Off the Net, Cast Underwater

T-. T-1 Day. The shuttle took off today, so I gotta use the mission control jive.

Sunscreen. Check.
Pasaporte. Check.
Bob Esponja Water Wings. Be stylin', bouyant!

My mission-out-of-control, compress as much fun as is possible into one week.
Disconnect from Net. No email. No 'puters. (I recommend you try it if you can't remember a day in the past ten years, where you haven't heard "You've got mail.") This is serious business folks. Don't disturb. Crossing fingers.

I was going to start taking also about more weighty matters than wanderlust in this blog, but that's going to have to wait. I gotta get studyin'. I just got my Advanced Open Water manual, so I'm trying to read it most of it before I deplane.

Before I say "over and out", what I was wanting to comment on was an article in Foreign Policy, The State of Nature. Well, okay, I guess I don't have time for a comment just now, but I find the debate a fascinating economics issue. Yeah, that's a lame copout, but the subject is a preview of what I want to start pondering in this blog rather than constant navel-gazing (though no doubt there will be plenty of that).

Saving the world can wait for another day.

Gopherlunch.

Strike. Or just visualize the funny gutter ball animations they play on the scoreboard. Repeat 10X.

Not much to report on the week before last. I went bowling Friday before last since there is an alley about two blocks from work, and pinhead that I am, I scored an 83 (versus my friend the "one-pin wonder," who scored 110 or so, always one single pin away from a strike). I'm trying to remember the last time that I participated a game involving motor skills and won versus anybody. I'm thinking never. I guess I just need to find a game and practice it to death.

In a fit of concentration, I was able to engage my higher planning centers about a week ago and create the spreadsheet of financial destiny. Some of my grandiose plans for this year are going to have to go away thanks to airfares going up (by all appearances at least 50%), and my slacker intent to take at least three months off before training. But the consolation prize ain't nothing to complain about. In fact, I was feeling more excited to go on the tallest Roller Coaster in the world (which per the Roller Coaster DB is now Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great America in New Jersey) than the possible trip to Egypt. This way, I should be able to spend another month on the beach without as much worry for the PC years, and torment my readers further during the months when that white stuff I've heard of about falls on the ground.

"Sitting here in Limbo, Waiting for the Dice to Roll"

I think there has to be some good German word for the situation when a gott-damn notebook computer starts acting catatonic, and I spend eight working hours wasting time defragging the HD and driving 15 miles for a replacement chip, only to find it was that one of the memory chips had came a little loose out of the socket (never hurts to have a screwdriver lying around, which I didn't have). Farfegfreakingnuggen!

No time to make this fancy, I've stocked up on Red Bull and Espressos and now that the technical difficulties are cleared up, I'm locking myself in my office tonight until further notice (yeah, unfortunately I have to betray some of the key principles of bum-hood for now to defray creditors).

Just wanted to post a link of one of my favorite reggae songs, since it's apt for the moment, and last night as I was working I listened to about ten different renditions of

"Sitting in Limbo".

Other news, I have a frequent flier ticket, so I'm plotting where to go for a short span in the US this summer, and I think I want to go to exotic Sandusky, Ohio. Why? Top Thrill Dragster. I think they could have thought up a better name, so I'm going to christen it something else if I'm lucky enough to go on it this year.

If there is anyone brave enough out there who wants to tag along, let me know....

Un Retroceso al Mexico de Mi Niñez

Shoooo...I was getting worried for a sec that I might have fallen off the four-fold path of mar, playa, vistas y descanso (that whole Colorado being a thousand miles from the ocean thing). So, I had to take drastic action -- and so in three weeks, it's Puerto Vallarta time! I'm going to stay in old Puerto Vallarta, south of the downtown, trying to minimize the gringo resort factor so I can try to practice as much Spanish as is possible in a week.

It's been more than 15 years since when I went to Mazatlan with my dad and brother (the first and only time I went to 'Mey-hee-ko').

Random Memory Fragments (okay, not so interesting, but I'm just trying to bring it all back to see how much is hidden away deep in my noggin):

• I didn't eat much of anything the whole time unless ketchup could be doused on it. My dad brought about five boxes of fruit-roll-ups and assorted snacks which I survived on.
• On a road, we passed a number of tin shacks, and I recall asking incredulously if someone lived there.
• As a kid, I wanted to be a marine biologist and read lots of books about the ocean, so I thought it was the coolest thing in the world to see a tide pool and a dolphin jumping out of the water, when it was about the second or third time I had ever seen the ocean.
• My dad told me explicitly not to eat anything with milk in it, but I forgot and ate ice cream anyways. Didn't get sick.
• Chiclets
• Some random guy asked me and my older brother in broken English if we wanted to sell churros on the beach for two dollars an hour. Nope.
• I probably have a sombrero and a gecko wire puppet somewhere amidst the sedimentary layers of Lesser household crud.
• My dad bartered my plastic digital watch for a better deal on some tchotchkes.
• Crowded bus, many chickens. My dad tells me that there was a disorderly drunk on one of the buses who talked back to an off-duty cop, who promptly pistol-whipped him.
• Going to the marketplace, and seeing a pig's head staring back, and experiencing a whole new miasma of stank.
• Watching a carnival themed show at dinner, with a trick lasso-er, fire juggling, and guys on stilts in costumes.
• It was December, and so they also had fireworks (some festivities for Our Lady of Guadalupe?) and a sign that was lit up with fire works.
• Watching my brother and dad paraglide from a boat.
• Going to the projection TV room the hotel had and watching a James Bond movie with Spanish subtitles.
• Buying a ton of the Mexican equivalent of lifesavers with my funny money. My beginnings as a candy-holic....

In the beginning there was the smile

Something for me to remember (and perhaps all), as I learn the happy, shiney people algorithm, and hesitate after my smile is reflected back and then some, walking along a path in the mountains along Lake Estes, a pleasant dream jogging jiggly past (the aliteration was too fun to avoid):

"One Moment in Annihilation's Waste,
One moment, of the Well of Life to taste--
The Stars are setting, and the Caravan
Starts for the dawn of Nothing--Oh, make haste!"

- The Rubaiyat of Omar-Fitzgerald

No tengo el tiempo para dudarme!

Mountain Time

I'm getting ready at the last moment to head up to Estes Park for the 4th (T-1 hour). I can't wait to take some quiet hikes and be all meditative and such. And then interrupting the idyll, get my usual altitude migraine...crossing my fingers.

The past few days I haven't done much, just went to see "War of the Worlds" (so-so, but they ought to have updated the plot from its 19th century line of thinking and taken license -- e.g. writing in the pre-antibiotic, limited vaccine era the aliens dying from the flu would have made more sense), and on Friday we went and saw "Batman Begins." I really liked BB better than all the rest of the B. movies since the villians were still comic book but somehow less cartoonish if that makes any sense (the psychiatrist villian and the aerosolized hallucinogens was a cool twist).

Last night, we went and saw "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" at the Country Dinner Playhouse, and it was definitely cool to have live entertainment for once. I probably hadn't seen a play in two years. It's certainly not broadway and the food sucked, but hey the courtesan women didn't disappoint, and that's what matters.

As you can see, I have moved my blog to free hosting for the forseeable future, since I never really did any custom development to differentiate my blog in the past (although I never lack ideas). I'm starting to try to trim my expenses so that I can have a rockin' time later this year and still have enough for some of my expenses over the next two years and side trips.