August 2006 Archives

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time for a coherent post tonight, but at least my class did get out early enough to let me write something again.

I suppose I should also mention that this "class" I speak of is part of the MBA program, which I officially began last week. It's too early to tell how the classes will work out, but I'm remaining optimistic. The late nights on Mondays and Wednesdays haven't been too hard to handle (yet), and Steve and I are making the best of it. I'm still finding out creative ways to get to class through strange-yet-surprisingly-easyl combinations of Metro and driving, but the overall beauty of the West Falls Church campus is that it's only 5-10 minutes away from my house. The building itself doesn't evoke any sense grandeur or of actually being at Tech, though, I'm sorry to say. They need to renovate it with some Hokie stone. I think the UVA half of the building might object to that, but really - who cares, right? It's weird enough seeing UVA and Tech merchandise side-by-side in the building's bookstore. I suppose graduate students are expected to be more mature and accepting of others... we'll see how that theory holds up in late November. Say around Thanksgiving?

Two more links for you:

- Hokie Explorer has a sobering view of being part of the tense events of last Monday in Blacksburg.

- Josh (The Love Pirate, not my roommate) has a review of Snakes On A Plane, complete with a good synopsis of how the whole thing evolved. I don't know if I'll find anyone to go see this with me, and I'm not even completely sure I want to see it. I was, however, pretty much sold once Josh (my roommate, not the Love Pirate) sent me my personalized voicemail from Samuel L. Jackson a couple of weeks ago. I sent some of my own out, as well, and history was made.

It has been a fascinating couple of weeks, and not just with my own, self-centered matters. The world still moves for certain, and with it come revelations and changes. In the year or so since I graduated, I've really paid more attention to the news as a whole. I'm not to the point where I think I have time to read the entire Post every day, but I'm gradually increasing my own daily recommended allowance of news items. Since a blog is the perfect sounding board for the new generation, every time I heard of something interesting over the last ten or so days, I thought "hey, I should write about that..." and then I'd have to turn back to whatever task was at hand. So, I think I dropped the ball on these items, but for history's sake, I'm going to crank up the spin machine and give you my short take on the following stories:

• Pluto's not a planet - I'm sorry, what? By Jove, what are we going to do now, redesign all of the solar system party hats and napkins that are out there? And what about My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles, the best mnemonic device this side of the sun? Now, Mom's just going to have to serve an ambiguous nine, but the schoolchildren of the U.S. will never know nine of what. Or maybe she'll just have to serve us niacin instead. Tom wrote a super article that expresses my view of the situation nicely, also.

• William Morva - The initial few hours after learning the true extent of his crimes were tense for me, since I naturally have a vested interest in the safety of several people in the Blacksburg area. But Gina and Katie stayed on lockdown in their apartment, which was slightly uncomfortably close to the section of the Huckleberry Trail where this guy was ultimately caught. Though the loss of life was tragic, thankfully it was not worse and did not develop into a hostage situation. The morbidly fascinating part of this case for me, though, was reading the testimonials of those who knew him from his frequent travels through Blacksburg. They paint the picture of a earthbound, nature-loving, hippie kind of guy - a bit of a tall-tale teller, but on the whole harmless. So what made him snap and do this? Or was he training for it all along in his mind? I'll be interested to see if any further details come out in the trial.
  

• Eddie From Ohio rocks - I discovered one of my new favorite bands on the 17th, when Gerritt and I went to see them at the Wolf Trap. They're just so darn good, plain and simple. My only regret is that I didn't pay closer attention to the buzz from people like Gerritt, Josh C., and Amy during college so I could get on board the EFO train sooner. And Josh, sorry we missed you and H at the show, but I hope you had as awesome a time as I did.
  

That'll do for now, pig. That'll do.

Hey kids. I promise I've still got a lot to say, but it will probably have to wait until I can better balance grad school, work, and travel. I'm keeping notes, most of them mental, as I go from place to place and hear about interesting things, so there's no lack of material to catch up on once I do get the time to write. Just hang in there, keep checking back, and know that blogging is still fun to me. Right now, it's the one main outlet for the writer in me, and that writer will only keep quiet for so long! Cheers until then!

I make this sound like I won't be updating for forever, but you could feasibly expect something tomorrow. I just couldn't stand the thought of things being dormant around here for another night.

Greetings, once again, from the new Project BS Headquarters. I've been relaxing and healing the last few days, but with Mom's help, my room is livable now. The Coors Park townhouse is also almost finished, save for a few wall decorations in the works or on order, depending on who you ask.

The surgery on Friday went well, and quickly. I was out of the hospital within two hours after they began preparing me, but I was in Sleeptown, VA for most of the rest of Friday. I came to long enough to socialize with Gina, her mom, and my mother downstairs over a spread of Boston Market and vegetables from WV, but I went to bed soon after that. I stayed groggy part of Saturday, but I gradually came out of the anesthesia-and-painkiller cocktail and became a productive, if sore, member of society again. I think the only funny quotes Gina and Mom got from me during my post-operative stupor was "well, I can still clench my butt cheeks, so we know that still works," or something to that effect. Indeed, that kind of thing is important.

Over the next few days of healing and resting, I caught up on some reading, caught up with Mom, and caught up on slowly getting the townhouse arranged. She helped with most of it while I wheeled around on an office chair piled up with a pillow. We also had a couple of nice dinners in the dining room, supplemented with Gina's lasagna one night, Mom's cooking another, and vegetables from Dad's garden both times. Gina's family came down to visit on the lasagna night, our first official houseguests. It'll probably be months before we have another dinner there, but it was good to break in the place!

And with that, it is time to prepare for my 1.5 days of work this week. Gerritt and I are going to the Eddie From Ohio show tomorrow night, and the weekend holds many other festivities, including a trip to Blacksburg. Cheers!

So, I think over the last couple of days, you've heard tidbits of just about everything that went on this last week. On Saturday, I finally got official written approval from the Virginia Tech MBA Program that I did not have to take a prerequisite Accounting course that I basically already took. That was a long battle that Steve and I fought, but we came out victorious. I'm now signed up for classes and feeling like a college student again.

This place is still not really unpacked, but I should have ample time to do that in the next few days, with Mom's help. She's up here visiting to help out around here for a few days. You see, I've kept a revelation from you guys.

Tomorrow morning, I will be undergoing some minor outpatient surgery. It's nothing huge; in fact, the doctors say it's pretty routine. I have a pilonidal cyst near the base of my spine that needs to be removed before it causes any problems. So, I will no doubt be laying around for the next few days while I recuperate. I may or may not feel like blogging during this time, so bear with me as I get back up to normal.

I didn't really get a chance to tell all of you about this in person, so I hope it's not a crazy surprise. I just didn't want to make a big deal out of it. I'll be fine, and I'll talk to you all soon!

You'd think that during the week I had to move, I wouldn't plan much else. Well, you could think that, and I could also think that if I put on a kimono and a mask, I'd be Hong Kong Phooey. Either way, we'd both be wrong. With Wednesday the 2nd looming as the day Josh and Matthew would rent the U-Haul and we'd move the majority of our furniture out of the Elms, I ended up going to a concert all the other nights of the week except Monday.

The first was Guster at Wolf Trap with Gerritt. I can now scratch the Trap off the list of local venues where I haven't seen a show. It also gets a rare A+ rating from me in terms of atmosphere and location. It's so close, many good acts come there, and it is amazingly easy to leave once the show is over, unlike Nissan. In fact, the Nissan parking lot people should come take some lessons from the National Park Service or whoever it was that was directing traffic after the show. Kudos to them! The lawn isn't the greatest for listening to a band you really care about, though, but it is a great party. Gerritt and I decided we'd have to return and sit in the pavilion. The sound was still incredible, though overrun at times by the talking teenagers. As for Guster themselves, their new album is one of the best of the summer, full of catchy classic Gusteresque songs that both evoke their old stuff and advance their music even further. It's hard to beat that kind of a combination with a band you already really like.

Josh's dad and brother Brian teamed up with Matthew to get most of the moving done before I even got off work on Wednesday. All that remained was my computer desk. After that, we went to our new local neighborhood Subway and chowed down on sandwiches. My roasted chicken was, in fact, frozen - but that didn't stop the guy from making me an entire new one. I think we're going to like this Subway.

Thursday night was the long-awaited Buffett show at Nissan, which was a blast as always. It had been too long since I'd seen him live, that's for sure. We didn't quite get to hang out in the parking lot as much as the last time, but we did manage to meet up with Steve and Mandy. Gina, Katie, Gerritt, and I had a good time on the lawn. We would've brought our own chairs, but some doofus in the back parking lot said they weren't allowed tonight, probably in a futile effort to keep people from bringing lawn chairs in. We rented some anyway, which proved to be a good move, because the oppressive humidity made me dizzy partway through the first set. After a few more songs, though, I was back up and grooving. One guy behind us constantly yelled "Jimmy Buffett!" the whole night, which never gets old. Especially when he yells back at Jimmy's stage banter, like so:

Jimmy: "Thanks for coming out tonight!"

Random Yelling Guy: "Thank YOU, Jimmy Buffett!"

By Friday, I'd recruited Gina to help clean out the old apartment and begin to help organize the new place. However, Martha and JC from work called us during the day to offer us a couple of tickets to the Dixie Chicks show at the Verizon Center that night. We're normally not the jetsetting type to go to shows on back-to-back nights, but the Chicks are some of Gina's favorites, so the offer ultimately proved too good to pass up. It was good fun hanging out with my work friends again, too, and the concert itself was interesting and entertaining. The Dixie Chicks have gone toward a more rock-edged, even-more-pissed-off sound after their falling-out with country fans as a result of the infamous President Bush remarks of a few years back. I was waiting for some kind of reference to that, and when they came out to the tune of "Hail To The Chief," they made it clear they had not forgotten. When Natalie Maines commented later that they'd "like to say hello to President Bush's family up there," the crowd let them know that not everyone agreed with them with a few resonant sections of booing. Ahh, shows in DC. I normally don't like the political elements overtaking the music, but in this case it was interesting.

The Dixie Chicks' show was also high-energy and well-done, though I'm not really familiar with their songs that much. Their opener, Bob Schneider (hailing from Austin), was pretty wild. His songs seemed to range widely from blues to jazz to Texas swing while keeping it basically country, but the closing cover of "Natural Woman" made me wonder what the heck was going on. His song about Batman, however, was a tongue-in-cheek classic. Or cheesy. I can't decide.

So that's it for tonight. Part 3 of the catch-up is tomorrow, where we'll learn about some other things. I'm out of steam.

Well, the move is complete! In fact, it was complete Saturday after a few hang-ups and unpleasant Elms surprises, but I won't get ahead of myself. Josh, Matt, and I have started the Coors Park era with several great events, including an inaugural round of mini-golf at the neighborhood course. Tonight featured the most gloriously expensive grocery shopping trip in the history of man, where we afterward tested the limits of our expansive fridge and new pantry. It all fit. Men: 1 - Groceries: 0.

Our Internet is back up and running, too, and we're now happy customers of Cox for all of our communications needs - except that our digital cable is still not 100% working, thanks to some Radio Shack do-it-yourself cable jobs some of the previous occupants tried out. We anticipate full channel coverage in time for, oh say - football season, maybe?

At any rate, I'm pleased with the Internet service: this cable modem is much faster than our DSL was. However, the gap in Internet coverage has definitely left Ramble On in sore need of a catch-up. I won't try to do it all tonight, but I'll pull double-duty over the next couple of days trying to work it out.

Where do I start? Saturday, July 29, perhaps - the day of the White House tour? For all the pomp and circumstance leading up to the tour, and the rigamarole Steve had to go through to even secure the tour in the first place, it could all be summed up in one word: short. I definitely am glad I was able to walk some of the hallowed halls of such a building, and there were certainly many interesting artifacts showcased in the few rooms we saw, but we walked through the whole tour route in about 25 minutes. I'm not sure if it was a bad time, or if they sometimes open up other hallways, but who knows. At the very least, I can say I've been there now, and not everyone can say that. I would still recommend going on a tour at some point, just don't come a long way to DC just for the sole purpose of touring the White House. Plan some other sightseeing along with it.

The rest of that day was jam-packed, really. Most of our eclectic group had a fun lunch at the Capitol City Brewing Company nearby, followed by more touring (I went with the Lloyds to the American History Museum because it's closing for remodeling soon, but most of the exhibits are already gone) and then Gina, Sarah, Katie and I ended up at a party thrown by one of my co-workers. Gina's presence at the party finally put to rest some long-standing rumors among my friends at work that my girlfriend didn't, in fact, exist. They had never met her up until then, so who was to say I didn't just Photoshop her into all the pictures I put up in my cubicle? At any rate, the legend has been disproven, and just in case you are wondering - yes, she IS real.

This brings us through to the beginning of last week, where nearly every evening I was shuttling a load of junk from the apartment to the townhouse. I took a Monday to work on my latest online class, too. From Tuesday the first until now, however, it has been absotively, posilutely NON-STOP. Check back tomorrow for an update on concert weeks, moving, frozen Subway sandwiches, and mysterious surgical procedures. If that won't hook ya, I don't know what will!