Next time I am in the states I want to see:

• La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles to see the dusty old bones from the ice age.
• Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of California, home to the oldest known individual organism, the Methuselah Tree. Saw an episode of Nova on the Bristlecone Pine and have always wanted to see them for real.
• North Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. I've done better than most people from Arizona having been there, but I've always wanted to go back to see the other side.

Stuff has to have been around for a long time before I want to see it :)

Canyon de Chelly I feel like someone is watching me.

A quiet place, and a wide angle lense can really make you feel small sometimes.

Canyon de Chelly with snow.

Today I climbed a tree in order to rescue Tristan's frisbee. It was a lot of fun, and felt like quite an accomplishment. It reminded me of two people I know who like to climb trees: Amber and Brad. It's fun to act young.

(more random thoughts that have collected over the easter weekend)

more pictures here

(and some more)

Ever since he started working here (which is years ago at this point, although I can't tell you exactly how many years it has been) I half jokingly decided that Frank W. was my arch nemesis on account of the "fact" that he went to ASU, the arch rival of the U of A. Given that Arizona State (as in the state which is Arizona, not ASU) is identical to Arizona (as in the state which is Arizona, not the U of A), since there is no other subdivision like Arizona City (a la New York City), it s kind of a silly rivalry. If an alien presence were to visit the state of Arizona he might conclude that the rivalry is based on the ordering of words.

Today when I got out of my car, I realized that I had left my badge in my other pants, and was about to give one of my co-workers a call when I saw two people in the parking lot. One of them was that cute Indian woman who I'd like to get to know better, and the other was my arch Nemesis Frank W. I asked if they could let me in. People at work don't even answer that question. Security is so lax that you can assume the answer is yes.

Walking in, we started talking about snow, and then skiing and then...

Brief intermission here: it is so obvious that this conversation arc was going to lead to my proclamation about how much better the snow, and therefore the skiing is in the southwest. I just can't help myself. Every time I start talking about snow or skiing with someone I just have to tell them what they are missing (if they are missing it) or commiserate with them if they know what they are missing by living on this quarter of the country. Why do I do that?

...I tell them about how I am used to the white fluffy snow we have in the southwest, as apposed to the awful icy crap that they have around here. Frank tells me that he went to school in Arizona (which I already knew), and I say: "So did I." He asks me where, I tell him, and then he told me that he went to NAU.

All the while I am being coy, pretending that I don't know. Only I didn't know. I always thought he went to ASU, and now it turns out he went to NAU and that means he can't be my arch-nemesis anymore! As arch-nemeses^[1] go, he was benign. Though I realize by definition, one's arch-nemesis is not supposed to be benign.

When I was in grade school, my arch-nemesis was Brad Green, and he was a good arch nemesis, because we used to get into fights. I can't remember exactly what they were about. In high school, my arch-nemesis was Bird Boy. He nominated himself president and founder of the GTO haters club (GTO being my initials). As such, he was more of a thorn in my side that I really great arch-nemesis. I don't think I had an arch-nemesis in college. Tyler: If you are reading this, can you remember if I had one?

Now I need a new arch-nemesis. I will be accepting applications immediately.

---

[1] Apparently this is the plural of nemesis.

What was 2004? It was a year of stolen and disputed elections in Georgia and the Ukraine, the rise and fall of Howard Dean and John Kerry, the first private space flight and the end of the "X-Prize," disaster in Darfur, prisoner abuse in Iraq, expansion of the European Union, the death of Ronald Regan and a month of flags at half mast, the return of Greek Olympics and a very smug presidential victory. In less political but tragic terms, the worst natural disaster in my memory has occurred in Asia as Tsunami death tolls top 135,000 according to CNN.com.

For me, the year started out as a bleak one in the coldest New York winter I have ever experienced. My mother came to visit me for her birthday. We stayed in Manhattan and it was bitterly cold.

Lowel and Johanna

I took a lighting class at Dutchess which was a blast. Some of my friends from Black and White II were taking the class and I met some other cool people. It was so much fun working with those people, including the teacher, Lowel Handler.

(Read more...)

In Short, 2004 was A Great Year and I have high hopes that 2005 will be even better.

I have discovered that if you want people to hang around then it helps to have an optimistic outlook on life. I learned this by observing people and by reading How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Just now, it occurs to me that the inverse corollary to that theorem is that if you want to avoid somebody you should be negative in all your statements when talking to that person. I don't mean be negative about them, mind you, that will just earn you an enemy.

For example, I can't stand Office Mate IV. This is a long tradition with me which goes back to Room Mate I. The only Room Mate I ever got along with was Eric (featured briefly in my story Arizona Fish Story : A Life Less Serious) and the only Office Mate I ever got along with was a girl I had a crush on named E.

Anyway, Office Mate IV walks in just now and says "Any good news?"

"Is there ever any good news?" I ask.

I was actually thinking specifically of The News as in what you read in the paper, or watch on TV (or read on the Internet). Lets face it. Good News doesn't sell so there is no Good News.

"We get Wednesday off." He pointed out.

This for some reason is a big deal to everyone. I am not quite sure why, because every Wednesday before Thanksgiving your manager comes by in the early morning and tells you that you can leave early. It's supposed to be a surprise, but of course it never is. I had decided to circumvent this stupidity this year by just not showing up at all on Wednesday. This year, they told everyone ahead of time, so they beat me to the chase, as it were.

"I was already going to take Wednesday off." I respond, not in a despondent sort of way, but very matter-o-factly.

"I give up then." OM4 says finally and leaves.

"Victory!" I think to myself.

It then occurred to me that this may be a more effective method of dealing with OM4 than putting my ear phones on and turning the volume way up on iTunes. I can remain chipper and optimistic about the future and at the same time exercise my sarcastic wit on OM4. This truly is The Best Of Both Worlds.

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch codnutced at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are tpyed, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit oedrer. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

Source Unknown

This is the philosophy by which our pet Quakers lived.

So a couple of weeks back, I posted to The Twilight Report a story based on my life back in Arizona (Arizona Fish Story : A Life Less Serious), which included a reference to someone Tyler and I met "virtually" but never in real life. Last night Tyler and I are running around a virtual maze chatting about the good old days, and somehow we talked about our eventual goal of actually having Pizza with I_SUCK, one of the Quakers on our LAN at school. Like all of the Quakers we ran into from those days, we knew his real name and Tyler put it into google (or something) and found his web page, and e-mail address. The crazy thing is he works at The Company, just like I do. Had I known that I could have just searched the The Company employee data base. Big Brother has got to keep an eye on us after all, so we are all in there. Tyler sent him an e-mail and we swapped a couple of messages today. The thing is, after all of these years, and after telling the story (mostly to each other) for so long, I_SUCK has achieved a sort of mythic status. I doubt the actual guy could live up to it. Still, we must have pizza sometime, until that happens my life will remain incomplete.

phone woke me up. reporter daily star. "it's three o'clock morning" i moaned. parts of speach difficult. photographer. desire photographs taken. for interview. vaguely remember reporter from yesterday. mitch gitman. acknowledge affirmative. roll out of bed. stagger bathroom, drench self healing power of hot water. My eyes begin to see objects a little more distinctly and my memory is coming back on line. Yesterday a reporter had interviewed me about the Dorm network "ResComp" or as I like to refer to it "ResInComp." I turn the water off and start to towel off. I had directed him in the direction of an acquaintance Fydor and my friend Tyler, because they were like minded Internet Dorm Dwellers. Mitch had just called me up to ask if they could photograph me using the Internet.

I wonder why he called me up this early as I walk back into my room, when I notice that it is awfully bright in my room for 3:00am. I squint at my alarm clock and hit it with a clenched fist. It changes to 8:14am, which I assume means it is actually 8:04am, since I always set the thing ten minutes fast.

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