spices, no salt, not a thing.
Long story short I dropped $190 dollars, and while I embellish the difficulties slightly, I will probably be able to use a truck here to go buy food if I need to, part of me wanted to see if I could make it though. If you care I wound up with not enough meat (it was not a cheap store) , a lot of staples (4 lbs pasta, 8 lbs potatoes, 5 lbs rice, 5 lbs carrots), no soy sauce, no black pepper, and the store had no shaving cream, lots of veggies (a good part frozen), a lot of cheese, a lot of fruit (nanners, apples, oranges, grapes to be frozen) the essential baking ingredients, and a few other things. I think I could make it if I have to, but living without soy or stir fry sauce is uncivilized in my opinion. But enough about food, except to say this. The kitchen I'm in has 3 long tables 2 stoves and 4 refrigerators, I have replaced the HP apartment problem of not enough space, with the new not enough food to use it dilemma, Oh Dinner Club, how I long for thee.

When I got to cedar creek and plugged in my clock/radio I discovered an 80s channel in 2 stations so things were looking up. Woke up this morning at 6 am to billie jean is not my lover. Then I went and burned stuff. But first I had to work a flapper which is a rubber pad on a long stick that puts out small fires, we also had 3 jerry-rigged pickup fire trucks which were doing most(all) of the work in containing the fire. We burned maybe 20 acres with a drip torch, basically mix of diesel and gas (turns out that it burns rather well). And may I add that dried grass, say 1 meter square and 2 feet high can generate a lot of heat very quickly. Tomorrow we'll burn something like 200 acres of savannah, I'm a little excited to see that.

Went for a run after work, took a shit in the woods in the middle of it because I had to and was left with last year's leaf litter to wipe my ass, it took my mind back to a very memorable sprint down a rather prominent mountain once upon a time. All in all, good run, saw 2 deer, 4 cranes?/herons?, found one turkey feather, and the shower at the end was most enjoyable.

General thoughts, Every one here seems friendly, and I really like the feel of the place, although maybe not a fair assessment as the weather seriously could not have been better today, which is good because I'm somewhat isolated, at least for the moment, but I think I'll be able to fill my time with some pretty cool stuff. I think I'll let people know about this blog in a week or so if I think its interesting as opposed to painful. I think in the future that I'll try to be a bit more concise, which will help. In any event good night gentle reader (at this point me, I guess) and hopefully thy slumber will be broken only by the melodious strains of "Don't Stop Believing"

man I am still king of the run-on sentence.

Name

2005-04-13T20:51:00.000-05:00

For those who don't know, crazy nomad was my nickname for ultimate before a different, slightly less accurate moniker supplanted it. It was gained from wandering around oberlin ultimate fields with a shirt over my head, because of the heat and sun, and making odd comments. Anyway, thank god that is out of the way