Get Ready

Soon, very soon, there will be a post on here the likes of which have not been seen since 1729...

The hard days

Saying goodbye never gets any easier.

As my time in DC drew to a close, I kept pushing the unavoidable to the back of my mind, hoping I could just cruise through without a tear or thought of regret. It was good having some of the farewells spread out - the ones before my last weekend were no problem at all; we'd finish dinner or drinks, shake hands, hug, and part ways. But I was still returning to my same apartment at the end of the day, and it didn't feel like I was really leaving.

Then last last days arrived, and it was really time to go. The reality of the departure hits you like a punch to the gut as you load the last boxes and return to the empty bedroom in an apartment still occupied by two of your closest friends, friends who aren't leaving. And then it's time to say goodbye. You give your hug or your kiss, and you turn to leave. This time, though, you're not going back to your apartment to watch TV and b.s. with some friends; this time you're going to a big truck, filled with everything you own, ready to leave everything you've worked so hard to know the last two years, ready to leave the ones you love thousands of miles behind.

So you pull out of the driveway, wipe the tears from your eyes, and think "I'm glad that's over, it'll all be easier now." But it's not.

Now I'm home in KY, sitting alone in the kitchen, waiting to be shipped off to the Lost Continent. There's so much to get done, yet still not enough to get my mind off of all the questions wandering through it: Am I making the right decision? Will my friendships still be the same after being gone two years? How many of those friends will I ever even see again?

In college, I spent eight months working in Connecticut as a co-op. When I returned, I felt like an outsider, looking in on a world that had left me behind eight months before and not looked back. But that was only for 8 months, only a $200 flight away, and with regular telephone and internet access. This time I'll be a thousand times less accessible and gone for two years. How could I possibly expect anything or anybody to wait for me? I guess these things are just the price I have to pay for wanting to take this path in my life. I pray every night that I'm making the right decision and that I'm not leaving this all behind for nothing.

I love you all, you've helped make me what I am today. Please, don't let me fade away..

Facebook Friends

I just happened to notice that my current total of Facebook friends stands at 727. Of course, I'll be the first to tell you I don't have 727 friends - I probably can't even name 27 good friends who I talk to on a regular basis. Nonetheless, 727 is a great number, as it represents my July 27 birthday and a Boeing jet. Therefore, I now resolve to remove one 'friend' for every 'friend' gained in order to maintain the friendship equilibrium. If you think you might be in the outbox, now would be a good time to bake me brownies ;)

Favorite Laffy Taffy Jokes

Q: What's green and pecks on trees all day?
A: Woody the Wood Pickle!

Q: How did the mule get into the locked barn?
A: With the Don-Key!

Q: What's underground and goes 80 miles an hour?
A: Mole on a motorbike.

Trivia, Coors, and a New Camera

Trivia Champions. At last. Besting all the other teams, we outanswered the runners-up by a mere point - 276 against their 275 - after 4 rounds of grueling trivia. Questions like 'Who sang Cats in the Cradle?' and 'What French character married Celeste in an elaborate ceremony in 1931?' along with a movie bonus roundn in which we went a soul-crushing 10-out-of-10 boosted us to win our $55 in Rock Bottom money.

When we got home, Noah started talking about really wanting a Coors 24 ouncer, but that he couldn't find one anywhere. He said he just wanted to taste it. Seeing as it was only 10:45 on a Monday night (??), I suggested we try the 7-11 down the street. Sadly, they had no Coors. Not willing to settle for mediocrity in a Budweiser or Schlitz, we marched down Fairfax to the Giant in Virginia Square. Once again, no 6-packs. In fact, the only Coors they carried was a single 24-pack. Of course we bought it. Along with some Twizzlers. Now, I know you want this story to end with us killing the case after winning trivia, but I had been up since 3am, and Noah had worked all weekend, so we drank 2 or 3 a piece and called it a night.

We didn't however, call it a night without taking a few pictures with my new camera:





Here's a picture of a thirsty (Guinean) spider with good taste:



Lastly, my new camera is awesome. I snapped some photos of the George Washington Masonic Memorial Temple on my way home from work yesterday. Here's the temple with no zoom (click on the photos for a larger size):



Here's the temple at around 10x zoom:



18x zoom:



And lastly, after lowering the resolution from 8.1 megapixels to just 3, here's the temple at 28x optical zoom:

electro-synthomagnetic musical sounds

On Friday morning, after only a few hours of sleep, I hopped on a two hour flight from DCA to Orlando to visit Aunt Elaine (my godmother) for the weekend. After doing a few crossword puzzles and giving up on reading a patent case about a connecting structure for log walls (Zzzzzzz), I decided it was time for some sleep. While many of you may be excellent sleep-anywhere'ers, I'm not. Sleeping on an airplane is especially challenging.

Generally, when sleeping in a horizontal bed, I fall asleep on my side, or, judging by the plurality of lines across my entire face in the morning, flat on my stomach. One can't sleep like that on an airplane. When I know I'm going to be attempting to procure some amount of sleep on a flight, I grab a window seat. Unfortunately, my flight on Friday was on a small plane, so instead of leaning against the window and sleeping, the window sort of curved into my sitting area, so I had to sleep straight up (I'm 6'2 - not that tall, but tall enough for the wall to hit my head in small aircraft).

Okay, hopefully that has established some sort of harbinger for poor sleep. Seeing as we were above 10,000 feet, I also chose to listen to my iPod, on which I had recently loaded a 5-disc box set of 60 Years of Disney Classics. What? You never get nostalgic?? Oh, okay, then I guess you CAN make fun of me. Anyway, as I drifted in and out of reverie, I was serenaded by songs ranging from When You Wish Upon a Star to One Jump Ahead.

The last song I listened to BLEW. MY. MIND. Before Friday, I had never listened to or even heard of the Disneyland Main Street Electrical Parade. Please listen to/watch this:



I woke to this song and had NO IDEA where I was. Hopefully you can imagine what this song might do to a sleep-deprived, trying-to-sleep-on-an-airplane-but-can't patent examiner. Even as I listen to it now, I feel like I'm on some sort of discount 80's drug.

That was a joke, and some other things

For the four of you who read my blog, I'd like to point out that the last entry was a joke. The second paragraph was taken almost verbatim from one of Patrick Bateman's (played by Christian Bale) internal monologues from the movie American Psycho. I wrote the entry while I was in the Charlotte airport instead of doing work and couldn't stop laughing.

In other news, I spent all of my remaining money online yesterday. Ok, not all of it. But a lot. Thanks to a generous sister and amazon.com credit card rewards, I had acquired $370 in amazon gift certificates. Eager to start getting stuff ready for Africa, I purchased:

Apple iPod Classic 160 GB Black

Solio Solar Charger

Solar Powered Battery Charger

Rechargeable AA Batteries

Rechargeable AAA Batteries

Panasonic Lumix Camera, 8.1 Megapixel, 18x Optical/4x Digital Zoom with Optical Image Stabilization

Panasonic 4 GB SD Memory Card

The iPod will mainly act as a small portable hard drive. I'll keep all of my media on it, then use the laptop to transfer music from the large iPod to my smaller iPod Shuffles, which are easier to take with you on the go, and less of a big deal if stolen.

The Solio, hopefully, will be used to charge my iPods, as well as my cell phone (once I purchase it over there). The Solio cannot charge batteries, so I also got the solar battery charger as a backup - the batteries will power things like the speakers for my iPod, my backup camera, flashlights/lamps and maybe a small fan or something of that sort.

The camera. I'm really excited about this camera. 18x optical zoom with image stabilization? Awesome!!! That means I won't really have to be very close to the giant spiders in order to get giant pictures of them. I'm pumped.

In other news, I can now benchpress 275 pounds and lift 200 pounds directly over my head while seated (aka, seated shoulder press/military press). This is a big deal to me, because it means I am now strong enough to do handstand pushups, an essential exercise for someone in the middle of Africa with no weights. Now I just need to learn how to do handstands..