The Right Eye

Coffee is Awesome

2011-12-29T08:17:00.003-06:00

Allow me, for a few minutes, to pontificate on the awesomeness of coffee. Some of you may know the legend of how coffee was discovered, but I'm going to give my version of the story, because it's entertaining.

A long, long time ago in Ethiopia, there was a sheep herder doing his thing on a regular day. Let's call it Tuesday. But this Tuesday was no ordinary Tuesday for this man as he had lost one of his sheep wandering off into the woods. So he went to find his wayward sheep, as it's wool was thick and would have fetched a good price.

He searched and searched, and finally heard something over in some underbrush. Startled, he went to examine, and voila, there was his lost sheep!

But there was something wrong with the sheep. He was jumping around, running after things that weren't there, even almost knocking over our hero sheep-herder with his boundless energy. The shepherd was confused, and started looking around for clues to what happened to the sheep. He discovered that the sheep had been eating berries off a peculiar tree, with skins and random berry-flesh laying about. He had seen these trees before, and hardly gave them a passing thought. But with the sheep so over-energized, he decided to try one of these berries for himself.

And from there, the human race's obsession with coffee has proceeded with almost a reckless abandon.

From it's native Ethiopia, coffee made its way to Yemen, and to the Caribbean from there. Once a foothold was taken in Latin America, Southeast Asia received the bounty of the bean in the Sumatra region of Indonesia, and into West Java. Sulawesi, Timor, and Laos started growing delicious Arabica coffee in the 18th century.

Coffee has been credited for the Industrial Revolution, as workers could work longer if they were given coffee breaks during the day (hence the all-American "coffee break"). It has also been credited, in England, for the spread of ideas among people like Sir isaac Newton, who had a favorite coffeehouse where he smoked, drank coffee, and pontificated ideas of the day inclusive of mathematical theory.

During the time of the American Revolution, coffee became the drink of the colonies and a badge of allegiance with the rebels. Those loyal to the British crown drank tea, and if one wanted to show his patriotism for the American rebellion, he drank coffee.

Coffee is grown all over the world in the 21st century. It has permeated into locales such as India, Nepal, and Hawaii. In fact, coffee from the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal is some of the most delicious coffee grown in the world today.

And as a testament to coffee's efficacy, we have Starbucks. We can debate the quality of Starbucks coffee all day long, but I'm not going to do that. I'm merely pointing out that coffee is ubiquitous in our culture, and its discovery by a lonely shepherd in Ethiopia hundreds of years ago was one of the most significant events in human history. The device that you are reading this on could very well never have existed without the discovery of the most awesome beverage ever.. coffee.

Day 5 - Arrivederci

2009-10-20T06:34:00.002-05:00

I did not sleep well. I kept tossing and turning, sort of dreading the flights back. I did not want to go back to Malpensa. I just had this nightmare scenario in my head of missing my flight because I got lost.. blah blah.

So I got up at 6 and started packing. It didn’t take long, and I had plenty of room for my loot. I hung my friend’s gift with my leather coat, and wrapped that in my suit bag. Everything else I threw in the leather bag I got in Firenze.

I went down to the hotel lobby to get some breakfast. I hadn’t eaten there the whole trip, and I figured it was high time. But then again, all I wanted was some good coffee, but I just wasn’t willing to pay $9 for an espresso for Pete’s sake. This was one of the things that was so disappointing - how prohibitively expensive even the most commonplace of things can be in Milan.

I got a couple of small pastries.. they were very good. Then I went back up to my room, got my bags, got a cab to Malpensa airport, and off I went.

I got to Malpensa, found KLM, checked in, blew through security, and found myself on the other side with plenty of time to spare. Well that was painless. It’s still a shithole, but a painless shithole anyway.
I got my coffee that I wanted, and I had the one Italian food that I hadn’t had the entire time I was there: pizza. I had a slice of pizza salame, which is what we call pepperoni. It was great.

It was great, the trip was great, and it underscored the lessons I learned from a few days in Italy. The Milanese, with a tough and cold exterior, had a kind and warm center indicative of their Southern kin. Once you got someone talking, they opened up. It was getting to that point that can be a bit difficult, however.

The Italians surprised me at almost every turn for 4 days. They impressed me with their grace, their style, their passion, their unrelenting pursuit of quality in every facet of their lives, how they are able to discern every detail with unparalleled voracity. Everything that I saw - the churches, the opera, the sculptures, the fashion, the food and wine - was created and refined by a people that do not tolerate shortcuts, that don’t accept inferiority in any form.

And yet for all their flaws, and believe me Italians are no angels, this is the one thing that defines them as a people: their effortless mastery of skill and talent that no people in the world can eclipse.

And so I stand with them with beaming pride, my fair northern skin contrasting with their warm olive complexion.. my dark jade eyes with their soft brown, knowing that my appreciation for talent runs as deep as theirs.. that I am as discerning, as critical, as passionate, and as warm.

As such, my big announcement right now is that I will put on hold, as my decision, the citizenship process. I understand that I have a right to Italian citizenship under law, but to become an Italian citizen without speaking the language, without being able to adapt into the culture effortlessly would be the most un-Italian thing to do. I have homework to do - and at least one more trip over here to make. The difficult part of this is how to balance this with being, first and foremost, an American. This is a challenge, but if I am to be a citizen, this is a challenge that must be overcome with the same sprezzatura that defines the culture that I need to adapt to.

Arrivederci, Italia. It was nice to finally meet you. We will become better friends in the future... whatever that may hold.

Days 3 and 4 - Ubiquitous Beauty

2009-10-20T06:32:00.000-05:00

I’m glad I ran out of time last night to write about yesterday. Given what I’ve seen and experienced, it makes sense to put them into one entry, as both days were spent wholly in Milan.

Yesterday morning started pretty normally. I wanted to get to Via Monte Napoleone, the main shopping street in Milan. It’s like that street in LA. What the hell is it called? Oh... Rodeo Drive. It’s like that, but better. And bigger.

But before I could start the festivities of the day, I needed coffee. It’s strange, but coffee in Italy isn’t there when you need it. Like the MORNING! Sure, the hotel would be glad to offer me an espresso from room service. But to pay 10 euros for a ounce of coffee that will be cold when it gets here is asinine.

So I take my hotel’s limo into town and they drop me off right at the beginning of Monte Napoleone. There’s a bar nearby, so I go in and get my one ounce of coffee and call it a morning. I do miss my coffee machine at home. :)

At the top of Monte Napoleone, and I define that as where it intersects with Via Mazzoni, there is a Vertu store across from the Bruno Magli store. Strangely enough, I didn’t see a picture of OJ anywhere. If you don’t know what a Vertu is, it’s a crazily-overpriced cell phone that serves one purpose: to show people that you have money to waste and you don’t care about quality. These phones are upwards of $50,000. Crazy stupid to spend that on something so ubiquitous as a cell phone.

But past that nonsense and right into some amazing stores. Everywhere I looked, things were beautiful. The Armani store at 31 Via Manzoni is truly amazing, I really recommend at least going in there. I found a sweater that fit me pretty well, but I wasn’t willing to spend $450 on a sweater, so I passed. They have an “Armani Casa” on the lower level where they sell furniture. Absolutely outstanding furniture - I found no less than three things that would go great in my condo - a dining table, a bed, and an unbelievable armoire. Prices... with conversion... $13,500, $32,000, and $18,000 respectively. I think I’ll be leaving now.

Down Monte Napoleone is one work of art and beauty after another. Prada, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Bruno Magli, Versace, Yves Saint Laurent, Emporio Armani, Ralph Lauren... on and on and on. One after another, seemingly endlessly. In almost every store, the windows were dressed with mannequins and decor showing off the designer’s work and what was for sale.. and usually the price as well. Everywhere you look there is something beautiful - if it’s not in the window of Prada or Armani, it’s walking down the street, and if it’s not walking, it’s parked on the curb.

This was very intimidating. What do I say to a guy that just walked out of a Dolce & Gabbana store with an armful, that then goes to put it in the trunk of his Lamborghini? I don’t even know where to start. Everyone dressed so well, every piece of fashion and design with every detail thought of had me feeling a little uncomfortable in my Luckies and white oxford shirt. This whole atmosphere was unapproachable. I normally can find some way to fit into a foreign country’s culture in one way or another. But this.. I didn’t know where to begin.

So I didn’t even try. I said, screw it. Here I am, bitches. I’m in my jeans and Robert Wayne shoes, but I’m wearing a dam fine antelope skin coat that’ll kick all’y’alls asses!

All of these boutiques didn’t really have what I was really looking for - a pair of bitchin Italian shoes. I had found a couple at the start, but I didn’t want to get something right off the bat - I wanted to look around.

I made it all the way to the end of the street (oh... about a half mile at least..). In one piece, I started to wander around at some of the other shops in Milan that were off-Monte Napoleone. There was an Alessi store! I went in.. and was like... blah. $50 for a bottle of Alessi Olive Oil. Kiss my first-pressed ass.

Then I got lost. I spent almost an hour wandering aimlessly with no idea where I was. I love that a little.. I mean.. really. What better way to learn a country than to get lost once or twice. For a while, I reveled in my non-directionalness and just walked wherever my feet wanted to go. It was great... bar here.. shop there... on and on. The only problem with walking in these cities that are 8 thousand years old is that the streets aren’t paved and are a bunch of large stone blocks put together. And over said 8 thousand years, these become uneven. So my feet were bothering me a little because I kept twisting my ankle on the uneven streets.

But screw it, I’m in Italy. I don’t care. Onward, you fool!

I had a map of Milan on my iPhone and I just used that to find Monte Napeoleone again, so I could walk down the other side.

But first.. food. I’m hungry. I found a “Wine Bar” near Monte Napeolone, went in and sat down. I ordered one of the things I had to have in Milan - Risotto Milanese. I got it.. and... blah. It wasn’t all that great. I’m like.. really? They sell this shit in US grocery stores, and the packaged stuff is just as good as this? Disappointed!!

Oh well. Apparently not everything in Italy is perfect. Dammit.

So I walked down the other side of Monte Napoleone. All the way down looking at one gorgeous thing after another. Then I got up the courage to go into a boutique that sells shoes and look at some of these things.

I pick out this awesome pair of dress shoes.. ask the guy.. “dodici.. tredici?”, which in Italian means “12... 13?”. He looks at me and says nope.. the largest size they carry is 11. Dammit, I think to myself. But then he chimes in.. “no wait.. try them on anyway.. you never know..” I decide to humor him in my disappointment, and let him bring the shoes out.

And wouldn’t you freaking know it. They fit me! 11??! What!!! They were a little tight in the middle, but I have wide feet, so it’s nothing that a little horn can fix. AWESOME! I’m getting shoes from Monte Napoleone!!

But wait! Now I’m energized again! I want to look at the Dolce & Gabbana shoes! Turns out they had the ones I really wanted in a 10. :( But they had these other ones in an 11 that were really cool.. really casual.. made out of soft leather.. with an awesome shiny “D&G” on the side and a shiny streak along the bottom. And they fit me too! I was so excited I said screw it! Gimme those too!

What was really great about all this was that the woman selling me these shoes was absolutely beautiful, wearing really tight clothes and nice things, and was very nice to me. She made this whole experience approachable again. She told me how to act when I go into places and what not to ask for. She was awesome. Grazie e mille, Claudia!

I took that advice and went into a couple more stores after I spent a bunch of money on the shoes. I looked at some Armani suits, some Magli shoes, some shirts and ties.. all of it was so expensive I thought I could get it all cheaper at home at Saks Fifth Avenue.

So fahghetaboutit! I got two pairs of shoes from Monte Napoleone. Good enough for me. :)

It was pushing 4 at this point, and I wanted a nap before La Scala. I went back to the room and crashed out for a bit, got ready, and took the limo to Piazza La Scala.

Hello Piazza La Scala. I’m here!! And I’m hungry again! :)

Fortunately I had an hour or so before the opera started, so I went to this bar next to La Scala. There were some people in there with tickets, so all was good. I was hoping to hit a ristorante for some spaghetti con pomodoro again, but ristorante in Milan don’t open until 7:30 or 8. Why? What do people do when they have tickets for something that starts at 8?

Quit complaining, fool! You’re in Italy!

I walk into this place.. very nice. Very modern decor. I like it already. The menu is very simple.. I order.. pazzauna.. spazzatella.. I can’t remember what I ordered! It’s a traditional Tuscan dish with spelt and vegetables with a poached egg on top. Very good. I really enjoyed it, and it was the perfect size portion.

But I hadn’t had dessert since I’ve been in Italy, so I had to get some. I ordered a simple dessert wine, and a tiramisu. Okay Americans.... this is what happens when you make tiramisu with real mascarpone and use real espresso, not cheap brewed coffee. What’s that? What happens, you say? IT’S DELICIOUS!! Absolutely knock-out delicious tiramisu. And the wine the nice waitress suggested for me is making me really happy. Just awesome.

But here again I got bit a little. That meal was one glass of prosecco, the spelt dish, water, tramisu, and two glasses of inexpensive dessert wine. Total bill... 73 Euros. Almost $110. Wow. And that meal had no fanciness to it at all.

SHUT UP FOOL! You’re going to La Scala!!

By this time, it was 7:30 and they had opened the doors for an 8pm performance. I get there, and I have no idea where my seat is. My ticket says “Palco n. 7 ORD.IV/ Des Posto n.1. Now aside from “seat 1”, I have no idea where I’m going.

Well, it turns out that La Scala has ushers. And boy do they have ushers. They’re dressed like priests, with these huge medallions around their neck and black coattails. Apparently, this is the way it’s been since 1778 when it opened. Awesome! I love it already!

My usher was nice.. he showed me my box, and where my seat was. There are 5 seats in this box, only two chairs, and one of the chairs faced away from the stage. The other 3 seats are stools, and don’t have very good views. Wow.. this place really is that old.

The inside of the theater is *amazing*. A perfect round.. one level of seats on the floor, and 5 levels up the sides going in an almost circle. I was on the 4th floor of that row, in the 7th box from the stage, in the seat that got to look towards the stage (that’s why it was so expensive!). I started taking all kinds of pictures, since there were others doing it too.

The lights dim, and the orchestra gets ready to start. The conductor comes out, a older Korean man of slight build. Interesting.

Fast forward to the end of the first act. The first thing I notice.. almost immediately.. is that there is no ballet in this opera. That disappoints me because Wolfie wrote some great ballet music in this opera and they were going to have to cut it.

But what really surprised me was that they cut the entire last scene of the first act. In fact, when they dimmed the lights, here came the loggionisti in the upper deck.. booooo...boooooooo... boooooooooooooooooooooooo. Yup, I got to hear some boo-ing at La Scala. And I almost boo-ed too. That was not cool to cut three scenes out of the first act like that. WTF? BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

But the next two acts made me forget about that little transgression. We had Richard Croft signing the part of Idomeneo, who turned out, in the second act, to be unbelievably amazing. There were three *outstanding* sopranos on that stage. There were three: one played Idamante, the son of Idomeneo, one chick dressed in white that played the “good” side, and one chick dressed in black that played the “bad” side. “Good” chick is a smoking hot Italian woman with fiery red hair and skin that didn’t need to be faired by makeup. I could have stared at her all night.

But “bad” chick stole the show. She was just an amazing soprano. A bit dramatic on the acting, but screw it, it’s La Scala. Nailed every aria she sang.. and with applause afterwards (that’s a big deal at La Scala!) She owned that stage, and you knew it from the first act onwards.

What was a little weird.. she looked like Elaine from Seinfeld. Like.. really looked like her.

But forget about it. That opera was amazing, and there’s no two ways around it. All of the singing was awesome. Mr. Chung was great. They all took two bows during the applause, which I thought was a little much, but the applause kept coming, so they kept bowing. And they deserved it.. it exceeded my very high expectations.

And I can’t not say something about the audience. These people were amazing. I’ve never seen a more well-dressed and refined bunch. The women were dressed with the most amazing dresses, hats, broaches, shoes, etc. This one woman looked like something right out of the 18th century. She wore an amazing yellow dress, makeup all on her shoulders, neck, and face, with what looked to be a wig on. But she was just stunning. All of these women were stunning. Long, flowing dresses with fur coats.. just awesome. I was once again surrounded by ubiquitous beauty.

I didn’t know what else to do after that, so I just went back to the hotel and went to the bar. And this couple that was at La Scala was sitting right next to me. The woman, again, gorgeous. What an amazing body that you could clearly see through her tight and long, flowing dress. The guy she was with was old enough to be her father. I thought it might be a professional relationship, but the Valentino mink coat said otherwise. I love my people, God Bless ‘em.

I had a couple drinks at the bar and then went upstairs. Bedtime.. 1am.

I was awoken the next morning by the maid. No, she wasn’t in my bed to begin with (gutterbrain), she buzzed the door and it woke me up. At 10am!! What!!

A little distressing because I never sleep that late. And I had me some Duomo di Milano to see. So I put the “Si prega mi non disturbare” sign on the door and got ready in a flash.

I was down to the limo by 11:30.. just as it was pulling up. But wouldn’t you know it... dammit it was full with other hotel guests. I didn’t want to wait any more, so I just took a taxi.

The taxi dropped me off at La Scala, which is right by the Galleria de Emmanuale Dipozi, which leads right to il Duomo. This is perfect because the Galleria is lined with restaurants, I’m hungry.

I stop at this joint on the left.. the first one I saw that had what I wanted.. spaghetti pomodoro e basilico. And once again, it was just flat out awesome. It was as good as what I had in Firenze. The pasta was cooked just perfectly. Happiness on a plate for me.

NOW it’s time for some Duomo. I make it out there.. and wow. Just wow. I knew what to expect on some level by some of the photos that I have seen, but this was nothing like a photo. The Duomo is the third largest church in the world, and I sure would like to see what the other two look like (I’m assuming St. Peter’s is one of them.) This church was amazing, the entire outside of a massive structure adorned with every detail. From the gigantic doors with their metal-worked sculptures covering them, to the statues standing on top of every truss the church had to offer, this church was a work of art in and of itself. Normally I get disgusted by Catholic opulence, but I couldn’t help standing in awe of my people’s passion, care, and artistic genius. For once, I put the impetus of all of this sprezzatura aside, and just stood to admire it for what it was, and not what it stood for.

Of course, I had to see the inside. And guess what? It was free!!! Woohoooooo!!!!

As with Il Duomo di Santa Maria del Fiore in Firenze, the inside was worthy of the outside. Tapestries lined the pews on either side, and each one was a gorgeous work of art in and of itself. There were awesome sarcaphogi of various cardinals all around the church, which I thought was pretty cool. But what steals the show in the Duomo di Milano is the stained glass. There is one window made up of 40 or 50 smaller windows, each one with it’s own color of glass and amazing detail. It’s really a sight to see.

I love gothic churches like that, but this was the third church I’ve been in since I got here. I think I’m church-ed out.

Turns out I wasn’t. I had one last thing in me once I discovered that I could walk up the outside of the Duomo all the way to the roof. Cool! I pay the 5 Euro for the privilege of walking 15 stories into the air and back. But I got some great photos, and the roof of the church was very surprising. There are nooks up there, each with it’s own statue of a biblical or religious figure, in it’s own mini-piazza almost. It’s really quite amazing the detail and the thoroughness of the construction. Quite often, these little piazzas would have small statues on the top of their entranceways that were again, amazingly detailed in their own right.

I thought about what I’d write while I was up there in some peaceful tranquility, and I realized that I continuously used superlatives to describe what I saw here in Milan. And the answer is that I just don’t know of other words to describe what I was seeing. Oh well.

I started the journey down, through all of the small passeti, some of them so small I could barely fit through them myself. But that fact added to the historical charm of where I was. Judging by the Medici sarcophagus I saw in Firenze, Renaissance Italians were not 6”1’. :)

Piazza del Duomo was another great place. A massive plaza, with shops, street entertainers, even a huge TV screen in it. This was Milan’s “Times Square”, if you will. I went and did some shopping, most of it at a large department store.

And by large, I mean LARGE. I walked in on the first level, and it was all makeup and girly stuff. I saw there was an escalator that went down to a “home” store. Maybe this is where Milanese get all their shit, I thought. I get down there, and it’s basically a home store with kitchen goodies, furniture, lighting, even quite a few books. What jumps out at me immediately is just how well designed everything is. Even the sets of demitassi look great and are so well designed.

I really start to think how much I’m going to miss Milan the next time I set foot in a Target.

Enough of that, fool. You’re still in Milan!

I find this area where they sell all sorts of books, and they had some souvenir books from La Scala. I bought a couple blank books with a La Scala playbill on the cover. The playbill is from sometime in the 50’s, it’s for La Traviata, and it lists Maria Callas as the lead. Pretty cool.

Now I want to check out the rest of this place. Time to take the escalator up.

And up I went, past the makeup floor to the second floor with some cool leather goods. I walk around that floor, and see that there’s a third floor.

Up I go again. This was more men’s stuff, so of course I look around at some things, but don’t see anything so super-cool that I want to bring it home from Italy. I was getting worried about my precious suitcase-space. But there’s another floor apparently, so I go up again.

This floor is women’s. Blah. But there’s another floor.

And another.

And another.

And another!!

And yet another!!

HOW MANY FLOORS DOES THIS PLACE HAVE!!

I get to the very top, and it’s a food shop. Rock! I wanted to bring back some olive oil or something. They had EVOO everywhere, balsamic vinegar, pasta in all shapes, chocolate, truffles, etc. It was awesome. Every aisle I went down had something that I would have liked to try.

Alas. At these prices? Where do the Milanese get all this money from? 4 Euros ($6) for a pound of pasta? Really? $18 for a standard bottle of olive oil? Forget it.. I can get good Italian things in the states for less money. I was really disappointed.

I had to get some chocolate though. So I did, and I guess since my co-worker brought back some of that Belgian nonsense, I’m going to have to return that favor this week, I thought. I asked for the best chocolate to be had in Milan, and got a little bag.

By this point, my feet are tired. I’ve just spent all day walking around, buying little things here and there, climbing stairs to the top of the third largest church in the world.

So my final full day in Milan ended exactly how I wanted it to. With a bowl of pasta (arriabiata this time), and a bottle of wine. I took the wine back to my hotel room and started blog-writing.

Looking back, I’m beginning to realize how much I’ve learned.

Day 2 - Drag me to Heaven

2009-10-17T02:32:00.002-05:00

I went to bed at 8:30.. no joke.. and woke up at 6am this morning. For those who know me, that’s an eternity. I never sleep that long. And I was tired when I got up. That was some serious jet lag, but it was made worse by the flight and the long travel time.

Oh well. My train for Florence leaves at 7:30am, and it will not wait for me. So I pull myself together, catch a ride to Milano Centrale, and get going. The train was okay. It was clean, and the seat was comfortable. Not much else I can ask for. They came by with the cart for drinks, so I ordered a ‘caffe’ and wasn’t sure what I’d get.

Well, this begins the day in perfect fashion. It was just brewed coffee, but it was really strong and served like espresso. Very very very good - way better than any brewed coffee I’ve had in a long time. On top of that, they gave me this little danish/pastry thing in a wrapper. Again, very good. Just a simple danish that you can probably get out of a vending machine and it was excellent. At this point, I started getting excited for a little lunch, and it was only 8am.

I get to Firenze Cenrale (Firenze = Florence for the non-Italian :)), and find my way off the platform and over to the tourist office, where they conveniently have tourist maps for 1 euro. Cheapest thing I’ve bought since I’ve been here, I thought. I had one goal for Firenze - I wanted to see David. That was the one piece of pure sprezzatura that I could not leave Italy without seeing. I found Galleria dell’Academia on a map, and started walking.

My good friend Chris Carriero told me that there were some deals to be had on leather goods in old Firenze. I wasn’t looking for them, but they found me. I was just walking in the general direction of David, and I found all these outdoor markets lining the streets. Awesome! They had every form of leather I could possibly want, and more. I waited until I got to my fourth or fifth leather guy, and found something that I liked. I wanted a coat for the winter, and what better place to buy a coat than Florence!

I walk into this guy’s shop and I am amazed at the wall to wall leather jackets/coats/purses whatever. You name it, this guy had it. And it was all of the best quality that I’ve seen in leather clothing. The first thing I found was a great leather coat for a good friend of mine. I wanted to get her something very nice, and this jumped out at me. But I didn’t want the guy to think that I was a sucker, so I started looking for something for myself. He showed me three or four jackets, and then I had one that was an absolute winner. If you know me very well, you know that I’m *very* detail-oriented. So I’m sitting there looking at all the stitching in this jacket that had a sticker price of 680 Euro. It’s made of antelope skin, it fits me perfectly, it looks great, it feels great. The stitching on the lining is perfect, the button stitching is also perfect. He starts telling me about how this is “real Italian - not some crap made somewhere else” - and points out to me the detail in the stitching and the lining as well as the elastic around the waist. I love it - he’s got me going with the Italian bit. The guy tells me that he’ll sell me both this jacket and the one I was looking at for said friend for 415 Euro. This is a nice older Italian man of about 65, and he started launching into this story about how I’m his first customer and that I’d be good luck if I bought from him. But as far as I’m concerned, $600 for a leather coat and a antelope-skin coat is a done deal, I just string the poor guy along.

I made him happy though. That counts for something.

I wear the jacket as I leave as it’s a little chilly. And then it starts - every single person selling leather on the street starts saying “wow.. nice jacket!” There was a time where five *in a row* started telling me that I got a nice jacket. Geez! Leave me alone already! Haven’t I spent enough money?!

Nope. I kept looking through an exquisite line of merchants.. one selling something more beautiful than the next. Just amazing, my people. And then, I see what looks like a church in the distance (a church.. in Italy? NO WAY!) As I walk up to it, I see that it’s very old.. it looks like it was built close to the dark ages (which ended in what year with what event, gentle reader? Answer later.) It turns out that this is the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, and was a central figure in the Medici family. I learned as I plowed through Firenze just how powerful the Medicis were. And alls I have to say to that is... DAM. Really dam powerful.

You have to buy a ticket to get in, a sign of the modern-day Vatican. I paid the 10 friggin Euro to walk into a church for a religion that I supposedly belong to, and walked in. UN-BELIEVABLE is the only word I can think of to describe my amazement at what I saw. A massive space.. adorned on both main walls with renaissance masterpieces. As you walk towards this church, whose main decorator was Donatello, you realize the coffins and tombs that are right out for everyone to see. You can’t see inside of course, but there they are. Some of the Medici family are entombed there, with reliefs that are a sight to see for any traveller.

Amoungst my amazement at what I was seeing, I saw a sarcophagus of one of the Medicis in a relief on the far wall. Wouldn’t you know it.. it’s made of glass so you can see inside. And there he was.. a Medici in all of his skeleton glory with a olive branch made of gold at his side. Just simply amazing. I saw a Medici... an actual Medici that ruled Firenze all those years ago. Wow.

So after I saw the crucifix that was made by Michelangelo, I walked out. No pictures allowed!! DAMMIT!

Okay, so I looked on a map to find Galleria dell’Academia, where David is. And I started walking, agian, in that general direction. After a couple of minutes, I saw yet another church off to my left. I turned, looked at this massive structure, and I could not help two audible words coming out of my mouth.

HOLY SHIT! Are you kidding me? This church was hhhuuuuggeeee, and the outside was the most unbelievable architecture I’ve ever seen in my life. As I walked up to Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore, I could be heard on the streets of Firenze saying “holy shit!” several times underneath my breath. I have never, in my entire life, seen a structure as amazing as this church. I’ve seen Cathedral de Notre Dame in Paris - and this kicks its ass, and chews gum afterwards. Absolutely unbelievable that man, in the period of the renaissance, could build such a structure. A massive church, with detail on the outside normally reserved for the finest of Italian art - in the most perfect shade of Tuscan blue that you could possibly imagine. Now I was beginning to understand the power the Medicis had - not even the Vatican could build this church. This was a Medici family landmark, and you knew it before you even walked inside.

Which, by the way, was free. Yay! I go in there, and I was “holy shitting” just as much as I was on the outside. An interior that fit its exterior - floor to exquisitely painted ceiling. Every side of the church had something amazing on it - a painting, a sculpture, a tapestry, even the friggin holy water container was made by Bernini. I was in complete awe.

And, I was hungry. It was 11:30 - time for a little Italian lunch before David. I found this little joint on the side of one of the streets. Ristoranti in Italy don’t really have menus like they do in the US. Pasta is a first course, followed by some sort of meat usually. So I order spaghetti con pomodoro e basilico *and* pollo con funghi porcini e pomodoro. Translation - spaghetti with tomato basil sauce and chicken with porcini mushrooms and tomatoes. Oh, and some pain old house wine. :)

I get the pasta course. I could have died right there, and you would have had to drag me to heaven before I finished eating the best pasta I’ve ever had that wasn’t made by my grandfather. It was simple - just pasta and tomato sauce. But it had flavor that I’ve never tasted.. smooth tomato flavor.. pasta done *perfectly*.. just the right amount of basil. Just awesome.

The chicken... oooh the pollo. Not as awesome as the pasta, but awesome none the less. And the small pitcher of wine that I paid 3 Euro for - just great. I’m not sure if it’s better than 3 Euro French wine. I have to have a couple more. :)

Now that I’m full, it’s time to see what I came to see - a naked dude in marble. I find the Academia.. aaaand the line’s around the block. SHIT! I had 4 hours before my train left for Milano, so I decided to wait because I wasn’t leaving Italy without seeing this.

Wait wait wait. Read graffiti on the wall, most of it by American high-school students who didn’t realize how lucky they were to be in Firenze. Wait wait wait. And finally.......

I get in. I get a ticket, and I see a sign for the Museum of Musical Instruments off to the right. Okay, Sinore David can wait until I see this monstrosity and vilify it. What the hell does a golden period Stradiveri violin do for anyone when it’s locked in a museum. GOD I HATE THAT!! I wanted to liberate it from it’s plastic prison and play on it so it doesn’t forget the purpose for which Antonio created it in the first place - to BE PLAYED! Not to be seen! GRRRRRRRRRRR

Okay, nothing a little David can’t cure. I find my way into the gallery where David is kept. It’s actually lined on either side with unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo. But I don’t notice those.. I don’t notice anything.. I just see David standing at the end of the way. A *humungous* statue.. far larger than I had imaged. A lasting image of David, right after he slew Goliath in the biblical myth (yeah, I said it. Myth.) A work of art that makes everything else in the room go away.. so you only see it. And this is from 200 feet away. As I walked closer to *the* work of art from the Italian Renaissance, I started to realize just how little I knew about my people and their history. The only other major museum I’ve been to is The Louvre, which has a very nice collection of renaissance works. But nothing, at all, compared to the 40-foot tall statue I was standing before. As I walked around the back, I began to notice details about it that you can’t see from far away. I wasn’t seeing marble carved to show bones, muscles, and blood vessels natural to a man. I began to feel I was looking at an actual man, one that had lived centuries ago, and had his body cast in some sort of preserving (and enlarging) material. It did not seem possible to me that this could be carved out of a solid piece of marble by human hands. I sat there, as long as I’ve ever stared at a naked man before, completely awe-struck at what I came to see. This wasn’t made of sprezzatura, this *was* sprezzatura. The very definition of talent and skill in the hands of someone, whom with effortless mastery, creates something that no human has ever seen, and that no human will ever duplicate.

You might think I’m crazy for saying something about a piece of marble carved into a man. For you, I say one thing. Go see it. And then get back to me.

Well everything in Firenze was sort of pointless after that. I walked back over to the market area to get some stuff for family. And I got the bug to get a full-body length leather jacket. What better place to get it?!

As I was looking for this, I really started to pull back the foreign veil of the Italians and found a certain commonality. When I was shopping for leather goods in Firenze, I of course would check the inside, the stitching, how the handles were attached to a bag, etc. One guy told me “You notice that? You really are Italian!” Yes I am. Yet another guy told me “Sure, this is made in Italy.. but look at it.. it was made by Chinese in Italy.” Don’t want to ruffle any feathers here, but there was a significant difference.

And I did finally get that full-length leather jacket, along with about 3800 other things that I now have to bring back somehow. I’ll figure it out. My tally:

Antelope skin coat
Full length leather coat
Leather coat for a friend
Rosary for my grandmother
A work of glass art for someone who’s watching my cats right now
Another work of glass art
A leather bag to carry all this shit in
A sweatshirt that says “Italia” on it
A hand-made mask. OH It’s AWESOME!
A cashmere scarf

Now that’s a day!

One thing I did do in Florence was get an espresso as often as I could, so I could try coffee at a bunch of different places. every place was different.. one of the ones in the middle had the best espresso. I had one cappucino, by the train station, and it was excellent. Much richer than the US.

The train ride back to Milano was uneventful. Same sort of seat, not too bad. I had another coffee.

Once I was back in Milano, I was a little tired. I got back to the hotel around 8, and went down for dinner around 8:50. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand it was dinner in Italy.

Today was a day of superlatives, and dinner was no different. I paid the most I’ve ever paid for a dish of pasta - $90. Not worth the $90 if you ask me, but it was dam good. And I’m sorry for all my peeps in Minnesota, but I had the best steak I’ve ever eaten in my life right here in Milano. Just awesome. Blows Manny’s away. All this with a bottle of Nebbiolo, and I was one very very happy camper. Until I got the check. Sheez this place is expensive!!!

And so I sit here with the last glass of my nebbiolo. What an amazing day, I don’t think I’ve had a day like that in my home country, and considering I’ve seen some of the best we as a species have to offer, I don’t know if there’ll be another like that (still haven’t been to Egypt though). But tomorrow there’s fashion shopping in Milano followed by Idomeneo at La Scala. So who knows, I could be proven wrong again by a country that surprised me at every corner today, and that was with high expectations to begin with. But then again, Italians have been surprising the world since the time of Christ, to the end of the dark ages in 1066 with the Battle of Hastings, to the end of the Renaissance, to the modern day world. Why should I expect anything different?

We shall see. Coming home will be difficult, I am beginning to think.

Day 1 - Travel, Amsterdam, Schiphol, and Milano

2009-10-17T02:29:00.001-05:00

Alrighty then. I really started to feel better on Tuesday night, so I dove right into the packing/getting excited to go to Italy bit. So I hauled butt and got everything ready in time, and got some sleep to kick this cold.

Fast forward to the plane. I’m in 12-B. There’s a two-child family in 12C-E, and a one-child family in 11F. The entire flight, for 8 and one half hours, if one child wasn’t screaming, the other was. I was too excited to sleep anyway, but it kept cutting into my movies (The Hangover, then Monsters vs. Aliens, then State of Play)

The flight was the most turbulent Europe flight I’ve ever been on. It was very rocky, scary sometimes even, right in the middle of the Atlantic. Kinda creepy.

I had a 6.5 hour layover in Amsterdam. So what’s a single guy to do with 6.5 hours to kill in Amsterdam. If you said “take the train into town and cruise Damrak and the Red Light District”, come forward and claim your prize. There was just one minor problem with that master plan - I picked the wrong 6.5 hours to be in Amsterdam. You wanna know what goes on in the Red Light District at 7:30 in the morning? NOTHING! Not a Dam thing (no pun intended.. that’s hilarious if you’ve ever been to Amsterdam). There was no one around.. only cleaning crews cleaning up the window hooker nooks. Apparently this is hired out. A little gross if you ask me.

Things started to pick up a teensy bit around Dam square around 9, but I said screw it, I’m going back to Schiphol so I don’t miss my flight to Italy, which is after all why I’m here to begin with.

Once I get to Schiphol, I look for my flight up on the big board.. my boarding pass said gate C12. But when I looked up there, it said gate D78. That’s right, D-seventy-fucking-eight. I have to go through security again, but oddly enough, not passport control. Weird. So I just pass that off and hit a bar that serves large cups of coffee. I was tired. I had just flown here and spent 2 hours walking aimlessly around Amsterdam with no one in it.

I belly up to a bar with three women customers sitting there. It turned out to be a mother and her kids. The youngest was no more than 16. All three of them... Beer! At 10:15 in the morning! Including the mother! God Bless the Dutch. Bless ‘em all I say!!

I got my coffee but I had to have a Heineken while in Amsterdam. I mean, I can’t fly all the way over there and not have a heine in one form or another. :)

I was really getting tired, so I started walking to D78. And walking. And walking. And walking. And walking. I get to the gate and realize that I’ve walked to Denmark. They were so impressed with me, they awarded me the 2016 Olympics. Yeah!

But seriously, I get to the gate and look at the time and realize that something is very off. Then, I realize that I had been looking at the 14:55 flight to Milan, not the 12:55 flight to Milan. GOD DAMMIT! I just walked all that way for nothing! BACK TO C12!!

I make it to C12, get on the dam plane, and sleep for a bit. KLM does a nice job. I got a sandwich on the flight, and the stewardess who spoke to me in Dutch apologized and said “You look Dutch!”. Yeah right sister.

My first impression of Italy was Milan’s Malpensa airport. And that impression? What a shithole! I’ve never seen a more poorly kept airport! Everything was still 60’s green everywhere with the floor that we used to have in the grocery store I worked at in high school.

Shut up, I said. Get your bags and get on the train and get to the hotel ya bastard. I finally start walking toward the train escalator, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s broken. Welcome to Italy. I find the elevator bank that goes to the same place, and out of the 4 elevators, 2 are broken. I hear these guys make great cars.

I kept telling myself.. Don’t belittle my people!! But seriously. The train ride into Milan was not comforting. It was like taking a train ride through a developing country. People fanning their sheets off the balcony. Graffiti everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Did they really just fly me to Cleveland or something?

Off the train, taxi to the hotel. Glad I booked a room at the snootiest hotel in Milan. They have a limo service to the shopping district for pete’s sake. Good Lord! But then again, they also have the limo service to La Scala, so I can look important on Saturday night. :)

I get my room, try to sleep a little, and then get antsy to check the place out. I start walking around.. and my concerns were being verified. This place is a dump! *THIS* is the fashion capital of the world?! Where? The Miami ghetto looks better on a good day! I can’t find a wine shop to get some wine for later, can’t find a place to get some bread for the morning.. helllllloooooooooo??? Amsterdam has better options than this!!

I calmed down a little, went back to the hotel, and am now sitting at the bar. One thing I’ve realized is just how expensive everything is here. Price list so far:

24 Hours of internet usage at the hotel: $40
A Mango Bellini from the bar: $25
A bowl of pasta with some fanciness to it: $45
Continental breakfast from room service: $52 

They brought me these things to munch on with my $25 bellini. Olives, potato chips, and cashews with some strange shit in it. The olives are the best olives I’ve ever had. The potato chip is the single best potato chip ever made, I don’t need to try them all to tell you that.

Then they brought these little tiny spring rolls and come crostini with cheese and olives. Just amazing. Just flat amazing.

So I ordered another drink. I have a feeling that’s how this whole trip is going to go...

What the hell is wrong with neoconservatives?

2009-06-16T15:48:00.000-05:00

I'm reading all kinds of material about the "election" in Iran, feeling ever so sorry for the people of that nation, and honestly I can't understand the reaction here at home. You have people like me, who sit on the left politically, who want nothing more than that anti-semetic freak Ahmedinejad ousted from power. Social reform in Iran would show the world that the Middle East isn't a bunch of hardline Muslims, would strengthen relations with the United States and the rest of the world, and take one major nuclear threat basically off the table.

So why the hell are American neoconservatives seemingly pulling for an Ahmedinejad victory? Ari Fleischer, Bush's former press secretary, claimed that the uprising in Iran was a result of the American invasion of Iraq. Are you kidding me? Our war in Iraq has fueled Ahmedinejad and his hardline supporters, not made the opposition stronger. What a joke.

And then there's the argument that Obama do something and intervene in Iran. That's a God-awful idea because this controversy is between Ahmedinejad and the people of Iran, not the United States. Anything we do to put ourselves in the middle of it is very wrongheaded.

Finally, what is up with neocons claiming that Ahmedinejad simply won fair and square? Are you kidding? Have you seen the statistical analyses? Check out fivethirtyeight.com for some great insight on why the Interior Ministry apparently just made shit up. What about the certification and approval by the Supreme Leader merely hours after 40 million hand written votes were cast? And what about the three-day period that the loser has to challenge the result before that approval by the Supreme Leader? This election is wrought with bullshit - I can see it, the supporters of Mr. Moussavi see it, and believe me Mr. Ahmedinejad - the world sees it too.

It's time for you to go and let the Persians be the people they are.

Iran

2009-06-15T09:28:00.001-05:00

I think it's clear that the Ayatollah has complete control of the country, and the people are powerless to do anything about it. So he's going to appoint some sort of commission to look into election rigging. And who is he going to put on this commission? I'm sure it will be made up of fellow hardliners and supporters of Ahmadinejad. The people don't stand a chance in that country - completely destroying the spirit of the Persians going back centuries.

I personally believe that Iran is one of the great human tragedies of our time. The Persians had a full and magnificent culture that was progressive and tolerant in so many ways. But once again, radical Islam and anti-semitism take a prosperous society and destroy it.

It's time to resurrect.

2009-06-11T10:15:00.001-05:00

It's high time to resurrect The Right Eye. And it's time to make this blog about everything I like, not just art and stuff. So it's time to rebrand The Right Eye as not just the right-brained way I view the world, but everything I think is important, cool, or just damn spiffy.

Let's go!

2008-08-15T10:27:00.000-05:00

Working only 40 hours a week rules. Forget this overtime stuff - I don't care if I get paid hourly for it or not. I adore having Fridays off.

Which is one reason (of many), that I had to go try Manny's breakfast - that's right - Manny's serves three meals a day in their new location at the W hotel.

My review? Well, what is a 4,000 calorie a day boy supposed to do when he goes a nationally ranked top 5 steakhouse for breakfast? Steak and eggs perhaps? Sold!

The place is beautiful. They really rebranded the entire Manny's name. Decor on the inside does not suggest steakhouse in the slightest, but rather an elegant and thoughtful restaurant whose atmosphere unsubscribes to the notion of hotel-attached dining and embraces a more independent spirit. Of course, this is Manny's, and had anything less been achieved your fair reviewer would have been seriously disappointed.

I order coffee, and I'm picky about my coffee. This was good - but not great. The first bit did not live up to Manny's standards. Shoot.

I order my steak and eggs, which comes with potatoes (shocking), two eggs, and a 6oz top sirloin Manny's style. For $18, I don't complain as I'm sure it's excellent. I also order a side of bacon, the brand of which is escaping me at the moment, at $7. What surprised me the most was not what was on the menu, but what wasn't. The one thing that they serve at dinner that can go with both a steak dinner or breakfast - hash browns. Very disappointed in that I must say.

When I get my food the first impression that I had was not a good one. While the presentation of the steak, eggs, and potatoes was excellent, the toast left something to be desired. And the side order of bacon consisted of three strips of fairly thin bacon with grease on it. Shades of Perkins, I thought.

I dive into the steak, which is excellent. I would not normally order top sirloin for dinner, but I want to go and try their baseball steak au poivre after eating this. Very tasty. The eggs were eggs, and the bacon had an excellent, albeit slightly greasy flavor.

The potatoes left something to be desired. They appeared to be deep-fried, which is not what I was expecting and not very flavorful. This is the one bit of ubiquitous hotel-dining fare that was detectable at this point. The toast as well was not that great as they were rather large pieces of fairly airy bread that had been toasted - not unlike a french bread. The fresh bread would have been excellent at dinner, but the toast at breakfast wasn't very inspiring.

The service on the other hand, was excellent - everything that I have come to expect from Manny's. Attentive and very pleasant servers were available at a moment's notice if necessary.

I would rate the food as better than your average breakfast place, but on-par with elegant hotel dining. I expected more quite frankly. I expected a true Manny's experience at breakfast and as such, I was slightly disappointed.

The total bill came to $31. That was another bit of a shocker as I don't think the price was indicative of the experience. ($3.75 for coffee is excessive in my opinion)

I will return only to try the short rib benedict and potentially multiple times to sample some very interesting menu items. However, if I'm just flat out hungry on a Saturday morning, I'm going to Key's.

Well, there you have it. It was a bit of a bummer, but what can you do? For now, I'll take solace in the fact that I can now eat three meals a day at Manny's if the fancy strikes me. And that makes everything all better.

Peace.

How hard can it be?

2008-04-26T08:42:00.001-05:00

One wonders how hard its going to be to get a group of 20/30
somethings out tonight. Its Saturday for fucks sake.

Lines

2008-04-16T12:18:00.000-05:00

Gawd the lines can be long at chipotle. And the St. Louis Park one can
take forrrrrrrever! I swear I've taken one step in the time it's taken
me to type this on my iPhone. Gimme mah burrito!! :)

Biaggi's in Maple Grove

2008-04-13T12:40:00.000-05:00

Over--rated!

Chicken parm was Olive Garden quality. Bummer. That'll teach me to go
off the grid and doubt the supremacy of Mafgiano's.

There you have it. My first restaurant review. Peace!

Nice day. Taxes done.

2008-04-13T11:25:00.001-05:00

It's a nice day today, and my taxes are done. Woo! I was going to go to the Mall to do some shopping, but I think I'll take the new car up to Maple Grove instead. There's some great stores up that way.

I'm frustrated, as I'm sure all of you will hear me bitch and moan about having to pay Alternative Minimum Tax. But a fix isn't coming for me. I'm in the top 2% of all taxpayers on an Adjusted Gross Income basis. And of *that* 2%, I'm one of the 5% who is slngle, childless, and rents. So whaddya gonna do? .02*.05=.0001. So count me as a VERY significant minority of taxpayers who won't be getting any AMT relief any time soon.

The only thing that would really make me worry is if I got sick. Then I couldn't deduct those medical expenses, as I can't even deduct all of my state income tax as it is.

Oh well. I'm going to go shopping and enjoy that top 2% figure. :) And plus is super sunny so I'm in a great mood as I don't think Mr. Sun and I have seen each other in a while.

Smokin bones

2008-03-05T20:26:00.001-06:00

Dudes I rocked my probability midterm tonight. Kiss my pcrv you
fuckers! :)

Imminent burgerage

2008-03-05T11:31:00.002-06:00

A former colleague of mine is about to pick me up to hit fuddruckers for lunch. The hilarious part is that she's a recruiter and she just got back into the IT space this week after a year in pharma. My firm is pissed!! It's hilarious actually!

If I come out of this burger meeting with a new job, it's not my fault. Its hers. :)

iPhone blogging?

2008-03-05T10:55:00.001-06:00

Wow can I actually blog straight from my iPhone?

I think I can!

Communication

2008-03-05T09:45:00.001-06:00

Have you ever known someone that, in conversation, makes statements that are completely incompatible with the current context of said conversation? Or, alternatively, makes statements that are flat false even though the information they have at their disposal clearly directs them to the opposite conclusion?

For instance, just today, this conversation happened. One of our instances was down this morning when we came in. My co-worker told me about it, and asked me what the issue was as we have seen this a few times before. I told her that it was a problem with a backup script. She said, but no, a backup didn't run last night.

Ok. That's a problem.

I start digging into it. And guess what, a backup ran last night, there was a problem with one of the scripts, and the instance didn't start after the backup completed. Seen it 100 times if I've seen it once. So I send out an email to my team explaining why we were getting these annoying emails about this instance being down. What do you think the first sentence of my explanation was? "A backup ran last night.."

And then, about an hour later, I hear my co-worker on the phone with another one of our team members explaining what happened with this instance. What did she say? "Well, a backup didn't run last night and the database was down.."

Oh. My. God.

Do you hear what I say? Do you pay attention to my emails? Do you even read things without scurrying off to the next thing?

Boy I'm really starting to question if this is working out anymore.

The Cruise, by the numbers

2008-01-20T12:01:00.002-06:00

Workouts: 3
Bottles of wine: 8
Midnight buffets: 1
Silly smokestack cups: 2
Umbrella drinks: 15+
Sail and sign receipts: 42
Number of rainstorms: 1
Congo peppers eaten: 2
Nights of gambling: 5
Money lost at Casino: $105
Money spent on drinks: $779.50
Money spent on gold: $125
5 days with your family with great weather in the Caribbean: priceless

Day 6 - Debarkation

2008-01-20T12:01:00.001-06:00

The last day is just breakfast and waiting to debark. I had a higher number than the rest of my family, which meant that I was going to be the last one off of all of us. I actually took the time to walk around the ship and take some pictures, because I realized that while I had tons of the island, I had none of the ship!

I had taken this very ship 9 years ago for my college graduation. I found myself reminiscing about that trip, and the really cool chick I met that time, Sharon. It was quite a bit of fun.. Sharon and her friend on that trip were this trip's Roseann and Matt. People that were awesome that I just met that I had tons of fun with and that I'll miss after it's all over. I took a lot of pictures where we had some drinks, my favorite casino table, all that jazz.

Then they called my number, and I headed off. It was a great vacation, I recommend it to anyone. Although next year we've gotta do a 7 day instead of a 5 day. If I'm going to miss a whole week of work, I'm really going to make it count. Not that I didn't on this trip, that's for sure. I met some cool people, had a blast every day, had some great experiences, and took some great pictures. Now it's time to get back to reality. But I knew that we were going to see my father and go out for dinner. I'll have some good wine, I thought. IOVSI.

Day 5 - Nassau, Bahamas

2008-01-20T12:00:00.002-06:00

Nassau. Whooptie dam doo, I thought. But I did want to go shopping. The cool shopping lady had a nice flyer that she handed out with a map of all the shops on there. I had agreed to go with my whole family over there and we would go to Atlantis for a bit. Atlantis is basically just a big hotel.

We all met up on the Lido Deck for breakfast at 8am. God Bless the Lido deck. We were eating and the Disney Wonder cruise ship parked right next to us. It blew it's smokestack horn. Usually, they're really annoying.. but the Disney's ship horn went to "When you wish upon a star..." I almost puked. It was cute though. That ship had a plasma TV on it's top deck so large that we could watch the movie they were showing from our Lido deck. It was amazing. I'd love to see the ship, but not take a vacation on it.. too many kids.

Then we had another mild travel drama. Have you ever tried to gather 27 relatives together and do anything all together, at the same time? It was ridiculous. We could barely get off the ship. Where's Al? Where's grandma? God dam it, now he's got to go to the bathroom. Then someone else wanders off. It was really frustrating actually.

It was hot. Really hot. Almost 90 hot. And we were trying to get everyone in a cab to go to Atlantis. As we drove over to Atlantis, I really noticed how much of a pit Nassau is. I mean, it was flat gross. Houses were in total disarray. Dogs roamed unchecked. People were walking around, all of them black, looking totally ragged. It actually made me uncomfortable a little bit.

Then we got to Atlantis and it was as if we had crossed over into a different universe or something. It was HUGE! And the shops downstairs were amazing - any kind of watch that you can think of was on display and for sale. The people that were staying there seemed to be all foreign.. Latins.. Europeans.. I don't think I saw one American that was staying there interestingly enough.

Some of us wanted to go to the aquarium. It was cool. But on our way there, we lost half the family to some shop or something. So we're standing there waiting for these people in this huge hotel not doing much. I hate it when I'm stuck in that position - especially when I'm on vacation. I just wanted to walk down to the aquarium and get it over with. It was cool, but I wanted to go shopping.

Then the other half of my family showed up, we walked down there.. did our thing. My mother wanted to walk around the outside of the hotel where the beaches are, so we broke off from the group and started walking around. It really was nice except the nice parts were restricted to guests only. I still got some awesome pictures, though. It was nice, but ultimately still a hotel.

My grandparents were tired, so I took them and my mother back to the ship so I could get some local food and do some shopping. I started by just looking around and I found a little place that had conch fritters. I LOOOOVE conch fritters, so I got some and they were really great.. The sauce was good.. but it wasn't a good as Key West conch sauce where they make it with key lime juice. :) One down, I thought.

I just started walking down Bay Street - the main shopping district of Nassau. I went in a few stores but I was getting disappointed in the cost of goods. I thought that as a tax and duty free haven, things like watches would have good prices. Nothing could have been further from the truth. A $3100 Raymond Weil, which I was going to buy if I could get a good deal on it, was priced at $3495 in Nassau. Whaaaa? Forget it.

And the whole street was like that. Most of the liquor was decently priced, but not too much lower than back home. If you were buying something like Blue Label, then it was worth it. But the cheaper stuff - forget it!

I wound up not buying one single thing in Nassau. I was disappointed. At this point, I was tired from walking around all that time, and I was hot too. I just decided to go back on the ship, take a nap, and then go up deck for a drink.

That turned out to be a really good idea. I went up to the Lido deck (God Bless the Lido deck) after a good solid 90 minute nap and ordered another drink in one of those silly smokestack shaped glasses. This time, I made sure that I got the name of the drink. It was an "Ultimate Suntan". I now have a new favorite drink.

None of my family was up there though. It was slightly disappointing, but whatever. This older woman from Montreal was hitting on me though. She was in her 50's - it was a little weird since she had a wedding ring on and was almost twice my age. Whatever.. her name was Susan incidentally.

Then I bumped into Matt and Roseann, my cousins. Thank God. Cool people to talk to whilist I get drunk on the Lido Deck. I was about half done with my Ultimate Suntan when Matt offered Pina Coladas.. IOVSI, I thought. Here we go.. I knew today was going to be interesting and it was getting very interesting. I had at least two drinks there, then I got another Ultimate Suntan to take back to my room. I decided to get most of my packing done before dinner so I could have some good wine and not worry about having to pack while I was drunk off my ass. I went back, put some music on from my laptop, drank my Ultimate Suntan, and did most of my packing. My bags had to be outside the door after dinner, so I had to be intelligent about it. And it's kind of hard to be intelligent on 3 Ultimate Suntans and 2 Pina coladas.

And then the wine came. Good grief! My cousin Trisha brought Champagne, my cousin Phil brought wine, and I bought a bottle at the table. Not to gloat, but mine was the best. :) We had a good bottle of Pommard and it was really good. Everyone had some too, which was awesome, so I quickly ordered another bottle and let it sit there to breathe.

Dinner the last night was good, but not as good as the short rib night. That was the best.

I went back, finished packing (somewhat intelligently), put my bags outside my door and went out. First stop - Casino!! Last night! Make it count!

And I did make it count. Iryna was there, and I was winning, but not much. But it definitely kept me in the game, so it was cool. Then my cousin Susan and her friend Dinamarie sat down and starting playing a little. And they both won, including Dinamarie who won back a lot of what she had lost the previous night (like $30 or something). Cool!

Then Susan asked me if I had ever put $20 on a hand of blackjack. I actually had while she was sitting there, but she wasn't paying attention probably. So, I did. I was a little worried about it because I had lost the last three hands. IOVSI. Bam, $20. First card, Ace. Second card, King. It was awesome! She goaded me into winning $30 on one hand. Woo! :)

Then my cousin Phil showed up, and I had won about $50 at that point. He said he was going to play craps.. and I love craps so I went with him. I tipped Iryna $12.50 in chips because she was cool and she works her ass off 13 days every two weeks.

Craps was awesome. Phil and I both won.. I wound up winning $25 and he won about $50 I think. We both quit while we were ahead.

I went to the show that night.. the first night of the whole cruise that I went to see the show. It was okay though. Roseann, Matt, and I went off to drink. Where, you ask? The Lido deck of course. Have I blessed the Lido deck lately? We went up there and started, moved to the club.. then Matt starting buying Jager shots. Good LORD! It was 2:15.. I had to debark at 9am, and I was totally wasted. Time to go pass out. Fun time on the cruise. I had a good time, I thought as I stumbled back to my cabin.

Day 4 - Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

2008-01-20T12:00:00.001-06:00

Okay, so I knew we were going to this island, and all I heard was that it was really nothing more than a beach. I was like, really? So I went over there just to see what happens. I relaxed for most of the morning though.. had a huge breakfast, chilled out, blogged a little, and then worked out. My arm was feeling quite a bit better.. and I got a good shoulder workout in. At least the trainer will be happy.

I went over to the island a little after noon. And guess what? It really was nothing more than a beach. Oh, and a bar. In fact, the whole thing is owned by Carnival so the same servers that were on the ship were on the island right now. And all the beer and stuff was American.. no cool Caribbean beers. It really wasn't much.. except for one truly amazing thing. The sand. The sand on the beach was like nothing I've ever seen before. It was like a fine white powder. It was cool, so you could walk on it. And when you picked it up, it just slipped right through your fingers. It was really astounding. It was the best thing about the island.

Then my uncle and cousin wanted to take a walk way the hell over to the very tip of the island. What the hell, I thought. My uncle said it wasn't too far - he said it was a 45 minute walk and he had stopped on the way to look at things.

As an aside, I feel the need to inject a little personal philosophy on this blog to paint a background of what's going on. When I'm at work, people come at me for things that needed to be done 5 minutes ago. It can get really hectic. One result from this is that my personal life, which I strive to keep separated from my work life, is slower than that hectic pace. I make sure of it. I don't really fly around when I'm not working because I don't have to. Unless of course, I actually do have to, then I can really hurry.

Now, back to the story.

A half an hour later!! We're nowhere NEAR the tip of the island. My uncle and cousin are wayyyyyy the hell in front of me. So far ahead of me that I can't even yell at them. I really wondered why they were walking so fast.. I had no intention of walking that fast while I'm on vacations.My foot hurt from walking on an incline all that time, so I just turned around and started walking back. It was really hot too.

I found my family and then just got back on the ship. It was kinda boring. And I had been in the sun a LOT that day and I was really tired. So I took a nap.

Dinner that night was probably the best dinner we had. It was soooo good. Short ribs!! They actually had short ribs!! I looooove short ribs! It was great.

So one really wanted to party that night.. including me. I hit the blackjack tables and the roller coaster began. I won my last hand, wound up $150 down, and I just went to bed.

Day 3 - Grand Turk

2008-01-17T08:27:00.000-06:00

Day 3 did not get off to a good start. I woke up at 5 am, right when I wanted to, but the gym was closed. So I didn't get a workout in. Then I decided for fork over for the internet access to check my email. In my email? My father didn't get the job he wanted (and needed), and my client's stock price was down 51% the previous day on news that they had to take a huge writeoff and got their credit rating cut to junk. Freaking marvelous. Well, off to Grand Turk. Time to do some shopping! :)

4:50pm ET

So, Grand Turk was pretty cool. Lots of nice scenery, and I'm talking about the nature type. Actually, there was some nice scenery of the other kind too now that I think about it. :) I've only got a few minutes to blog, but I wanted put in props for Grand Turk. It wasn't the best Caribbean island I've ever been to, but it was still cool. Got some great photos. Right now, I'm a little drunk having drank a sangria, a Mai Tai, and I'm working on this fruit/rum concoction from the bar in a silly smokestack glass. But it's cute. And really good too. I've got the "repeat cruiser" reception in 8 minutes, so I gotta get ready for some free drinks baby. Second night in a row - free drinks for Jeff! :) Woo!

Grand Turk

Grand Turk was a nice island. It wasn't much though - only 7 miles long. I got off the ship, went to the shopping area that is right as you come off the docks, and did some looking around. I didn't really find anything that I really liked, but I only looked around for a little bit. I wanted to see more of the island, so I paid $45 for this tour bus that you can get on/off of as many times as you want at any of the 4 stops. I figured, what the hell. I got on the bus, listened to my iPod for a bit, but I decided I'd rather listen to the guide, so I shut it off.

The tour was actually really cool. The first stop was this historic district that apparently had some restaurants. It was only 9am, so I decided to save that stop for later when I would be hungry for lunch. he second stop was the old prison. It wasn't much, but it was still neat. For some reason, I like visiting old prisons. Isn't that odd? It's one of those places where people and events seem to come colliding together, and you wonder who was there, why they were there, and what happened to them. But anyway this prison was built in 1830 and when it started, it only had a wall around it, and this little two-story building with three cells on the bottom, and the warden's barracks on the second floor. Apparently, there was very little crime there at that time. I asked about pirates, but apparently the pirates were gone by 1830 and in a different part of the Caribbean.

What was interesting is that at some point, drugs came to the island. And while there was only a few petty offenses committed before the arrival of drugs, they had to build an entire new building with 10 or so cells in it to house the drug criminals. They even had a women's block, and a solitary confinement area. Interesting.

I checked out the bell tower, and the garden, and then I walked around by the beach for a little, and then it was off to the next stop - the Lighthouse.

The lighthouse was just an ordinary lighthouse at the very tip of Grand Turk. But it had some interesting history though. The US actually made the British put it there because we were losing so many ships to the coral reefs offshore. And you could really see the coral reefs - they were huge! And everywhere around the tip of the island. I walked down one of the trails for a little bit. It was pretty hard.. lots of ups and downs with a few rocks mixed in. The scenery was un-beeeelievable. I got some awesome photos out of it, and I even took a little risk when I leaned over a cliff to get a photo. :) I walked around it, took in the scenery and the sun, and decided it was time for the next stop.

Next on the tour was the Salt Quay of Grand Turk. More history - I did not know that Grand Turk was *the* place in the Caribbean to produce salt.. apparently since the 17th century if I remember correctly. They had more salt there than I've ever seen in my life. Piles and piles of salt, all around you. It really did contribute to the history of the island because everyone back then needed salt for preservation purposes. They called it "white gold". I did not know that.

I shopped around in the gift shop, they had a lot of really cool salt oriented things. Bath salt, culinary salt, nuts with sea salt.. etc. They even made fudge.. which seemed a little random. I didn't buy anything because it was getting to be time for lunch.

Lunch was an adventure. I took the bus to the historic sights stop (the very first one that I skipped), and found a restaurant. That actually is the first cool travel story of the trip, and I'll publish that little nugget in a seperate entry. Hopefully, with other really cool travel stories.

After lunch, I was full and happy. Time to head back to all the shops and see if I couldn't blow some money. :) So I headed back, listened to the tour guide along the way, and started shopping.

And I bought nothing. Absolutely nothing. Squat. Zip. Zilch. Nada. There wasn't anything that was really cool. I found some cool necklaces, but they were too small for me. I looked around, went to Margaritaville, checked out some of the scenery along the beach, and that was pretty much it. I thought about going to the pool bar, but I didn't see any of my family, so I just headed back to the ship. At this point, it was 1pm, we had to be back on board by 3 anyway, and I was a little tired from spending pretty much all day walked around on a hilly island. So I went back to my room, put the photos on my laptop, and dozed off.

I wound up sleeping for an hour, and it was a good hour too. I needed it. I was going to work out, but I just didn't have it in me after the island. I just putzed around and went up deck to see off Grand Turk.

Eventually, I found my Aunts and cousins by the pool, and I figured it was time to start drinking anyway. And then we came to the second drama of our trip. Apparently, my mother was worried sick that I had missed the ship. So I listened to my family tell me about the search party that was out for me while I ordered another drink. My cousin Phil and I concocted a dastardly plan in this process. We were going to find an officer of the ship and pay him like $50 or whatever to go up to my mother's room and tell her that I had missed the ship. Too bad, he would have said, and that I was catching a plane back to Miami. It would have been priceless. :)

But I didn't find her, and I wanted to sit there with my family anyway. So I just ordered another Mai Tai (Polynesian word for dumb fuck, in case you didn't know), and proceeded to get schnickered. I'm on vacation, screw it. Then they came around with this really silly looking drink that came in a smokestack shaped plastic cup. It really was silly, but the drink was really good, and again, I'm on vacation screw it. (From now on, IOVSI).

My family told me about the repeat cruisers reception, and apparently my mother had my invitation. I went to her room to get it, she was there, and not all that worried about me. She gave me the invite, and I headed back to my room to change into dinner clothes.

Dinner that night really was the best so far. I had beef wellington, and the steak was nice and thick, and cooked perfectly. We had two bottles of Grgich Hills cab, which was equally excellent, and I was really getting schnickered. Perfect time for blackjack, I thought. Off to the casino!

I entered in this blackjack tourney for $20. You get $1000 in "chips", play 7 hands of blackjack, and whoever has the most, advances to the next round. Pretty cool, but at the end of the 7 hands I had no chips left. Ha! Oh well.

I headed back to the real blackjack tables and wound up winning $30. I called it a day at that point and headed down to this Karoke bar where the rest of my family was. I wasn't even there for a few minutes and they were ready to head out to another bar. Which was cool because I really wasn't in the mood for bad singing anyway.

We went up on deck and had some drinks. Then we went dancing in the club, and drank some more. At midnight, folks were hungry and wanted to hit the midnight buffet. Perfect. My trainer would be very grumpy, I thought. It was Mexican night and I was hungry from all the booze. It was really good too, I wound up eating a good size portion. IOVSI.

I had an interesting conversation with my cousin Roseann, and we were both tired, so we left and the others went back dancing. I went to bed and slept like a baby. :)

Day 2 - At Sea

2008-01-17T08:26:00.000-06:00

I love sea days. It's great because you just stay on the boat, and relax without worrying about getting back and forth from an island. I woke up with a fairly mild hangover I thought, given all the booze the night before. But I woke up at about 8, felt good, so I went upstairs to have breakfast. I took all my workout things so I could just go straight from there to laying out to hitting the gym. And that's exactly what happened. The gym was really small, I was a little disappointed, but I'm glad they have plenty of dumbbells so at least I can do some weights. Which I did, and I was working through my elbow pain, which wasn't too bad. I wound up getting in a good back and bicep workout.. at least for being on vacation.

I left there, and went and found my mother so I could retrieve my laptop from her room. I did, and took a good shower when I got back. It was nice - I bought some nice bath stuff before I left so I had some cool soap, shampoo, and some lotion. I actually took a good hour getting ready - no rush. It was actually relaxing getting dressed to some nice music from my laptop.

I wound up going up deck for some lunch.. and I was starving from my workout. They made Indian food for us for lunch. It was really good. They made a fish masala that was REALLY tasty. And the lentil soup was good too. I didn't eat much, but it was enough for now. I actually surprised myself because usually these cruises are non stop-food fests.

That afternoon, I just sat around.. took a nice walk around the ship, listened to my iPod. It was nice and relaxing. I was thinking about playing craps that night in the casino, so I went in for a bit while there was no one there, and I talked to the folks and learned the rules. I wound up losing like $80, but at least I now know how to play craps somewhat intelligently. :)

After that, I was in a peaceful mood, so I just went back to my room and took a nap. I actually slept until about 4:15 or so. My suit wasn't back from the Valet, and it was formal night, so I got a little worried. I called, and my suit was in my room in 10 minutes. I got ready quickly, and made it down for the 5pm Captains reception. Free drinks!!!

I walk into the lounge where the reception was, met Captain Vito Giac-whatever. Don't mess with guys named Vito, I thought. So I shook his hand, flirted a little with a fairly hot Italian officer, and went on my way. I went upstairs and found my grandparents there, so I sat down and started the free drinking. Eventually my Aunt Char showed up with her kids, and then they took off to find El Captain leaving myself, my godson Levi, and my grandparents there to drink and eat appetizers.

Which were AWESOME! They had these little meatballs that were just to die for. Even my grandfather said they were almost as good as his, a shocking admission. We blew through quite a few of them, and blew through some drinks, and then I headed to the dining room for formal dinner.

At dinner, I ordered the "tiger shrimp cocktail" and the "broiled lobster tail with jumbo tiger prawns". Puhlease. The shrimp cocktail, while good, wasn't as good as I was hoping. The shrimp were grocery store quality. And then, the lobster tail, while good, was really small. And those "jumbo tiger prawns"? Well, there wasn't anything jumbo about them, being just slightly larger than the shrimp that they served for an app. Although, they were cooked VERY well, and were quite tasty. But I was disappointed again in the size. So, I have to give the dinner an 7 out of 10.

Okay, back to blackjack. It's scary when the hot Russian dealer knows your name, and the really cute Indonesian waitress knows my Sail and Sign number AND my favorite drink. It's really not fair. The balances are clearly tipped in the ship's direction here. :) The dealer, Iryena, is really cool. She has a husband back in the Ukraine, and they own a coffee shop over there. It was cool, and she's really keen on learning English too. She's nice, but relieved me of $100. :) Oh well.

I quit while I wasn't breaking the bank and went with my family to Karoke in one of the lounges. I stayed for a little bit.. saw some good folks, but then I just wanted to go back to my room and crash. We docked at Grand Turk at 7am the next day.

Day 1 - Embarkation, Miami, party like a rock star

2008-01-17T08:23:00.000-06:00

So, the day began fairly innocuous enough. I finished packing fairly early.. my father came over about 10:30 or so in his Corvette and spent some time with us as we were running around trying to pack. It was nice though.

Then we had our first drama of the day. Right after my father left, I realized that the day before I had left my sunglasses in his SUV. Of course I realized this as about 11:20, about 15 minutes before we were supposed to leave. So my mother panicked like I have never seen before quite frankly. It was really bad. She was really yelling. My father agreed to rush home, get the SUV, and bring my sunglasses back to the house expediently. So, he's rushing, my mother is freaking out, and I'm just relaxing.. being myself. So, my father gets there, gives me my glasses, and we leave for my grandfather's house at about 11:50. We were late, but not too late.

So we get there, say hello to everyone, and start driving. To make a long story short (too late I know), we get to the port, check in without incident, get on the ship, I trade rooms with my cousin Alice so I can get my own room, and everyone's happy.

So I drop my backpack and laptop off at my room, and head up deck to have a drink with an umbrella in it. Woo! Vacation baby! :)

Every cruise has to have a lifeboat/lifevest drill. It's a pain, and you can't drink during it, but it was still ok. We got through it, put the lifejacket away, and then we pulled away from Miami.

Time to resume drinking. Go up deck, find my family, get more drinks, and hang around. I went up top to take some cool photos of Miami as we pulled away. Before I knew it, it was time for our dinner seating at 5:45. It took *forever* to find the stupid dining room. It's wayyyy in the aft and my room is wayyyy up forward. Freaking A. Oh well.. like I should complain.

So we sit down to dinner, and I sat with some cousins that I had met just that day, Roseann and Matt. They're cool. Roseann is younger than me, but she fits in well with us when we go party. She's cool and is adding some much needed fun I think.

Dinner, on the other hand, was disappointing. So they have Filet Mignon on the menu. Now, I know that I'm not going to get a Manny's quality steak. But for Pete's sake - can you please at least make it half-way decent steak? They put this sauce on it which they called "three peppercorn sauce" - it tasted like it came out of a can. It was the saltiest thing I've eaten in weeks. I ate it, but I didn't go for dessert. I'd rather save it for later.

After dinner, I take part of my gambling budget and hit the blackjack tables. Woo! I'm just putting $5 on a hand... and it's the same old story. Up, down, up, down, up, down.. blah blah. I went from about $40 down to $50 up in like a half an hour. I sat there for a couple of hours, until about 10 or so, and wound up winning $15. Woo!

Then it's off to the club on board where my cousin Susan, her friend Dinamarie, Roseann, and Mike were there. And then people started coming.. my cousin Vicki, her boyfriend Scott, my Aunt Charlene, on and on. We stayed until about 1am, drinking shots and stuff the whole time. It was great. I don't remember the walk home, but I know I made it and made it into bed. ;) Time for sleep.

My Cruse Blog

2008-01-17T08:22:00.000-06:00

So, I'm going to post my cruise blog here. Maybe I'll move it, but for now, it's here. Off I go!

Post Testing

2007-11-03T07:52:00.001-05:00

Just testing this post.

Unbelievable quotes from yesterday

2007-05-18T13:57:00.001-05:00

Okay, two quotes from yesterday that are just astounding.

1. I'm in the Dunn Bros. on Lake Street chilling with my coffee overhearing these two girls chatting it up about some sort of spiritual touchy-feely type stuff. They were talking about pathways and life dynamics and other such stuff that I neither subscribe to nor understand. This one girl then spouts quote number 1:

"I don't know much about Quantum Physics, I just get it."

O - - - - - - M - - - - - - G.

I honestly thought that of all the ridiculous things I've heard in my life, that this took the taco. But Happy Hour hadn't come and gone yet. And at Happy Hour, I met:

2. The criminal defense attorney. Not to use too many superlatives in one blog post, but I had a hart time remembering meeting someone so completely full of shit. I actually began to wonder if he was practicing on me so that he could defend his clients, who are presumably also completely full of shit. I told him that I was a grad student in Mathematics, to which he replied with quote number 2:

"I'm a natural at Math. I just can't do algebra."

You, my friend, are completely full of shit. I truly cannot decide which quote is more ridiculous. I'm leaning towards quote 2, because it came out of the mouth of someone with an advanced college degree.

What do you think, gentle reader?

Post-modern antiquity

2007-04-23T10:19:00.001-05:00

Can we, at long last, put the industrialism design movement to rest?

I'm not even sure how the heck it became such a force. The stainless steel/glass combo is just so impersonal. I've always disliked it, and now it finally seems to be disappearing and a sort of post-modern ancient design is appearing in its stead.

I'm actually going to coin the phrase "post-modern antiquity" to describe the latest in interior design. As far as I can tell, the old and tired stainless steel and glass is making way for a stone-like base incorporating both the nostalgia (if you like) of stainless steel and the fondness for color. Personally, I can't tell you how excited I am to see color finally making its way back into yuppie design (my term too!) as for quite some time YD was completely devoid of any intelligent color selections and relied on shape and form as a vehicle for its point. But now its starting to creep back in, finally, and I really don't care if the only reason for this insurgence is due to the fact that stone, unlike stainless steel, comes in many colors. Natural colors too, no FD #5 here. It appears as if this is forcing some designers and homeowners to make decisions on color where they didn't necessarily have to before.

Woo! Now we're getting into an interesting phase here! Stone as a design element makes a space feel more ancient - more primal - and yet so modern. I love it. Add to that an element of a post-modern hyperindustrial society in the form of stainless steel and other metals, and VOILA! You get post-modern antiquity, a most bodacious style that I hope hangs around until I buy my condo. :)

In like Flynn

2007-04-01T21:25:00.000-05:00

Allrighty then.

Someone (ME) got his acceptance letter from the School of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota. September 4th, your favorite blogger will HIT the U like a ton of 8-dimensional bricks to start grad school.

And then after I accepted the director of Graduate Studies for the school of Mathematics emailed me and wanted to buy me lunch. Oh my good dear Lord what am I getting myself into.

I figure, what's the worst that could possibly happen? I have enough money for it, I have enough brains for it, I hopefully will have enough time for it, so why the hell not? Let slam a Masters degree down and then I'll look at a PhDoofus later on. No rush.

Look over to the side - I've posted links to the homepages of the two mathematics professors from Georgia Tech that wrote me recommendations. :)

Remember, friends don't let friends streak through a disjoint vector space. Just say no.

The greatest word in history

2007-03-29T16:25:00.000-05:00

Cantankerous.

As in: Stop being so cantankerous! You don’t have to do that so cantankerously!

It’s best said by clearly sounding out each syllable and pausing after the first:

Can-tankerous. Why do you always have to be so CAN-tank-er-ous?

Chipotle Eating

2007-03-28T13:14:00.000-05:00

Yeah.

All that weight lifting and working out has finally paid off. On this quest, I had determined that the act of bench pressing 315 pounds paled in comparison to doing the unthinkable: eating two Chipotle burritos in one sitting. And I have finally accomplished the unthinkable. J

Burrito #1:

Rice

Black Beans

Carnitas

Corn Salsa

Sour Cream

Cheese

Burrito #2:

Rice

Black Beans

Chicken

Hot Salsa

Sour Cream

Cheese

I’m full, but actually I’m not over full. I’m happy. Next time I’ll try a fajita burrito in there somewhere.

Mathematics

2007-03-28T09:36:00.000-05:00

In the past few weeks, a goodly chunk of people have asked me why in the world I would go and get a graduate degree in Mathematics. Good question – mathematicians are usually pretty weird and they don’t really fall into the realm of mainstream society. Consider – how many times have you been at a bar, maybe doing a shot of Patron, and had someone respond to your ubiquitous ‘What do you do’ question with “I’m a mathematician”.

You’d probably ask for another shot of Patron.

Probably never happened, has it? There are probably several reasons – one being that usually mathematicians are very smart and by a tenuous definition, somewhat withdrawn and reclusive. Hence, he/she may not have developed the social skills that the rest of us have by procrastinating, not studying, and doing keg stands. Another reason - those mathematicians that are sociable probably don’t want to be associated with their more introverted colleagues because they realize it may put someone off that they like.

I’ll accept both on some levels. Personally, if and when I hold an advanced degree in Mathematics, the whole goddam world will know about it and I don’t care if you’re my employer, my mother, or Natalie Portman. I will find a way to get you that information.

But the subject here is the motivation for this pursuit. I’m not going to claim to speak for others so I will only state my reasons why I’m choosing this field.

Of all the science and engineering I studied at Georgia Tech – electrical engineering, computer engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, all the way down to biofluid fucking mechanics – mathematics was the only pure science. It was the only field where what was on the board was. Mathematics “is”. It isn’t right, it isn’t correct, it isn’t factual or accurate or precise or measurable. It simply is.

It is the only science that deals in truth. Physics and Chemistry, by example, deal in fact. If you drop a ball, it is a fact that it will hit the ground at a certain velocity in a certain number of seconds. You can calculate this and then test your results. You can then go and verify them with Newton’s laws of gravitation and verify that the earth is in fact round.

Mathematics, on the other hand, does not deal with measurable facts but rather with provable truths. I can’t drop a ball in a 6 dimensional vector space and calculate its velocity. That’s not possible for us – but I can prove that a six dimensional vector space exists, is real, and that you can in fact drop a ball in it. I can probably even tell you how the ball will deform when it hits the six dimensional “ground” based on its shape, size, density, dimension, velocity, and force field of the space.

I can do this by describing the relationships in that space and proving that they exist. This is not calculation – it is a truth.

These truths described above all boil down to one very simple truth and relationship, x=x. We all know it to be true, it’s not something that we can disprove (although some have tried), and it’s not something that we can calculate. The identity principle of x=x is the foundation for all of mathematics – it is the most basic truth that all of the other truths can be reduced to. When you take Real Analysis, this is one of the first theorems you learn, and then you’re asked to prove the transitive property of numbers, and then you’re asked to prove something else, and something else, and before you know it, you’ve proved some pretty high level mathematics. All starting with a single, undreducable truth, x=x.

It is because of this that Mathematics is so pure. There is no “margin for error” in math. You can’t fudge numbers or fabricate test results. You can’t take a swag or complain that your instrument isn’t calibrated properly. More specifically, you can’t lie. If you even so much as attempt to lie, the math you’re doing will beat you to your dry-erase marker pulp and spit you out. The more you understand how truthful and pure Mathematics is, the more successful you’ll be. And that is why I am taking this task on. It is pure, truthful, and beautiful – there is no lying in Mathematics.

There isn’t any crying either.

Testing Email blogging

2007-03-28T07:40:00.000-05:00

Hey you can blog from email!! Sweet!

Sigh

2007-03-27T15:12:00.000-05:00

No, really. This time I mean it. I’m not going to just fade away into darkness.

I need to get my blog going again. It’s been far too long. I’ve just been busy between my life and work and all that other stuff.. blah! Now that it’s getting warm out I’m going to start playing golf, and then I’ll REALLY disappear off the face. But I need to keep posting to my blog. I know this.

Coming soon:

1. A good photograph of a bad painting.
2. Something about global warming. It was 82 degrees here yesterday (March 26th). Shattered a record.
3. Should I write a novel? Hmm.
4. My addiction is worsening – I’m going to start growing hot peppers in my house. Uh-oh.
5. Is Jeff going to grad school? That is the one million dollar question.
6. Should I move? I mean, to another part of Minneapolis? I’m thinking of buying a condo. We’ll see.
7. Maybe, just maybe an mp3 of a solo piano piece written by moi. Ha! Like I’ll ever get that done!
8. Other general musings.

Coffee

2007-01-15T09:21:00.000-06:00

It is a wonderful beverage, isn't it? Lately I've been learning more and more about the history of coffee and how it became such a prominent beverage for us.

The story goes that sometime a very long time ago.. in either the 6th century or the 10th century AD.. depending on which story you believe, a farmer in what is now Ethiopia lost a couple of his goats. He went to look for them, and found them eating a red berry-like thing off a tree, and they were acting very hyper and jumping around. So, he tried these berries himself, and then he started feeling the effects, and began to write poems and do all sorts of things that he had never done prior to trying these red berries.

Well, the red berries were, of course, coffee. There are typically two coffee seeds in the berries, and it is these seeds that we pull out, clean, roast, grind, brew, and then wake up!!

It's a long and convoluted story about how coffee made it to Yemen and how the Yemenese wanted it all to themselves so they didn't allow the berries out of the country so they could be replanted. Then some French military dude (oh those pesky French military dudes!) stole a couple of berries, hid them away, and took them to Martinique in the Carribbean. Next thing you know, wham bam, thank you ma'am, and I'm sitting here enjoying a triple non-fat no foam latte in a Dunn Brothers. Ha!

Did you know Isaac Newton frequented coffee houses in London? Oh, and historians credit most of modern man's inventions - including the industrial revolution - to the power of coffee and its ability to make us focus and be quick quick quick!! :)

It really is interesting. I wish I had a cool link. Check back and maybe they'll be one on the right sidebar sometime soon.

My Crisis

2007-01-14T10:40:00.000-06:00

So, it has obviously been quite a long time since I have put my proverbial two cents into the blogging space. This is with not without good reason, as my so-called life for the past five months has been a series of up and down times, and this vacillation all but killed any inspiration I had to write. I needed to worry about myself a little.

But now I'm back, and both of my loyal readers are thrilled!

If you're one of my neglected friends that's reading this and wondering just where in hell I am, I'll take some time to fill you in before I launch into my diatribe on my prevailing crisis and how I have dealt with it.

In September, my father, you know, that's the man that raises you as a kid – oh come on, you know what I'm talking about.. the guy when you're a little kid throws you the football and expects you to throw it back.. that guy.. right. Well, he laid out the new world for all of us when he told me that he is leaving my mother and running off with his secretary. Anyone who knows me will also know that this has been the source of my deepest pain and my abrupt withdrawal from all forms of social activity for the past few months, save for a couple very close friends.

Are fathers overrated? Maybe. I'm not exactly sure. I'll attempt to explore that as I go on.

When my father first told me what was going on, it was as if I had been hit by a bulldozer, drawn and quartered, hung, had rats eat my insides and then, mercifully, burned. It was the furthest thing from my mind. Never in a million years would I have ever come close to have expected him to up and leave my mother, and by all rights, our family.

As a child grows and matures, he really starts to learn the value of his parents (provided he has good ones), and begins to put them on a pedestal as he learns not only about life, but what his parents do, and have done, for him. This builds up over a lifetime, and as the child experiences life from the teenage years to twenties to thirties and onward, the cumulative respect for one's parents and others of note forms the target of that respect into a flawless, awe-inspiring being.

So is all this family crap really a load of bull and the whole thing overrated? Well no, because if you make that logical jump then you would also have to assume that marriage is also useless. If you don't love, then you can never be hurt, right? That's a highly cynical view and one that I do not subscribe to.

Am I hurt? Absolutely. Forever. Nothing will ever take the place of my family. No one but myself will ever fully understand the extent of the pain that has, at times, crippled me in the last few months, and they will never understand the indelible scar that this will leave behind.

That scar represents the wound inflicted from having to say goodbye to a loved one that has not died, but rather changed into something that you no longer recognize. It is one thing for a casual acquaintance to cross you unexpectedly, it is quite another for a parent to completely turn his back on you. The immensely sad part to this story is that I've expressed everything in this chapter to my father, and he has continued to deem it worthy to stay this disastrous course.

Since the word of the affair with my father and his secretary has leaked, he has: 1. lost his family, 2. lost his job, 3. lost a goodly amount of money. And despite all this, and all the words that I have told him, he continues. You would think that number 1 on that list would be enough for one to reverse course and right the ship of one's life. And if that didn't quite work, then number 2, the loss of a career that spans 40, yes I said forty, years would be enough of an awakening to do the same. And if all that crazy-ass sentimental stuff didn't work, then a good old-fashioned jolt to the pocketbook would, right? Wrong. Despite all of his disasters of the last four months, he continues.

What kind of person am I describing? Am I describing my father? Or, with the last paragraph, am I describing an addict? It would appear that, sadly enough, it is the latter, and my once-proud and accomplished father has fallen prey to an addiction that he cannot shake – his secretary – or at least, how his secretary makes him feel.

Addiction is one of the darkest sides of humanity, and it is one that we all often succumb to.

So on January 27th of this year, I am going to have to do something that I never would have thought I ever had to do. I will have to say goodbye to my father as he walks out the door as a member of this family for the final time. I will have to say goodbye to the family that has nurtured and cared for me for exactly 31 years and 1 day. It is not something that I want to do, but it something that I must do in order for me to create a new reality – one where my father and mother live in separate houses, lead separate lives, and rely on others for happiness and comfort.

Today's message: we are all human. No matter how much we think someone else exudes the positive side of humanity, there is a darker side of humanity that no one, not even those that we have glorified into idols, can escape. And don't ever assume that anyone, even yourself, is without at least a little of the undesirable traits of us humans.

Despite all the perceived vitriol that I am spewing into cyberspace, I forgive my father. My mother does not, but I do. The next steps for me along this journey involve caring for my mother as my primary concern, and learning to accept my new reality for myself – this involves the extremely difficult task of forgiving my father's secretary – something that I am finding it harder and harder to do.

But I will persist. I am human, and it is part of my message today that humans, by instinct and desire, persist. Both my mother and I will not fold under the pain nor will we languish for the rest of our lives in a pool of sorrow and despair. To paraphrase a proverb, life isn't about how hard you hit – but rather how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. That is what we will do – take this hit, get up, and keep moving forward. While I will always be hurt and carry the wounds that this will inflict, I will still flourish.

Testing

2006-09-30T12:39:00.000-05:00

Alright, let me test this out and see if my Mac dashboard plugin works.

Math and Society

2006-09-22T12:51:00.000-05:00

Mathematics is arguably the oldest form of science, one that has caused people to contemplate more than any other single discipline the world has seen. You could argue that fields such as physics and medicine are more prevalent in history when it comes to the great thinkers, but I would argue that it was impossible for either of those studies to arise without mathematics.

Which is why I am so disappointed when I see people like I saw this morning who can simply not add and subtract numbers. I'm not talking about people philosophizing at length on the existence of numbers and what they mean, I'm talking about people looking at a five dollar bill and a one dollar bill and wondering how much money they're looking at.

If you were, say, FOUR, this could be acceptable for your stage of development. But you're not four. You're an adult. Human beings have worked with numbers since before the stone ages - going back to the time of the Mayans thousands of years ago and the Persians before them. Since then, we have accomplished so much as a people - the ability to cut ourselves open and fix something using a tool one-tenth the width of a human hair, the ability to launch ourselves into space, and the accomplishment of pushing a few buttons and talking to someone on the other side of the world - just to name three.

Yet for all these amazing accomplishments of really only the past couple of hundred years, why in the world can we not educate our young people to perform tasks that were ordinary several millennia ago? For all of our intelligence in solving the most difficult problems imaginable, why is this one seemingly insurmountable? It is literally not rocket science - it's simple addition.

I claim that the answer lies in the society that we've created - one where you add the basic human instinct of acquisition to a culture that rewards it more highly than any other human instinct (like survival). I'm by no means suggesting that capitalism is a detriment to humanity, but I am suggesting that a capitalistic society that continues to reward those at the top at the expense of those at the bottom is fundamentally flawed.

Let me take that survival instinct question a bit further. If you were faced with a person threatening your death, and you had the means to kill him, would you? I would. Immediately. Unfortunately, this act of instinctive survival is subject to review by our judicial system, and I could be incarcerated for a lengthy period of time if things did not go my way. However, if I make a business deal and gain $10 million dollars, I would be looked upon with great reverence by my friends for this act of instinctive acquisition.

The bottom line to these rantings is simple. We are a 21st century society that, for the most part, thrives. While any society is going to have classes and hierarchies within those classes, we simply cannot allow an entire group of people to go unnoticed and unrecognized for so long and fester until it produces adults that cannot function within the parameters of societal standards. If we leave our own people in the stone age, then eventually, we will all join them there.

Photographs - Lies or Truths?

2006-09-21T11:17:00.000-05:00

Someone asked me today if photographs should be allowed to be altered and then published as photographs. Should photographs be the truth? Should we not consider something that has been 'touched up', or even remastered altogether to be a 'photograph' because it is not an original snapshot of the object occupying that particular space at that particular moment in time?

That's a good question. I believe that the answer is individual for all of us because of how we percieve photographs. Do we rely on the photograph as a representation, or as art?

Interesting word - percieve. Let's run with that for a moment. When you take a digital photograph, light passes through a lens and focused onto a digital image sensor which translates those rays of light into pixels. Then another electronic doohickey takes that data, creates a file, and puts it onto a memory card. Now, digial photographs can be great representations of what was in front of the lens at that moment, so let's discount that little digital sensor doohickey and let's further assume that the file-creator doohickey is also flawless.

At some point, our eyes have to percieve that digital image. Let's say you open that image onto a computer monitor. Well, your eyes are viewing a pretty good representation of what was in front of the camera lens at the moment the shutter opened. So, it's basically a recording of the light reflections at that exact moment requiring your eyes to percieve that moment one more time.

But it all boils down to your perception of that image. You still have to percieve it for what it is. It might be a photo of your girlfriend holding a teddy bear. The image has meaning to you and your mind will recreate that moment when you see the photograph.

Now, let's go back to the camera. The one part of the camera that I did not assume to be error-free was the lens. This is a piece of glass.. light inherently bends through glass before it gets to the little digital sensor doohickey. So, it that digital sensor actually capturing what's happening? Not really, is it? Ever play the telephone game.. where your teacher tells one person a secret and by the time it gets around the room the sky is falling, the Messiah is coming, and garlic will kill you immediately. But you don't notice these little errors because your mind has already created the memory of that moment when you look at the photo.

What if someone unrelated sees it? Then what? Well, they have no memory of that moment, so they take the photo at face value that some chick was holding a teddy bear. They don't know the girl or the teddy bear, so all they know is that she held it.

Artists use lies to tell the truth. We can go to the Louvre and see David's Coronation of Napoleon I, we know it happened, but we have no idea how. I don't think David did either. That representation is probably a false one, but it tells the truth of Napoleon I's coronation.

If you look at that painting, it will mean something different to you than it will to me. If I show you a photograph of a girl holding a teddy bear, it will undoubtedly create a different feeling in you than it will in me (especially if it's my girlfriend).

Is a photograph reality? Are you prepared to call a bunch of 1's and 0's, or a series of photosensitive chemical reactions 'reality'? I'm not. Is a photograph a slightly more accurate representation of events than a painting is? Yes. Is it reality? No. To presume that something artificial is reality or the 'truth' is, in my opinion, another example of human arrogance - our little way of waging war against mother nature.

A photograph is a work of art. It is a representation of events as they happened through the eye of the camera lens. To alter a photograph is to alter what that photograph means, perhaps to make it more meaningful or tell a story, but all it's doing is turning a small fib into a larger lie for the sole purpose of conveying the truth. And that, gentle reader, is the essence of art.

Microsoft's Shame

2006-09-08T10:36:00.000-05:00

People who know me know that I’m no fan of Microsoft. In fact, I think that Microsoft has done some of the most deplorable things seen in American business, and they are not only praised for it, they are rewarded in spades with a virtual monopoly on Operating System and Office software. I’ve even gone and told United States Senators about it.

In 2001, I lauded Bill Gates because at that time, Microsoft was at the forefront of technological innovation. Windows XP was the first OS that Microsoft released that actually worked. They stuck with what their core product was, and made it better. Congrats, Bill.

But as I learn more and more about Vista, Microsoft’s new and improved Operating System to succeed XP, it is blatantly obvious that they have succeeded not in forefronting innovation, but doing what got them here in the first place: wait for someone else to think of it and take the idea. They’re so unabashed by this, they’ve even coined some very similar product names AND ICONS to Apple’s Mac OS X computers. It is a blatant and, quite frankly to those of us who actually care about the computing industry, offensive move on their part to explain the last 5 years of inactivity on the Windows front.

While Apple’s engineers are creating new ideas and transforming them straight into useable and highly effective software, Microsoft was clearly waiting for these same engineers and attempted to incorporate their good ideas into a half-hearted attempt to come out with a “new and improved” operating system. Windows has become atrophied software – weak and dissolving into nothing.

Personally, it makes me sick.

Shame on you Microsoft. You do $50 billion in revenue a year. You have some of the brightest minds on the face of this planet working for you, and this is the best that you can come up with in the 5 years since Windows XP was released? Go ahead and release Vista. You will learn a painful lesson from the experience both financially and publicly. And that lesson is the very simple fact that you need to completely rip apart your operating system and start from absolute scratch. Computing has changed so much since Bill’s MS-DOS came out that it’s the absolute wrong answer for the average computing need.

Go back to the drawing board, Microsoft. Go back, and do what you’ve shown us you can do. Innovate. Create. Do something original. Use the good people you have to create a new operating system that fits the needs and wants of today’s computer user.

Note to Bill Gates: buy a Mac. But do it quickly – before Apple starts whipping that old and tired tail of Windows.

Symbols

2006-09-07T10:24:00.000-05:00

How important are symbols to you?

Before you answer this question, make sure you understand the question and grasp the weightiness of it. Symbols of various things are all around us every day. I am communicated to by the Minnesota Department of Transportation when I see a blue square with a number in it on a green highway exit sign. That’s State Road .

How about a football team? Do you have a favorite? Is your symbol a Native American’s spear? How about a large bee? Oh for Pete’s sake, you could identify yourself with the Horned Frogs if you went to Texas Christian University.

What about your very name? Is your name a symbol of who you are?

That’s an important question. I ask it because one of my close friends quite recently when his daughter, just after the birth of her son, gave the baby the last name of the baby’s father and not her own. My friend was quite distraught over this and still is as I write.

I’m not sure I agree with him on this one. Sure, my name is part of who I am, but it in no way defines who I am. My last name is Gassman, but I’m just as much an Inzalaco as I am a Gassman and you won’t know that unless I specifically tell you what my mother’s maiden name is.

Oh those pesky Italians.

What about religious symbols? The fact that a symbol of a 1st century man being nailed to a cross can cause people to fly large airplanes into buildings is quite scary, don’t you think? But what it does illustrate is how important symbols are to us as a people. Humans are by definition slaves to our senses. If we see something, we perceive it, remember it, and file it away for future recall if the situation calls for it. If we smell something, we do the same whether we like it or not. I personally cringe at both the sight and smell of eggplant, because my senses send unfortunate signals to my brain when I eat it. You could show me a large purple oval, and I probably would have the same reaction.

I can hear the Italians spitting now.

By the same token, I have some music that I listened to in college that I still today associate with Georgia Tech. Some music I listened to while studying, some while running, some of the same songs were playing over the radio at 7am while I was weightlifting in the student athletic Center. When I hear this music now, I feel exactly as I felt then with very few exceptions. They are symbols of parts of my life in the past.

So what’s in a name? I argue that it is nothing more than identification. And possibly, although not in my case, part of a historical genetic record (also known as a FAMILY TREE but I wanted it to sound fancy).

Oh great, I’ve just pissed off an entire nation. Just sit down and have an Anisette. You’ll feel better I assure you.

I’d be Jeff Gassman if my parents hadn’t made me take piano lessons, or if I had gone to the University of Miami instead of Georgia Tech, or if I had married my last girlfriend instead of breaking up with her. My name doesn’t change as my whims do, nor as I learn new things and develop new ideas and beliefs. If I change political parties, Jeff Gassman will make that change; the Republican party doesn’t get to give me a new name as much as they would probably like to.

On names, symbols, and pesky Italians, I’ll conclude by saying that everything is a symbol. Including the words you’re reading now. The sentences I’ve managed to string together are merely a conglomeration of symbols used to convey sports loyalty, what you think about your name, a particularly feisty group of people, terrorists, college, et cetera. How about a single word – ‘identification’ – that I used in a previous sentence? What does that word mean to you? What does it symbolize? Government power? Nationality? What?

Italians would still be the same people if all of a sudden one day we decided to call them Durpickens. They’d be the same people with the same attitude, but they’d by Durpickens instead of Italians. So what’s the difference?

I’m going to fix a Durpicken coffee now.

Apparently, the Anisette didn’t work. Here they come!

Office Space

2006-08-27T20:57:00.000-05:00

Every time I start on a new client, the most noticeable yet unstated policy of any corporation is reflected in how it treats its employees and consultants. Are they regarded as near equals? Or are the consultants second-class citizens in a corporate environment that values loyalty above all and trusts only those that have pledged blind devotion to a cause that is not their own?

Sadly, my new client appears to be the latter, although they do appear to acknowledge it and attempt to fix it.

I sit in a cube farm that makes Office Space look like Shangri-la. All the desks are lined up in lines. It's almost like Arlington National Cemetery; where no matter where you stand the headstones are in a straight line coming towards you. My desk is a metal desk with a faux-wood top. My PC is about 3 or 4 years old, although has enough power to do what I need it to. Everything else, however, is woefully out of date. I can barely stand all the space I have on my raucously spacious 15 inch CRT monitor. (Which incidentally – weighs more than my 24 inch LCD at home.) The phone at my desk was made sometime between the dawn of touch-tone technology and Voice-over IP telephony – and I'm guessing much closer to the former. The walls of my mini-cube look at least 20 years old and are of a light khaki color that one gets when one drinks too many cream drinks and vomits.

There is one other consultant here from my firm –call him Bob. Outside of myself, Bob, and the guy that sits next to me, there is ne'er an American to be found in this room. Although I appreciate the smell of good Chicken Tikka as much as the next guy, I'd really like it if people simply spoke English in a United States workplace. Guess I'm a stickler.

All that said, I am getting more respect from my client employee colleagues than I've seen some contractors get. I've even been told by one that she may try to move me out of here and get me a real desk. Bob, too, might be afforded the same badge of honor.

One thing that troubles me is that the respect and the kindness seem to be directed at us contractors with an all too familiar pattern. White skin and European names. Abu across from me barely even talks to the client. And his name really is Abu, that's not an Aladdin reference used to put down someone. I have no idea what he does. I'm not entirely sure if he speaks English or not because the only people that come talk to him speak in a foreign language that I cannot recognize. In fact, I have no idea what anyone in the farm does except for Bob.

What is most troubling about this environment isn't the cube farm, or the lack of modern equipment, or even the apparent discrimination, it's the complete lack of personality and individuality of anyone here. This isn't an environment of expression by any measuring stick. The micro-culture in this room is devoid entirely of creativity and self-awareness. The people that work here are paid to simply sit in front of a computer and work. That's all, and nothing more. And I wonder if this void of personal freedom doesn't carry over to their after-work life; that would be the real tragedy.

Beginnings and Endings

2006-08-13T22:48:00.000-05:00

I had a great opportunity to attend a fabulous wedding for two of my friends on Saturday. The wedding and the reception were first-rate despite our location, Minnestrista, also known as 'butt-^$&@ Minnesota'. It was a gorgeous day, and outside amoungst the nice warm air and breeze, it got me to thinking more and more about how I view events in my own life.. as beginnings or endings.

This thought process was thrown into a quandry by a very close friend of mine revealing to me that her mother passed away suddenly the week previous. She was obviously very upset over it, and I didn't dwell or ask anything more that what she was willing to reveal.

I wanted to ask her a very important question. Is this moment in her life the end of the part of her life where she is graced with the presence of her mother, or is it the beginning of her adult life with only one parent? Now, this may seem like the same thing, but the way in which we view these type of events almost certainly dictates how we handle them, and how we live the rest of our lives, so it's very important to discover this about ourselves.

It should be noted that I believe what happened is part of the natural order of the world. Children have to bury their parents. It's going to happen to almost everyone. It's just the way things are. Parents burying children is the disturbing side to my subject.

Now, in this partucular case, she was caught completely off guard by a deeply personal and tragic event. I argue that these moments where we have no direction and are numbed to virtually all emotion are our defining moments. It's not how we handle them at the moment, but how we carry on and live our lives. Knowing this person as well as I do, I know that she'll handle this intelligently and come out a stronger person and headed in a better direction.

All these thoughts of burials and I was at a wedding. While I think it's a travesty that the beginning of my friend's mother's afterlife journey needed to coincide with another friends beginning of a new life, a married life, it is the way of the world and perhaps the celebration helped people take their minds off more unfortunate things.

And it is of beginnings that I'm focusing on. It's very important that, in my life, I view things as they happen as the beginning of one part of my life and not the end of another. When my father was diagnosed with cancer, I did my absolute best to consider that as a new part of my life - the part where I have to take care of ailing parents. Fortunately, events transpired that allowed me to delay that part of my life, but I was still fully prepared to begin it at that time. If we view very important points in our lives as beginnings and not endings, then we look forward to the future and don't dwell on the past. As difficult as it might seem to begin this part of our lives, we will be better people if we actively look for ways to gain the most knowledge out of the experience. If we understand that we are about to embark on a new journey, then we will be prepared to make it as meaningful as possible.

Rememberance of the dead is critical to our lives and to our being, and I'm not suggesting that doing so is "dwelling on the past". In the same way that my friend should not dwell on her mother's passing for too long, my other friends who got married should not dwell on that event too long either. They should use it as fuel to drive their relationship forward and look for ways to better it.

Today's blog message: Don't dwell. Look forward. Always seek ways to enrich yourself and celebrate your life at every opportunity.

"To speak the name of the dead is to make them live again."
- Proverb from the Egyptian Book of the Dead

The Minneapolis Uptown Art Fair

2006-08-11T09:25:00.000-05:00

The Minneapolis Uptown Art Fair, held every year, really is a great display of art from all over the country. It’s really fun to check out all forms of media as well as talk to the artists and get their impressions and feelings on what they did.

However, this art fair is ultimately held in Minnesota. And this means wierdos. Lots and lots of wierdos. I’ll break down my experience, bit by bit, and attempt to explain how these things made me feel and exactly what I saw.

The Horse’s Ass

The Uptown Art Fair is probably the only place in this great state where you can purchase a $500 framed photograph of a horse’s ass. And I’m not being figurative.. I literally mean a photograph of a horse’s ass. Now, I love art, and I appreciate art in all its forms. But some art I simply do not understand because the subject of the art is an object that is either completely neutral or produces a negative reaction in ostensibly the majority of people. And example of this type of object would be a horse’s ass. In fact, you could spend your hard-earned $500 on any number of asses. White asses, brown asses, black asses, from the top angle, the side, and all with various tail positions were to be had for your $500.

So as you walk away with your framed horse’s ass in hand, ask yourself, which one of you is the bigger ass?

The Clueless Man

This event draws a much different and smaller crowd than the Minnesota State Fair. That said, there are plenty of people walking around with just as an unfortunate level of intelligence as you might see in people at the State Fair. One in particular stood out as I was standing waiting to get a glass of wine. This particular stand sold two different kinds: Pinot Noir and Pinot Grigio (which I hate, by the way). The man ahead of me walks up and asks for a Chardonnay. Well, I thought the signage was sufficient to inform this numbskull that they had the Pinots on hand, and not much else. Then he asks “What is this bru-shit-a on the menu?” That’s bruschetta, you boob. He orders one, and can’t manage to keep his bruschetta and his wine straight. The server tells him that two glasses of wine and a bru-shit-a come to $15 all together. He hands her a $10 bill. I stood there in astonishment as I tried to figure out whether this guy was hard of hearing, stupid, or just plain clueless. I went with the latter.

Suburbanite Wannabes

I would never suggest that people from the suburbs are clueless. Never. I know plenty of very intelligent people that for whatever reason decided to move to the suburbs. However, culture in the suburbs isn’t a free-flowing spicket of humanity, and a lot of people that are originally from the suburbs have never even seen the inside of an art museum.

I call these people ‘Suburban Tourists’. I gave them that name because they come to Minneapolis from the suburbs, and act like tourists. “Ooooh! Look at that tall building!” If you have a sharp stick, I’ll be poking my eye out now.

This one couple in particular was especially notable because as we were walking with the crowd, at no point did I ever hear either one of them look at a piece of art and be critical of it in any way. Everything was amazing to these people. Even the horse’s ass, incidentally. One booth in particular had canvases with nothing but solid color on them. Red, yellow, blue, brown, you pick it, you got it. And these people were AMAZED at the canvases with red and blue on them. As if the artist had come from another world and where here to revolutionize human art. Okay, move on.

Bob Ross

There is absolutely, positively nothing wrong with Bob Ross style paintings. If you’re unaware of who Bob Ross is, he’s the big fro man on Public TV who paints ‘happy little trees’.

Bob Ross is responsible for entire new technique of oil painting – wet on wet. Meaning, all of his paints start with a thin coat of thin white paint. This allows him to get these nice blended clouds and mountains.

But modern day art students feel it necessary to look down upon those who paint in this style. They complain that these paintings ‘aren’t real’ – that the landscapes and figures are solely the creation of the artist and don’t represent anything existing in the physical world.

Really, captain artsy-fartsy? This style of painting allows for an astonishing amount of creativity because everything is coming from the artist’s mind. I saw some landscapes painted in this style that were pure genius – they looked like photographs. My art student friends are simply arrogant, jealous, or both.

In case you didn’t know, Bob Ross was also well-known for his portraits. It’s hard to get more real than that.

Middle Eastern Food

It is a damn crying shame that some of the most evil people this planet has ever seen hail from the Middle East. At this art fair, The Falafel King had set up a tent and was selling his pita-wrapped goodness for all to enjoy. And playing Middle Eastern pop music to boot.

If you’ve never had Middle Eastern food, then you’re missing out on one of the truly great cultures of the world. Terrorism in this world has poisoned some of our minds against Arabs and Persians because they are largely Muslim. On the grand scheme of us Americans becoming more and more integrated into global culture, this is truly a travesty. I ordered my falafel from a little boy of no more than 11, who shouted the order in Arabic to his father who was wearing a traditional headdress according to his religious customs. It’s worth noting that it was pretty warm that day, and he really must have been hot cooking over that grill. But in the end, he gave me my falafel, handed me a napkin and wished me a good afternoon.

I say we drag some of these bonehead terrorists to right here in Minneapolis, where they can see their Muslim brethren practicing their religion right in front of us Americans, and all of us GETTING ALONG.

And eating well.

Rain and Traffic

2006-08-02T11:21:00.000-05:00

On my way to work this morning, I was made to endure an inexplicable phenomenon of modern day life – bad traffic in the wake of a rainstorm.

Last night we were hit with a deluge of water. It stopped raining about 5 this morning, well before any semblance of traffic began to hit Minneapolis roads. Yet, at 8am as I was on my way in, the highways of this wonderful town were parking lots. And they weren’t just your average, run-of-the-mill doctor’s office parking lot. This was a December 23rd, high noon parking lot at the Mall of America. Four lanes of nothing but cars as far as the eye could see.

I thought to myself, of course there’s a crash up ahead. There could be no other possible explanation for this staggering congestion.

The big real-time traffic sign came and went with no mention of a crash. Resigned to this stressful solitude, I wondered aloud, “Why do people feel the need to drive slowly after a rainstorm has hit?”

It’s not wet. It’s not raining. There are no tornadoes, hurricanes, or earthquakes. You can see out of your windshield just fine. There are no dangers of flying off the road or spontaneously tipping your car like a golf cart going down a steep hill. Why do you feel the need to constantly hit your brakes and go 20 miles an hour down a road that expects you to go 60?

I’ve never understood traffic patterns. In Atlanta, you can see the traffic in one direction getting very heavy around 3pm through downtown. You would think this would be going out of downtown – people wanting to get home. But no! Traffic going INTO Atlanta was terrible at 3pm, while traffic heading out was running smoothly on the 14-lane downtown connector. Hmm..

Here in the Twin Cities, Thursdays are a nightmare. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are all fairly tolerable, but for some reason, Thursday traffic is horrific. My commute from home to my main client is 25 miles. I can usually do it in 30 minutes on a good day. On Thursday, it takes me 45. The kicker – I go “against” traffic. Meaning, I’m headed out of a business district when most people are trying to get in.

Why does this happen? Can someone with some knowledge of general traffic patterns please enlighten the general public on how best to get an extremely oversized load of cars down a little stretch of road in the most efficient manner? It would help, because of how much time we spend in our cars and how frustrated we get in them. If there’s another technique that we can use… like going the speed limit and not letting two drops of rain or a flake of snow ruin our day, then please educate us like we’re four years old.

After all, that’s the age most people act when they’re on the road anyway.

Wine in America

2006-07-28T09:51:00.000-05:00

Wine has a bad reputation here in the US among everyday Americans. Inexplicably, people actually associate wine with cheap drunks – also known as “winos”. I’m not sure how this has happened although I’m prepared to attribute it to our general prudeness and fear of alcohol.

Yes, I said it. Alcohol is feared by many, and this has caused it to be treated in a very awkward way. In my career, I’ve had to work some late nights which have involved going out to dinner and then going back to work. On several of these occasions, I ordered a glass of wine with dinner and had to endure glares so hard they could burn a hole through my heart. Wine was made for this kind of consumption. I’m not ordering a bottle and chugging it before I go back to work, I’m simply having a glass of wine with dinner.

As an interesting postscript to that, the colleagues of mine that glared the most severely were Canadian.

The average American doesn’t understand what it takes to make wine. It’s not just letting grape juice sit in a barrel for a year and then slapping it in a bottle. People who make wine have a sincere and ever-present passion for the work. They put their entire being into every aspect of making wine. In the smaller wineries of California, the owner is usually the vineyard manager, the winemaker, the bottler, the marketing director, and everything inbetween. Every inch of this person’s character and being goes into every bottle he produces.

I’ve had the sincere pleasure of meeting California’s true wine patriarch, Robert Mondavi. He drinks two bottles of wine a day, and he’s 82 years old. Under the Robert Mondavi label, he makes too many kinds of wine to count, and some of it is the best wine America has to offer. He doesn’t do this because he enjoys being rich, he does this because he truly wants to impart on people the nuances of each individual wine and give someone an experience while he’s drinking it.

Each wine that is produced has its own characteristics, its own subtleties and personality. Each of us respond to these in our own way, and we like different kinds of wine for what they are. A great wine is something that truly contains an experience in each sip. It’s not just this fruit or that, this chocolate or that anise that the wine might present, it’s how the wine makes you feel – what you yourself think of when you’re drinking it. Granted, I’ve found that only very high-quality wine is capable of imparting this experience, but each of us perceives things differently, and some have tried $10 bottles of Zinfandel that they’ve fallen in love with.

A lot of us Americans don’t appreciate this. We don’t understand that wine is not just an alcoholic beverage, it’s a product of years of hard work and passion. People put their entire soul into making wine, and more importantly, making it into their own. A good winemaker views wine as an expression of himself – not unlike a fine work of art or a piece of music. Wine is not made for getting drunk. It’s made for pure enjoyment – so that everyone can experience it in his/her own way, and appreciate that for what it is.

Last night I had some wine from the world’s oldest winery, Chateau Haut Brion. This is one of the best wines made in the world, and it epitomizes what I’ve been talking about. When I drank Haut Brion, I could not only taste the exquisite balance of delicate flavors and characteristics, I could feel how the winemaker felt when he was making it. I could see him toiling over every single grape, every second that the skin was in contact with the juice, every minute watching barrels of aging wine expecting something extraordinary to come out.

And that’s what it is - absolutely extraordinary.

Culinary Masochism

2006-07-25T13:09:00.000-05:00

Culinary masochism is, as best I can define it, the art of making food for yourself that is so painful to eat, your body actually releases endorphins to dull the pain of the capsaicin ripping through your mucous membrane’s pain receptors. The after effect of which is something I call a “spicy high” – the endorphins making you feel relaxed and at peace with the world.

This is not to be confused with another phenomenon sweeping our nation.. culinary stupidity. There is a large difference between making dishes so spicy that you get this endorphin high and putting food into your dishes you know you hate. A friend of mine once made an entire plate of steamed mussels for himself, knowing that he hated seafood.

Ironically, 20 minutes later, he was at Chipotle.

Which brings me to my lunch meal of the day. As posted in an earlier blog entry, I thoroughly enjoyed my Chipotle burrito with Death sauce on it. So much so, I used almost two-thirds of the bottle of Death. I decided today that I needed something more masochistic than Original Death.. something that is tantamount to someone grabbing me by the testicles and yanking.

So, I brought After Death into work today. The next sauce up on the rung of Blair’s ladder of spicy goodness, I had figured it was about twice as hot as Original Death. Which, by my calculations, would mean that I would put about one-third of the bottle on my burrito and achieve the same level of “spicy high”.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m just about done with my burrito and I’ve finished the neck of the bottle. That’s right, the neck of the bottle. I’m going to start in on the rest, just to say I did. Just a few short painful minutes ago, I was pounding on the desk to prevent my brain from thinking about it.

And so now I go once more, down the path of flaming pain in order to achieve an afternoon of peaceful calm. The little skeleton on the bottle is beckoning me, acting as that little devil that shows up on one side of my shoulder whispering evil deeds into my ear.

Only unfortunately for me this time, the devil went over to the other shoulder and killed the angel.

On hooey...

2006-07-24T13:19:00.000-05:00

I am always amazed at the amount of hooey that circulates our society. And by hooey, I mean things that are told with the inappropriate amount of bias, or simply false. In fact, every day, from credible sources, hooey makes its way into the mainstream American conscious.

For instance, I got an email today from an intelligent relative of mine. This email purported that Mars would be at its closest point to Earth in recorded history this August and it would appear as large as the full moon in the night sky.

The first part, that being about Mars being its closest to Earth in recorded history, was true in 2003, and on August 27th of that year Mars was a brilliant speck of red light. However, since this is 2006 and not 2003, that part is ultimately hooey.

The next claim takes hooey to a whole new level. This is the kind of hooey that I’m sad to see otherwise intelligent beings actually believe. If Mars was ever as large as the Moon in the night sky, you better start packing and praying, because we won’t be here much longer. Mars will have had to collide with something really big moving really fast for that to happen. And if Mars ever even comes close to Earth, it’s farewell to humanity.

And one need not look in their emails for forwarded messages to find hooey. CNN has plenty of it. So does FOX. ESPN at times is even known to have reported hooey.

Since this, at its core is a right-brained blog, I will refrain from commenting on which news source contains the most hooey. But I assure you they all do.

I’m convinced that the soul of an intelligent being is a curious and investigative one. A truly intelligent person will read something and NOT believe it immediately, unless he/she absolutely knows it to be true. If someone sends me an email and tells me its raining, I look out the window. Some would say that I’m doing that to observe the rain, but I claim I do that because I want this person’s position confirmed that it is actually raining.

That said, if a doctor is telling me that I have a broken arm, then I will in fact believe that I have a broken arm. At some point, trust is a factor and people find sources that they will believe on certain topics. If NASA tells me that Mars is coming close in August, then I will believe them.

What’s my blogging message for today? Don’t believe everything you read or hear, no matter who is telling you or the medium it is coming from. Question everything. Do research. I guarantee you will learn something new to pass on to other people. And they will do some more research and learn more. In an ideal world, we’re all learned from each other and benefit from the passing of knowledge. Unfortunately, our world is far from ideal. I claim that in this world the thing that you can do to most enhance your own journey through life is to improve your hooey detector. You never know what you might some across…

Minnesota Festival Rant

2006-07-19T14:24:00.000-05:00

The other day I ranted on Minnesota festivals. In particular, I singled out the Aquatennial that is going on right now. I had a friend ask me to post it, so here it is:

What is the point of the aquatennial? Can someone please explain to me what the point is. Why is it that we need to have festivals that take fun events, like concerts, and incorporate them with the most mundane and ultimately worthless events, like milk carton racing? Why do we do this? What is the point? So, let's say you go out of town to visit friends and you're telling them about your festival trip. You say, "Yeah, they had this really cool band that was really good.. oh.. and then we went over to watch the SACK RACING and holy cow wasn't that just the best!" Seriously! Why can't we just have festivals that celebrate specific cultures or things (like the art fair, the Taste, et cetera), and be done with it? Why must we be made to endure the same old tired and boring ways of evaluating mediocrity?

All the while, we're getting deep fried snickers on a stick shoved down our throats by vendors that strategically place themselves every 5 feet on Hennepin Ave. For goodness sake is it so hard to make something different, like SNO-CONES! Oh, I've got one.. how about a margarita stand that will also conveniently sell you a little bag of cheesy nachos. Doesn't that sound good? I WANT MY MARGARITA WITH CHEESY NACHOS GOD DAM IT!!!

Weather Color and Design

2006-07-19T14:12:00.000-05:00

We had a very powerful thunderstorm hit us today. The last time I can remember the sky looking like that was about a year ago while I was doing a project at the Art Institute on a Saturday afternoon. I looked outside and these green, yes I said green, clouds started heading right for me. It was an otherwise sunny day about two hours previous and things had gotten fairly cloudy and windy, which is why I was looking at the sky.

It was pretty frightening. The wind really started to blow while lightening started hitting all around us. I live across the street, so I left my painting and ran home to unplug various devices that could be damaged by a power surge.

When the heavens opened up it was definitely a sight. The sky, still green, was seemingly pouring forth the sum total of the wrath of God in a cosmically instantaneous twenty minute period. It stopped raining and I went back to work.

The sky of a thunderstorm is one of nature’s most interesting sights not just because of its randomness and restlessness, but because it can produce some of the most frightening colors. I suppose that it stems from our environment having either blue sky, white clouds, gray clouds, and purple thunderstorms. But green? Holy unexpected hue, Batman!

What’s the lesson here? Just because you see something totally unexpected on the horizon, it’s not necessary to run home immediately. It may not be that bad and you might enjoy it a little.

The Death of the English Language

2006-07-18T15:01:00.000-05:00

I might as well go ahead and start my little rant on the death of the English language. I eluded to it in my first blog post because the issue makes me more angry and miserable than anything else.

In my last job, I worked with people that were incredibly deft at sending emails and writing documents that used the same set of roughly 100 words over and over again. There were times that I thought that people would just put said 100 words up on the wall, throw a few darts at it, and attempt to form the entire communication using only those that were hit. My coworker’s limited language astounded me.

It astounded me that people would say things like ‘We need to schedule a meeting and invite all the primary stakeholders to ensure we are doing the right things going forward.”

What the hell does that mean?

What are ‘stakeholders’ anyway? If you define a stakeholder as someone who has something to lose from something going awry, then everyone’s a stakeholder. And what exactly is a ‘primary’ stakeholder? In this example, the people working on the project were the ones that were going to lose their jobs if things ran amok, while the higher-level numnuts would still be rolling in it. So, I ask you gentle reader, who are the *primary* stakeholders?

‘To ensure we’re doing the right things..’. What the hell does that mean? What are the right things? Do you not know what the right things are? Does it take a stakeholder to tell you? Shouldn’t the people that are working on the project know what’s right and what is wrong? Did Michelangelo invite primary stakeholders to ensure he was doing the right thing to the Sistine Chapel? Hint: NO.

‘Going forward..’. Everything is going forward, isn’t it? I mean, we’re not going backwards, are we? So why do we say that? It’s totally meaningless.

The idea that was attempting to be expressed in the above quotation could simply be expressed as “We need to meet to make sure the plan is correct.” There’s a word that a project manager would never use to describe his or her own work – ‘Correct’. People will say that you’re correct if you say it’s snowing outside and it is, in fact, snowing. But how many times would you hear the same people using a word like ‘correct’ to describe a piece of work that someone else produced? Isn’t that something that we all should be producing? Things that are ‘correct’? What would have happened if Isaac Newton had not been correct? If you’re having surgery I would wager that you hope the surgeon performs the surgery correctly.

So, what’s the problem then? Why do we have to pussyfoot around issues and not use words with meaning to describe things?

This has been an issue of mine since I left college. People saying ‘let’s create some synergy..’ is just ridiculous. There’s a great book by Don Watson called ‘Death Sentences: How Cliches, Weasel Words and Management-Speak Are Strangling Public Language”. It’s great. Everyone in the corporate world should read it and realize what they’re missing out on.

Chipotle Design

2006-07-17T23:37:00.000-05:00

Chipotle really is one of the most well designed restaurants I’ve ever been in. Consider this by first realizing what it is: a burrito restaurant. They have 4 or 5 different kind of salsas along with a good selection of Mexican beer. If you think about that for a minute, without thinking about the inside of a Chipotle, you’d probably have an expectation of a Mexican themed place with big-hatted people waiting to serve you a burrito with yellow rice.

But in actuality, they went with this really industrial theme. All the tables are stainless steel, the wrappers are thin shiny foil, and the wood is really light wood. It’s totally unexpected, but it’s really cool. And it’s not actually a Mexican burrito, but this is irrelevant. They’re very tasty. Totally marketing to the “loft hipsters”. (My name for these people buying lofts.)

My burrito: Carnitas, rice, black beans, corn salsa, sour cream, cheese. And what’s really tasty is squeezing fresh lime juice straight on it. Oh, and hot sauce. I used almost three quarters of my bottle of Death sauce on one burrito. :) I really like insanely hot food.

What’s Death sauce you ask? http://www.extremefood.com

Decisions...

2006-07-17T14:11:00.000-05:00

So, I just bought a brand spanking new suit. It’s black with some good size white pinstripes. I love pinstripes.

I need to wear it to a wedding on Sunday. But I want a good color combo with the shirt and tie. In the store they had some really nice orange and yellow shirts. But I was thinking of going cooler – like a pastel green with a light blue tie. I could go with a yellow tie but then I’d look like a fricking sunflower – and I personally hate it when people mix warm and cool colors without thinking about it first.

I don’t know why but I’m leaning towards a yellow shirt with a reddish tie. I say reddish because I’m thinking of something light but not pink.

Maybe magenta.

But then I don’t know what color cufflinks to wear. Ack!

The point of this blog.

2006-07-17T11:55:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been thinking a lot lately that it might be a good idea to have a blog. What better way than to spend 20 or 30 minutes at the end of the day (or at any time for that matter) spewing faux-intelligencia for all to read. Who knows how you will react. Hopefully with thoughtfulness and maybe a little laughter.

I'm not going to commentary the political landscape of the day, nor am I going to take a side to any issue and argue it. I'm also not going to report the news. How many sites are there that report the news? If you like that sort of thing, great, there are plenty of cool blogs for you. I personally enjoy politicking myself, but I find that if I argue it just gets me angry. And that's not the point of this blog.

I will however, commentary on my own thoughts and observations on the world with an artistic eye. This is a right-brained sort of blog, the kind where if you want to spend a few minutes reading the ruminations of an artistically frustrated individual while maybe thinking about things in a new way, then this is the spot for you.

I actually woke up one morning and decided that I needed to vent more of my thoughts into the open air. The problem with doing that into literally the open air is that there are too many people within close proximity that neither appreciate nor want my thoughts filling said open air. I can't really just start ranting at work about the meangingless language that we use in the workplace, nor can I really do that with some people outside of work that could or could not be primary perpitrators of this ongoing genocide of language, so a blog was born. A blog - to digitally express the analog world using words and phrases that have meaning and confer ideas and father new thoughts - seems like a good idea to me.

That's the point. Oh, and to post some of my photographs and paintings. Or, more appropriately, photographs of my paintings. Maybe I'll use a photograph in a painting, so then you could have a photograph of a painting with a photograph.

Okay that was dumb. Onward.

P.S. Do not ask me what I do for a living. Ever. Such a question in this kind of blog is the most irrelevant question I can think of. If this matters to you.. if it's important to know what I do from 8-5 during the day and what kind of automobile I use to motor myself home, if this is how you measure a person's happiness and success in life, then please, for the love of God, GO AWAY!