Month: June 2004

i worked way to late last night.
spider man 2 rocked steady, liked it better than the first one.
i am operating on 3 hours of sleep at best, and haven’t had anything to eat since noonish yesterday. i need to exhume a bagel from some baked-good cemetary, lest i collapse in a puddle of blood sugarless goo.

So, for a project I am working on, we are considering the implementation of “holiday themes” for days worth celebrating. However, the usual big 12 (Txgiving, Xmas, Passover, etc) are not going to be on the list. I am looking for legitimate, yet obscure things to celebrate – something that speaks to your inner…whatever lives in your middles (geek, jock, beauty queen, you’ve all seen the ffin breakfast club, shit!).

My contribution to the data build:
October 22, 1938 – First electrostatic copy machine invented by Chester Carlson. This device later led to the popular innovations in print reproduction, which allowed for the upsurge in computerized printing in the early late 60’s/early 70’s.

EDIT! I screwed the pooch go to : – Lowes Orpheum for tickets!

Yeah, i know , I suck because I am going uptown, and you are going downtown, but I have both weschester peeps and sleepyhead fiancees to contend with =)

this weekend was good. saturday and i went engagement bling hunting in midtown. that girl has expensive taste – she’s totally worth it though =). i have decided that when i die, i want to come back as a member of the DeBeers family.

we had a small runin with someone else’s misfortune, well described in her journal. saturday night, we had a good dinner with wangch61, and my bro. it was good to see them. i really like the diner bar, even though they don’t make very good eggplant parm (this is the first meal i have had there that i didn’t love).

yesterday was sorta a lounge day, though i was working on and off when time allowed for it. i have a few projects i need to get wrapped up, and one i am just getting started on. chellez has been booted in the head for the past week with a migraine – here’s to hoping that it doesn’t stay with her this week. i made stuffed chicken breasts with fresh green beans and rice pilaf. i also got into a busy mode in the kitchen, and made another meal for later in the week (gaucho’s pie, a texmex variant of shepherds pie). got the laundry done, and cleaned the bathroom, to boot.

entertainment wise, we had the misfortune of starting Bubba Ho Tep. I like mummies, bad scifi, and bruce campbell, so you’d think this would be a cinch. “horrible” does not even begin to cover it.

happy monday all – hope everyone had a nice weekend.

I sooo rarely do this, but I mean, how can I not?

Gotta make a move to a
town that’s right for me
Town to keep me movin’
Keep me groovin’ with some energy

Well, I talk about it
Talk about it
Talk about it
Talk about it
Talk about, Talk about
Talk about movin

Gotta move on
Gotta move on
Gotta move on

Won’t you take me to
Funkytown
Won’t you take me to
Funkytown
Won’t you take me to
Funkytown
Won’t you take me to
Funkytown

Gotta make a move to a
town that’s right for me
Town to keep me movin’
Keep me groovin’ with some energy

Well, I talk about it
Talk about it
Talk about it
Talk about it
Talk about, Talk about
Talk about movin

Gotta move on
Gotta move on
Gotta move on

Won’t you take me to
Funkytown
Won’t you take me to
Funkytown
Won’t you take me to
Funkytown
Won’t you take me to
Funkytown

BONUS UPDATE: Sharin the love!

Fist off, go make some Indian grooves – thanks to for linkage.

After that, ponder something with me.

Assuming, momentarily, that quantum physic’s many views of reality could be condensed into a naked singularity (what we will call “the real world” for the purposes of this discussion), how much of a role do you think chaos has on your existence within that singularity? I define chaos as an event or series of events (conceptual or physical) which lead to an action or reaction made without premeditation on your personal part. That, in turn, can be the start, middle or endpoint of an interwoven, or even a new chain of events.

An absurdest example to get you thinking about my question: Someone who prepares their entire life for an ELE. They stock up on water purifiers, parmalat, dig a steel/lead cement bunker, stock it with all the goodies needed to repopulate civilization. Now, one might argue that when that comet hits, he will be all set – his reaction to the chaos will have been nicely premeditated, and all he needs to do is go downstairs and engage the airlock.

However, what if the meteor is not an ELE level event, but, like in The Discovery of Heaven life comes down to a chance “jump or don’t jump” before you get hit by a flaming golf ball doing 3000/mph. Even with all the planning, chaos still rules his existence (in my view) unless you believe in some form of preordained order – he was destined to get hit by, or just missed by a golf ball sized meteor.

From my reading on the philosophical constructs of predestination (or “fate” as most people like to call it), I have found it fairly unlikely that everything happens according to a plan. If you were to subscribe to this view (and many do), it is common to attribute an author to the plan. This often takes the form of a divine being. Consider this in your contemplation of chaos – does your god, who has a plan for everything, allow for luck, or randomness? If so, how? If everything is according to plan, then luck usually is just an illusion of a nifty wrinkle in the seeming path the plan is taking you down.

Regardless of religion, in defending fate, one might argue that the patterns which emerge when running chaos models could be construed as the echoes of the framework static plan all around us, which we simply cannot see from our vantage point in life. I find this the strongest support for the possibility of a preplanned reality, but it quickly loses credibility beyond the thin paper boundaries i have framed this particular question within.

Some people buy into a mixed model – wherein there are static cubes of predestination within which mousetraps and pingpong balls of chaos can determine which paths you take to get from one end of the box to the others. I tend to call this the “Epoch View” – in between preordained start and finish points, there is no controls – chaos rules as it would in an orderless system – the only garuntee are the start and end points.

How much does chaos run your ship then?


Vacations with my father are always stressful for the first few days. I left Thursday night so that I would be at his place for the 4am departure nt day. I didn’t get to sleep until ~1, due to late arrivals from work on the part of my brother, as well as the incessant barking of my mother’s rat dog. I was pretty damn tired when we pulled out of pville ~4:45 – I was also really hungry, because I forgot to eat. My dad was exhausted – he had a week similar to the one I did, plus he did all the packing and shopping for the trip.

We hit the road runnning, and made great time. We made it from Pville to the NH state liqor store by 8:30 – we made the actual cabin in Maine by around 2pm, which is _very_ fast for my father, I believe coming back last year bruteforcemethd beat my previous record time which was just over 8 hours. Neither of us were towing boat, gear, or 400$ worth of booze though.

My uncle and his daughter, and freind Frank made it in by ~ 8:30ish. My phone doesn’t work up here, neither does my dad’s. I had to walk a mile up the road to use a payphone to let chellez know that we made it in okay. I miss her a lot, though earlier int he week it is never so bad as it is later in the week. THe damn mosquitoes are so thick – I must have killed 40 of them in a 10 minute conversation. My arms look like I have been arm wrestling a porcupine.

I got ahead of myself a little bit – we were totally unpacked by 4pm – a first time ever situation in the 20-dd years my father has been coming up here.

Friday night we had fried bologna and cheese sandwiches, not exactly a deicacy in mopst places of the world, but for hungry drunk people, it seems to be near to mana. I like them, despite my intimate knowledge of how bad obologna is for you.

Saturday, we were up at 5, to get out on the water by ~ 8. My dad, much like myslef, takes great pleasure in cooking for a bunch of people who enjoy it. Unlike myself though, he pushes way too hard at having a good time, all the time. I do it sometimes, but I try to temper it, seeing what it has done to him over the years. The weather has been beautiful since coming up, but the wind has been unfortunate both in strength and direction. We got blown around a _lot_ yesterday, and thought there were some good fish points, overall, spotty at best. Around 3pm, we had fished out the area of the lake we had motored out to, so we decided to head in and fish closer to the cabin. My dad, who had been at the front of the boat running the trolling motor all day, was overcome with a bout of nausea, vertigo, and tunnel vision when he moved from there to the back of the boat. We elected to just head in, instead of continuing fishing, and I was _very_ concerned over his health. I was worried he might be having stroke.

We got in after some shennanigans over pulling the boat. Frank didn’t know how to back the trailer up to the boat launch, and my dad won’t let me do it because he is worried about his insurance. We ended up having a stranger back it up, after about 10 tries on Frank’s part. The funny thing is, I’d bet the guy who backed it in didn’t have a license either. More on that, and the dock situation later, but once we actually got settled back in, both Frank and my dad took a few hours of heavy nap, while I puttered around, did dishes, and cleaned up the cabin in general. We had corned beef, cabbage, and boiled red potatoes last night. My dad seemed to feel muich better by the time he went to bed. He attributed his episode to extreme exhaustion and age, which I hope we was correct about. Nonetheless, I am keeping an eye on him.

Today was beautiful, but it is Sunday, so the majority went to church, while Frank and I did dishes, and cleaned things up. When everyone got back, we went out. The weather was beautiful, and the fishing was decent. There is a tradtion of “hooching” – a layover from days when there was much more drinking on the boats. When you catch “a keeper” yopu take a belt of whiskey from a flask you keep in the cooler. Before going out, it was decided that the hooch bottle, which was half full of Jim Beam, should not be mixed with Jack Daniels. Before we even got on the boat, half a pint of whiskey was split between Frank and I. My brother flew into the lake Sunday, though several hours late. By that point, Frank was pretty much passed out, and the fishing ended shortly thereafter. I took the booze much better than Frank did, but I think that is because I don’t drink beer. The fishing was so good that by the time we got back, almost all the whiskey was gone. We had smoked ham with broccoli and rice with corn for dinner.

Monday’s weather was very pretty, but hardly ideal for fishing. There was a strong wind out of the southwest. With my brother here, there was more people than spots on the boats. I decided to stay behind at the cabin to try and go to the library, and do some research on local history. The library didn’t open – I waited for an hour onthe steps, and left when I gotred of people slowing down and gawking at the fact that someone wanted to get in. Everyone got back to the cabin around 1is, when the wind got too b ad for fishing. We had a warmup game of poker for about three or four hours, and then had roast leg of lamb, cremed spinach, and fried corn fritters.

Tuesday, today, is a “rain day”. Between the rain, thunder, and wind, there is no chance of any decent fishing. I woke up at 3am with the start of a migraine. It is around 11am now, and the migrane still hasn’t hit, despite my attempts at trying to trigger it. Everyone has been drinking for about the last two hours, except for my brother, who has been sleeping since after breakfast. Because my father can’t sleep past 5am, we tend to have breakfast before 7am. Not my idea of a perfect vacation, but everyone seems to be having a good time. I wish I flet less like I was underwater.

I assume that the poker game will start up again soon. I have fun with that for a few hours, but my family’s dedication to poiker (which incluides my cousin, Erica, who at 13, is quite the ringer). Frank and I are both similar in our outlooks on this – today he is making pasta sauche, so I will be sou cheffing. I am going to make baked eggplant and garlic bread to compliment the sauce and pasta.

The dock, which I mentioned above, is a major issue on the fishing conditions. In years past, the boat dock right near the camp has been the biggest atttraction to where we stay. The current proprieter, who has owned the camp for the last 4 years, has done absolutely nothing with the dock since he took the place over. With the ice averaging about 3 feet over the winder, the dock is now a nightmare – unsfe to walk on much less tie a boat to. My dad has stated, after 28 years, that if the guy who runs the place, Gary, has not replaced the docks by the time he comes back in August, he will find somehwere else to stay.

I have been working on a history/folklore of the area on and off since Sunday. I don’t know how much I will get one here, especially with my migraine on the horizon. I have made lots of notes though. It is the first writing project I have been thuroughly engrossed on in a while.

Wednesday was a lost day for me. My migraine totally killed any chances of me doing anything remotely interesting, especially when I became photosensitive. The owner of the camps, Gary, is having all the cabins repainted white, with blue trip. To make hsi artistic vision a reality, he has employed what I refer to as the “Moron Paint Brigade”. These four guys, while very nice, couldn’t count to a dozen if they all put thier minds to the task. While that is not always a bad quality in a person, in a painter, it is not so good. They painted all the trim on the cabins before they even finished spray painting the prime (as an example). Anywho, the MPB showed up at ~9am, and immidiately began sanding, sawing and hammering. So much for a restful day in the cabin. The most entertaining element of thier shennanigans was that after about 10 minutes of enough noise to wake the dead, the leader of the MPB told his underlinggs to knock it off, and that someone should knock on the cabin to see if anyone was there, and, if there was, tell them what they were doing.

I forgot to mention a bitersweet and embarassing moment from earlier in the week. The last zippo I ever bought, 7 years ago, but the dust this week. I had a hand-tooled leather case made for it when I was still a smoker (before chellez moved up) so I could wear it on my belt. When I was wearing it regularly, I would always wear it past my first belt loop on my belt, so, in the infrequent moments my belt was unbuckled, the ligheer would stay put.

It has been around two years since I was a regular smoker.

After a brief stop in the water closet, I was re-clothing myself as I bent over to flush the toilet. Fwoosh – no more ligher. Perhaps archeologists in the future will find the remains of the septic system here, and wonder what the odd little device was for. I like to think of it that way.

Thuirsday was, by far, the most beautiful day of weather we had all week. The winds were light to nonexistant, the temperature was in the mid-70’s, the sky was clear, the sun was bright and beautiful. Frank and I went out in a rental boat for the day. Despite the _perfect_ conditions, the fishing was abysmal. Everyone was frustrated b y it. My father is of the opinion that the fish are mid-cyucle, they have already spawned, but are not into summer patterns yet. This, combined with the complications of the incredibly low water (the dam was running hydroelectric for almost two months, the water is as low as it usually is in August now, in the third week of June) has made the fishing very inconsistent. My brother and Frank went back out Wednesday night, after dinner, and had three hours of great fishing – I think they are jsut stuffing themselves during the times we are not on the water =).

Friday, the last day, and I am not fishing. I am fished out. I don’t want to go out on a rental boat again, and there arre more people who really do want to fish than available seats if I go out. I stayed in, got some extra sleep (they were all on the water at 6), and talked to chellez for a bit before working on breaking down the gear int he cabin. Definitely the best morning I’ve had all week. I really miss her, it will be good to be home tomorrow.

Despite the ebb and flow of my feelings for the many parts which make up this ritual vacation(family, location, activities, environmnet), I am sobered by the fact that this might well be my last full day in this cabin ever. If Gary doesn’t come through on his supposed promises, my dad will move on, he has little patience for inconvienence when vacationing. This place, the memories, the stories connected to the cabins, even the familiar sounds late at night, all have blended into a rather complicated yet elegand shard of who I am.

Tomorrow is another marathon drive. Lobsterfest 2004 has been ruled “family only” because of the shambles my parets’ house has become. My father’s over-zealous tree-surgeon friend has, in the past week, dumped about 6 cords of unsplit wood at my father’s abode. The4re is, in fact, question over wether or not we will actually be able to get the boat up the driveay, depending on the location of the wood =/. That kind of sucks, since I se3nt some open invites, but I am sure people will understand. I asked cellez to take lobster orders if people still wanted them.

I probably won’t have an opportunity to read/write this again until I am back in civilization. I hope I make it home safe tomorrow, and that we make reasnoable time..

We didn’t, rain and traffic got us home in 11 hours this year. When we got home, it was to discover that my father had gotten not one, but several cords of uncut wood delivered to the house. My brother and I needed to move lots of it before we could park/unload the boat. He was nice enough to give me a ride home, and I went and got Japanese food with chellez. Unfortunately, due to the lack of free space, the lobster thing was sorta cancelled to a fam-only kinda deal. Sorry to all those I invited, then un-invited through chellez’ post.

Yesterday was the lobster thing, and chellez got to look at childhood photos of me to even the score of going through a chestfull of pictured when we were in Texas. The last week has been heavy on the nostalgia, and that seemed the appropriate cherry, all things being equal. I am not quite sure what my little Princeton writing project is tunring into, – I am just going to keep spinning into it – it will wither form a pattern, or a knot. Wither way, at least Ill know what I have at some point down the road.

This week, I have to make a consulting pit-stop, one of my friends interviews for a job in my office tomorrow, I need to launch at leat two applicaitons for beta, I need to get pet food and plant stuff, need to plan some future dates and trips, and, lastly, I need to plot with chellez for plans on saturday.

She feels shittty today – migraney. I hope her day improves as it goesw on. I am definitely not looking forward to returning to the bowels of the meat grinder.

Ray Charles is dead. Bummer of a way to start a vaca.
Next 8 days, inet will be spotty if existent. Those of you who may need to get hold of me, use phone, I will try to call back.

Ima miss a whole lot. Fiesta on the return.

So I have been seriously neglecting my journal of late. Don’t worry, more is in store.


I got back from Texas, and have had all kinds of stuff to distract me before I go on my annual fishing trip in Princeton, Maine. I was going to make a jaunt to Vermont, to hang out in the bungalow of my part-Abeanki friend, but that seems to have dried up as an option.

I like these trips – this is my 10th year going (scary, right). I just wish I liked drinking and fishing more. Both are done in such excess, that by the end of the week, I am often bored of it. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy both past times, but not at the levels of intensity, or volume which many of my compatriots do. To make matters more interesting, “rain days” – days where the weather is too inclement to fish, are pretty much made up of drinking, napping, and lots of poker playing. Also fun, but not in the gauge the local ammo store carries. I think I am more of a 9mm kinda guy – they are all about the ffin .44 Mag.

At least the food is great, even if we do have to schlep up the hill to get fresh water, and boil all the dishes.

This year marks a great disturbance in the traditional party makeup. This is the 27th year that some of my kith or kin has been descending on this backwoods chunk of New England to stimulate the local economy, but this is the first year we will have any women on the spring trip. I am by no means sexist, but this has traditionally been a “guys only” kinda trip – I am curious to see how the gender bender will change things. To make matters more interesting, my cousin (the femme in question) is pretty young (13) – younger than any of us were allowed to go up as young men.

New rules for a different breed I guess. I am not complaining in the least – I am just hoping the book supply I am packing holds up to the seclusion. I usually go through about a dozen or so. One year, I went through the entirety of Brian Lumley’s Necroscope series. That was productive, right?

Keeping with the early summer/new growth thing, I have recently come into a few plants. I am in the process of rehabbing an office plant that has been suffering from a lack of light, as well as attempting to transplant some spider plant shoots from mom. Grow grow grow, says I. I am going to get my window box in when I get back from Maine, and get some ffin fresh herbs in the mahfah. It is definitely time.

This has been one of the best weeks of recent memory with chellez – even nicer than our vacation in some ways. We have had a couple of great conversations, and spent an evening together which I am still, in some ways, reliving. She is the greatest thing, ever (fuck sliced bread). I am gonna miss her while I am being a backwoods neadrethal. We watched the promo of Kingdom Hospital last night. Good stuff – glad we got it sans commercials though. All you local NYC folks should drop her a line and see what kinda trouble you can get her into while I am gone.

Item of recent woe:
The cable in our building keeps getting ffed. We have open roof access, which is a perk, but not when you also have an exposed cable switch, and many would-be cable thieves. Hopefully, it will be remedied today. If not, I may toss the Time Warner tech off the ffin roof.

My brother, who is coming on this year’s trip, is not coming up with my father and I- that means I get to fly solo with the east coast’s biggest stress ball for 10+ hours, starting ~ 4am friday morning (aka my dad). This _is_ vacation, right? Chellez keeps reassuring me that all will be ok once I am up there for a day – I hope she is right =). My bro is not set to fly in until Sunday…eee.

For those of my peeps who are lobster-loving, there will most probably be a big lobster boil on the day after our return from New England. If tradition holds, it will probably be around mid afternoon on the 20th. If you want to go – leave a tag here, I will count heads and make calls before leaving Maine. I know that is a suck day, sorry, I don’t pick them, I just go along for the ride.

I have some writing ideas I need to explore. I have about a bazillion things on deadline at work by August, and three time lines have started slipping like criscoed oinkers due to NO fault of my own. I am so tired of the constant uphill in some ways. I need to nail someone like Bill Gates as a patron, and keep his good graces with mildly amusing works which take a sliver of my time.

Big personal tech projects in the air too – I wish I had more hands sometimes – almost as often at work as when chellez and I… er, uh, that.

Anyone have any more skinny on Ghost in the Shell SAC coming to some sorta Engrish network? Are the barbarians finally going to be graced with this great work of the chosen sons and daughters of the sun?

some chick sampled the shit out of ice cube’s “today was a good day”?
what the shit is that?! that song is way to cool to rip, at least not for another 10 years or so.
why don’t people try to make their own stuff good via talent and originality?
standing on shoulders makes for a bad foundation.

i’m off to go backpack hunting, then to meet up with some folks later in chinatown. hope everyone has a nice saturday.

chellez is home tonite! (and there was much rejoicing. yay!)

[austrian scientist voice]
ven you zleep witch ze door to ze bedroom openze in ze zummertime, ze suns rayz are reflected di-rectly into ze face of anyone zleeping in the bed with their face to ze north at _precicely_ 6:27 am.

it iz zimilar to having ze halogen lamp turned on in your face, ja?
[/austrian scientist voice]

so today, walking crosstown on 34th street, people watching as i stomped along to my mp3 player i had one of those reminders of why i love new york so much. i was in a pretty good mood, since the doctor told me i wasn’t going to die and all.

sitting on a bench reading a paper on the corner of 34th and 6th, was a man who stopped my bopping dead – he looked remarkably like kurt vonnegut. now, being a major book nerd, i actually know what the man looks like. he was rather absorbed in his paper, and, if it really was the man, i knew that going up to him with fan glee was just going to get me barked at, or ignored.

i tried the witty approach:

me:pardon me sir, sorry to interrupt your reading, but i was curious if you believe in autographs?
kv:::clear throat:: ::irritated look:: no, i don’t sorry, i don’t believe in pens. makes autographs devilishly difficult
me: (pause for witty comeback, totally dead on feet) ) uh, good thing i have this pencil then.
kv:::chuckle:: son, do yourself a favor, go away before i have someone bigger than you bother you the way you are bothering me.
me: sorry mr. vonnegut
kv:i’m surprised you even recognized me, now git.

and i did.

how cool was your day?


Encapsulating a week in type by memory is a daunting task, but I will take a stab at the highlights.

Flight down went ok – taxis were on time, so were planes for that matter. and I were both bit tired, and both a bit sick. This became an issue once we hit altitude for her, when her ear stopped aching, but she was afflicted by what I lovingly refer to exploding sinuses of acid (more on this later). As I had feared, the eardrum which I permanently damaged as a younger bloke came back to bite me in the ass with rattlesnakeesqe efficiency, hitting me on the descent into Texas.

For those of you who have never had any inner ear trauma, let me offer you a nice Mr. Wizard play-along-at-home version.

•Get an icepick and a hacksaw (if you don’t have access to a tabletop vice)
•Cut or snap the top 2 inches off the icepick (so the tip wont protrude into the meaty parts of your brains)
•Stab it straight down your ear canal. Right into the part that usually makes you dance on your tiptoes when you brush it with a Qtip. Twirl the handle 180 degrees for good measure.
•After extracting icepick, insert a small coffee straw into the recently made wound
•Have a friend or pet blow lightly into the coffee straw – this will de-normalize the pressure within your inner ear, creating a feeling akin to carrying a golf ball-sized sea-urchin of differential pressure within your skull
•Hope you do not do permanent damage

Needless to say, I did not meet my future in laws with my usual demure grace and poise.

However, that did not put a damper on my week. As time has gone on, I have gotten progressively sicker, but chellez got progressively better – except for her ear, which I worry about on the flight home.

Texas time was spent wonderfully. I revisited with chellez many a youthful haunt, which was a great sharing experience. We also both got some clothes n stuff, because it is super cheap down there. She selected some pretty snazzy outfits for meself. I feel bad sometimes that chellez had to give up so much of her old life to start one with me, while I get to keep most of my life intact. Nonetheless, it was a grand time – we even managed to leave some things to do next year.

I partook in some excellent Texan cooking – aside from one night of sub-par Italian, every meal was a pleasure. I enjoyed (in no particular order) Kolaches, Sonics slushes, some great rib eye and razzlesnake margaritas at Texas Roadhouse, and some good home-cooked meals a la chellez’s mom. I also managed to broaden the palate of her stepdad (somewhat) while I was down there by making a leg of lamb, creamed spinach, and some beefy mashed red potatoes. chellez’s stepdad was a little wary of lamb, as his only other experience in life with the species on his plate was mutton. I had to show him good meat did not need to be hidden with mint jelly.

Foodstuffs aside, it was wonderful just hanging out with chellez and her fam. I am planning on marrying the girl, if we can ever get a date squared away, and it is good to know I get along well with my future in-laws. I was even given an open invitation to return, with or without chellez! We went to the Texas A&M Rec Center, which was absolutely mind-blowing. There is this stereotype that Texans do everything three times bigger than everyone else, and this place was proof in the puddin (in a good way though). Take the largest gym you have ever seen, multiply it by three, and flesh it out with state of the art everything, and you have the place that visitors can use for 6$ a day! Unfriggin real. Had a great time hanging at the pool there.; Soaked some rays, and spent some quality time with chellez and her family, all the time trying not to over-ogle her in one of her two new kick ass bathing suits.

Cuz, damn.

Anyway, bathing suits aside, it was a great week. I got chellez’s mom’s internet woes sorted out yesterday before going, and was kind of sad to go – and a little jealous that chellez got to stay. I am sure she will have a great couple days with her mom flying solo though.

My trip back was several times nearly a debacle before it became one wholly. I woke up yesterday morning with all my congestion moved to my sinuses, which I knew meant bad news for high-pressure altitude. When I was in Europe, I had a sinus cold going through the Swiss alps by bus. I don’t think I have ever contemplated suicide as seriously ever before as that trip. This trip came close.

Due to a big band of thunderstorms in the midwest, all flights were being diverted far north or south of normal flight patterns. When I printed out my boarding pass, I checked up on things, and they were reporting scattered delays, but no hard data. I was a bit concerned, but not really stressed yet.

Then we got in the car and started driving, only to find ourselves, several times, off the beaten trail. Since there was still time, I was not stressed, until we were driving on a major Houston throughway, unsure if we were going the right direction, with bumper-to-bumper traffic going the other direction! However, due to chellez superior driving skilz, and her mom’s luck of the draw, we ended up making the airport in time for me to make my plane. However, my plane, which was scheduled to leave at 7ish (I was ~ 2 hours early) was now scheduled to leave ~ 9ish!! Checking the boards, anything eastern seaboard was 2-3 hours behind! I immediately went to the gate listed for a 4:30 flight to NY, and managed to squeak on that flight before it filled up with other stranded and pissed off people.

At this point, I figure, I got decongestants and painkillers, and time to kill – everything will be smooth sailing. I pulled out a book, and started to read. Sitting about 10′ away was a woman with a young child, and the young child was visibly (and more importantly audibly) upset about EVERYTHING. I tried not to focus on the set of lungs the little howler had as I burrowed into my book. I just assumed it was going to be one of those wailing children flights – nothing some handy headphones couldn’t ward off.

When we finally did board the plane after multiple delays (I got off the ground by 7:30, the flight I was supposed to be on didn’t leave until 10:!5!), I discovered that fate had started the hand job by letting me get on the earlier flight, only to blue ball me by sitting me next to the woman with the screaming child.

I have been around kids all my life – I love kids (a many people can attest). I have never, EVER come across a kid that could scream for three hours solid at the top of their lungs without getting hoarse, tired, or sated. The mom (Karen was her name) was a really nice lady, and I assume the kid was nice too, on good days, but yesterday was clearly not a good day.

At my full constitution, I would have gladly ignored the child, popped my MP3 player to “ghetto blaster” and played Gameboy or something. However, loud music is _really_ difficult when experiencing the above mentioned ear-urchins, combined with the “exploding sinuses of acid”. This experience is akin to having a ziplock bag stuffed into your sinuses, and slowly pumped full of acid, until the pressure is about to make your forehead pop. If you apply any pressure to the sinuses, little droplets of acid ooze out the ziplock, and give you that lovely “brain freeze” feeling, combined with some lovely burning and eye watering. OTR, darvocet is big pink Tylenol, and does precisely nothing in the face of “exploding sinuses of acid”.

Combine all the sensations above with 3 hours of wailing child and shushing mother, and you have, what I will happily say, was my worst plane ride ever. When I got home, I was surprised to find everything working in the cable department. I guess the puke who fucked with my cable msuta gotten someone else’s too, and they had things fixed. The downtime still sucked though, seriously.

Travel removed, it was a great vacation. Me being under the weather didn’t really hurt anything aside from me not being able to see chellez’ grandma (for fear of infecting her). I wish I could have spent more time… maybe next year. Damn if I don’t miss chellez soemthing bitter already – she’ll be home soon at least though.

Top 5 things I wish I had my camera ready for:
-Halliburton Corporate entrance off Sam Houston Expressway
–Bronze statue of Bush senior doing a GQ pose at Bush Intercontinental Airport (someone else’s pic)
-Chellez in her bathing suit (seriously, this thing is smokin)
-A good group pose while we were all out galavanting somewhere
-A victory shot of chellez mom and myself, after bringing down an otherwise undefeated duo at a board game her family has been playing for many years.

Enough outta me, I got stuff to do – anyone have plans for Fri eve yet (That do NOT involve Harry Potter?)