The Blarg

Stacie and I are planning on taking a two week or so road trip (ignore the numbering, those aren’t days) around a portion of the country that neither of us have really traveled. Here’s what the map looks like:

We have a couple main destinations listed below.

(2-3) This is Cedar City in Utah where some friends of ours moved recently. This is a good chance to visit them and see their new house.

(6-11) A large portion of our trip will be the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park. Neither of us have been there, but they both sound awesome.

(16-17) This is Crater Lake, another beautiful and scenic location.

(20-21) This is Monterey. Neither of us have been to the aquarium in years, and this looks like a great opportunity to visit again.

Everything else, at this point anyways, is just a means to get between the main sites. Anywhere you see a yellow box means we have an overnight stay scheduled there. We’re spending a little extra time at each of the above locations, but it would be great to see interesting stuff along the way. So help us out blogosphere (half of which is now in Ecuador and without the internet). Anything we should see along that route, or anything just off the route that is worth the detour?

Summer is off to a nice start. The dog is laying in the backyard sunbathing right now. She’s a weirdo.

Played a game of baseball online this morning. Went down early 2-0 against the Devil Rays of all teams, but had a couple nice innings and won 4-2, raising my record online to 10-4. Last night Angelo helped me fine tune my network setup and change my dsl router to a “bridge,” which should simplify things. But that’s nerdy mumbo jumbo you don’t care about.

We’re going camping this weekend at San Onofre which should be fun. I haven’t been to the beach in forever, and it will be nice to go “away,” even if it’s only for a short time.

Andrew and Sarah are well on their way of making Denise and Paul’s condo into their own. They’ve done some painting and moved in furniture. It’s great to see them start their new life together. I have a much greater appreciation than I used to for weddings and marriage, now that I’m married. You know what the people are getting themselves into and what a special time that is in their life.

We started to watch the season of ER that finished a month or so ago. We didn’t watch it all during the year, but instead saved it for summer viewing. It’s a well done show, but the liberal nonsense is unbelievably annoying. Here are the recurring liberal story lines:

1) Huge numbers of people are gay, and they don’t act anything like gay people do in real life. Gaydar need not apply, because you could never guess, because the show wants you to think gay people are just like straight people, but gay. Oh wait, that’s not all, gay people are actually more with it than the straight people. The gay relationships are always great, and the straight people are screwed up.

2) Everyone is dying in Iraq. Last year a main character got killed in Iraq, and this year there was a family whose father had died in Iraq. They wouldn’t want to have a character that came back from Iraq alive and emphasize the good they were doing. No, Iraq is the devil and everyone is dying.

3) National healthcare mumbo jumbo! The ER is always full and nobody has health insurance on the show. The characters are always screaming about how we need a national healthcare plan. What BS. Where are the illegal aliens in the ER? Oh that’s right, they never show any.

Sorry for that diversion from my summer, I apologize.

I’m off to start Act 2 of the book. Act 1 clocked in at around 20k words, or somewhere around 45-50 pages in a real book. It’s sitting on Stacie’s desk waiting for a read through. It’s amazing how much time it takes to get a story going and established. I’m looking forward to what comes next. It should get exciting.

Yesterday I ushered in my first hours of summer with some non-stop videogame playing. Stacie and I had a good long discussion a few weeks back, which led to the purchasing of a shiny new PS3. I never quite met my target goal, but it’s gotten it’s worth that’s for sure.

I played MLB ’07: The Show online for about 6 hours when I got home from work yesterday around lunch time. I played several games, winning and losing some. The best game was my last though. Early on I went down 6-0 against someone using the Yankees. I hit a solo shot and made it 6-1, but I was having a hard time breaking through. Eventually I had a big inning and made it 6-5, followed shortly by a two run inning putting me in the lead 7-6. This entire time my pitching was super sharp. In the top of the 9th I gave up 1 run, tying the game at 7-7. But in the bottom of the ninth with Russell Martin at the dish, he knocked a solo home run over the fence and gave the Dodgers the walk off win! It was awesome.

Aside from playing this great baseball game, I hope to fill my hours writing, trying to workout a bit, and doing a little travelling with the wife.

But for now I will start with watering the grass.

The last week of school is finally here! After ten months of work I am rewarded with something most adults only look back on with fond memories: summer.

Technically I have to work all week, but it’s much easier than that. We only have students for four of those days, and one of those four days I will be at Knott’s Berry Farm. Of those remaining three days, one of them students leave at noon, and another they leave at 1 pm. The only full day that I have to be there we have a two hour awards ceremony. All things considered, I’ve officially started my summer vacation NOW.

I’m looking forward to a lot of things this summer. Andrew and Sarah are getting married, we’re going camping one weekend, on a cruise for a few days, and there are several things I want to do that are hard to get done during the school year. I still have a lot of old family photos to scan and archive, I want to spend a lot of time working on my novel, and the house badly needs to be cleaned from top to bottom!

And I shaved off my beard!

There are 8.5 more days of school left.

I can’t wait.

Last week I went to a chiropractor for the first time. I expected her to start crackin’ away, but all she did was take x-rays. Today I went back and had my first “adjustment,” which means she cracked me good and proper. I’m starting an 8-week regimen designed to correct some of the problems with my spine.

There’s something about the whole deal that is a little weird though. At the office I watched a video that shows how the spine can get out of whack, and that it interrupts the “life force” of the body. I expressed to the chiropractor how that’s a little weird, and she agreed that it sounds creepy (so that was reassuring). For the last couple hours I’ve been reading a lot about chiropractors and what some believe. Apparently some think you can cure diseases by straightening the spine, and odd beliefs that fit more with the acupuncture arena than the medical arena.

Many of the complaints and skeptical ideas I read concern curing diseases, but I have read that chiropractic practices are well accepted now for treating back pain (which is why I went). I don’t have severe back pain, but if it can be managed without risky surgeries or drugs, then a little back cracking seems fairly mild.

And she did crack my back today, and it was crazy cracking. It went on for like 2 seconds straight, it was crazy. And ooooh did it feel good. I don’t know if that’s a scientifically valid way to research the effectiveness of the chiropractic profession, but it works for me.

Overall it’s one of those things where the more you read the more confused you get.

Life is good. Life is simple.

Today we woke up semi-early and took Stacie’s car to the dealer. Her blinker was out and she hadn’t had any service performed in quite a while, so we played catch-up. The car is over 6 years old and barely has 30k miles on it. It’s not a Toyota (which, granted, I knew going into the relationship), but it’s entirely paid off. Here’s hoping the little Jetta can have a long and useful life.

We went to Panera Bread for lunch a little before noon. There were two familes with young children talking. One kid was nuts and couldn’t sit still. The Smokehouse Turkey is good.

Came home and cut the jungle in the backyard. There were a few blades of grass that easily topped 1 foot long. After it was cut, edged, raked, and watered down, it was very satisfying.

We picked up the car from the dealer and brought home some El Taco. Stacie had a tasty margarita and I made a cherry Coke. We watched the movie Invincible, which isn’t very new, but it was a feel good story.

And finally as I’m about to retire to bed, I must say, life is good.

Or maybe it’s my allergy decongestants that I had to sign for at the drug store. I’m not sure what’s in them that they’re afraid people will use for drug related purposes, but maybe it makes you happy and optimistic. UPDATE: It’s called pseudoephedrine, and it’s similar in structure to amphetamines, so people use it to make methamphetamines. According to wikipedia methamphetamines “stimulate the mesolimbic reward pathway, causing euphoria and excitement.” I’m sure Denise can provide more exciting trivia about my drug use.

Have a merry day everybody.