The Trip: Day One

Part 1

The alarm went off around nine in the morning, the sun well on its way past

the horizon, and I'm usually drinking water heavily from my desk around this time on Wednesdays. Searching for new articles to support my proposal or beginning the editing of our sites; my ear buds blocking out the "good mornings!" and "cute skirt" comments that usually litter the cubes around me. Today, continue to pack my junk and head to the airport. After a one o'clock White Sox win my head still lingered horizontally as I moved toward the kitchen and to waffles.

The drive to the airport and flight thereafter were relatively uneventful,

going from DFW Airport to Memphis, from Memphis to O'Hare was unusual. The Memphis airport lacked the kind of charm I'm used to in airports. Red brick walls supplied the sole décor and an easily forgettable backdrop as luggage wielding travelers shuffled past those with carts and baby carriages. I kept searching the brick for a painting or advertisement to no avail as the wash of CNN snippets of last night's game and the overhead chatter from the flight crew going to Cleveland, Detroit and Charlotte.

Horoscope for this week:

"Virgo: (Aug. 23—Sept. 22)
You know it's not truly over until the fat lady sings, but my God, the enormous bitch is taking forever."

Civil Rights Hero, Rosa Parks

R.I.P. 1913 - 2005, "Mother of the civil rights movement"

Stuck

There are looks, looks that people give when they know something and don't

want to tell you right out, so they start talking in hypotheticals that result in further hypotheticals that result in a dance around the issue. You never have the guts to actually ask, "what are you getting at," because you already know. Know that there's no possible way for any of what the two of you are talking about to happen. And you just sit there and stare and pretend like you're rolling with it. Make some quick jokes or add something to the conversation's subject by proxy, but really, you just have no idea how to react or what to say. Because you just know. You know that it’s not going to work, and in a few months you'll still be here; and someone will still be calling you "the temp."

CoCo love run in Denver thin air.

Subject: Timecapsule

Dear Futureme...Beware the Ides of Turkish Chocolate.

Thanks RocketBoom!

Uhhhh, this is a bit weirder than I had hoped

The Simpsons have been exported to the Arab world as Al Shamshoon. Problem is, they changed nearly everything to reflect Islamic law. Women showing their faces? Not sure about that part.

Science News!

1. "Importance of whale death"?

2. The legally purchased babies were released or "Punctuation is Key".

3. After cursing the rat several times, scientists sat down simultaneously on whoopee cushions to the rat's delight. Stupid, rat.

4. Caulkicephalus trimicrodon translates, loosely, to "look at them there teef."

5. From the "No Crap" Department of the astronomy. "People in Iran look at the stars? Please, next you'll be tell me that Africans can drive cars. Whatever!"

The Proposal has been completed!

Now, back to writing normal stuff. ...ummm, uhh...I got nothing.

I've been so stuck in this proposal that I've completely forgotten to write anything today.

Umm, the Orioles have signed a three-year deal with the best pitching coach in the majors, Leo Mazzone, and they snagged Jim Duquette as their new VP for Baseball Operations. The rebuilding begins, and things are looking good so far.

You! Stay away from my notepad!

About a month ago, I was asked to write up a proposal for a possible new

venture the AHA is interested in investing some time and cash to, and over the past three days I’ve sat here hammering through as much as I possibly can. The process hasn’t left me dead and clamoring for a savoir as many of my co-workers had initially suggested, quite the opposite, in fact. I’ve found myself enamored by it, really. Calculating the structure, contemplating an introduction and conclusion and creating tightrope segues from subject to subject have become more entertaining to me than pretty much anything. While I sit at home, on the computer or watching the tube, I find myself coming up with more to say or different ways in which to say it. There are post-it notes cluttering my computer screen with yellow pieces of ideas, arranged in specific orders, and emails sent from my personal account to my work address outlining a paragraph or a new point that was before not thought of. Conversations on the ride home with my dad provide even more ideas. Our usual conversations of family affairs, the Baltimore Orioles and “what Shirin is doing” turn to this proposal and the ideas that seem to navigate my mind at jackass-on-a-Wave Runner speeds. He seems impressed as he gleans a different perspective or possibly new applications that he had been tooling with when he had to write up a similar proposal. The conversation usually ends with one or both of our phones losing connectivity and usually begins again when either one of us regains our bars, making Speed Racer movements through traffic as we iron out the finer points of how to implicate the process and ad-revenue issues.

It all seems obsessive and written out, in long hand, on a white legal pad that

I’ve become overly perfective of. With thoughts of taking it with me or hiding it somewhere in my desk like the two silver acorns I bought at the Nasher Sculpture Center or my ear-bud headphones. Perhaps this is a bit more paranoid than obsessive as I’m worried that someone is going to steal the idea, write their own report and have a leg up on me as this is my first proposal. Sneaking into my cube while I’m at lunch or at home with leather gloves on like a jewel thief or safe cracker.

Horoscope for this week:

"Virgo: (Aug. 23—Sept. 22)
It is neither sentience nor a sense of humor that separates us from the animals. Turns out it's actually celebrity zookeeper Jack Hanna."

Stridin'

On Friday I walked into my cube in the morning and noticed a stack of

nondescript mail sitting on my desk. It doesn't happen often, but when it does its usually junk reminders for our conferences and things of that nature. I quickly rifled through and flipped the junk into the garbage under my desk without paying much attention to the conference reminder and subscription request for Neurology Weekly, but at the bottom was a smaller green card with the words "Heart at Work Lifestyle Challenge." I turned it over to see an empty calendar ripe for check marks. Essentially, the point of the card was to promote healthy lifestyles by suggesting that people walk around the office during the day. Providing the incentive of winning a prize if they work out or walk on a near daily basis. 'Striding' is written on people's dry erase boards as they fast walk through the maze of cubes, down the stairs, through a maze of other cubes and back up the stairs. They move past, waving in groups of two to six with beads of sweat forming on their foreheads.

Science News!

1. "Lawmakers parking their gas-guzzling SUVs," but they won't stop randomly dousing hobos in gasoline and lighting them on fire.

2. In death, the alligator screamed out "I WIN, DAMMIT!"

3. New meaning to the term "work those crazy legs!"

4. Xena, Warrior Princess/10th Planet in our Solar System.

5. Tai Shan bursts into tears when it is revealed that its name means, Peaceful Mountain. When asked why the panda was crying, Tai Shan responded, "Someone just get me an Atkins Cookbook. I'm so fat!

6. When William Shatner received word that Doohan's cremeted remains will be launched into space he quickly called his lawyer to change a passage in his will to read "I want my body placed into a photon torpedo, and launched directly at Khan's Klingon Warbird". KHAN!!

7. President Bush immediately declared war on the flagellate, stating that as long as he "is in office, none of these 'flag-ellites' will get married on American soil. It ain't right, it just ain't right."

8. Upon landing, the world's first 'space tourist' emerged from his pod and asked some local villagers where he could find the hunter who shot his 'very hairy wife'.

A Sunny Day Real Estate renaissance.

If you know the where abouts of David Faroz Precht's other lense please contact him somehow.

R.I.P. Pat Precht

We will miss your amazing sense of humor.

And Oriole fans everywhere cheer their front office for finally showing signs of life.

My horoscope for this week:

"Virgo: (Aug. 23—Sept. 22)
You've known since you were very young that you were different from all the others, but still, you find it maddening that they usually put the naked people where they are very difficult to watch."

Yeah, I'm feeling a lot better today, and the frequency of posts will climb back to their normal plateau soon; while the overall stuffiness and latent headache remains to cloud me it's only slight. My co-worker Frank on the other hand? Well, he shouldn't have licked my forehead like I was a toad after I profusely told him I wasn't. His own fault, I assure you. Though he did claim that there were rivers of blood chasing after him on the plains of Gazar, (shrug) I swear to you all that I am not a toad…that I know of.

AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Way to go New York City!

NEWS FLASH!

Kanye West's comments disregarded, President takes picture with black people.

(Thanks for the picture Reuters)

Fire...drill?

Company Fake Out

So, around 1:40 or so this loud noise starts moving angrily through the office

in long increments, and I see heads pop up and leisurely walk toward their friends’ cube to figure out where they were going. I hear, "Starbucks?" from the cube next to mine as I remove my headphones that had prevented me from acknowledging the banshee horn for the first few seconds. "Yeah, this might be a long one."

I start to tuck away my iPod as I get an email from one of the authors for a

guideline that is moving to production this week, requesting that I send him a blank copy of the conflict of interest form he and his fellow authors need to fill out. So, as everyone else sloths down the stairs toward the parking lot and to their cars I sit formatting this form and responding with it in the body of the email. Within not more than a few seconds from me actually getting up and making my way to the exit the alarm shuts off.

Everyone's upbeat steps cease, shoulders slump over and everyone returns to

their desk.

Ryan's Hope signs to Punknews Records

Nick, Terry and Greg deserve this and more.
Congratulations, brosephusous!

Just a great article about one of the best games I've ever seen.

The flu continues, but now I'm crabby and without grammatical correctness. You don't want to see the emails I've sent out thus far. Just plain bad. When I'm healthy...well, healthier, I'll write something. Sorry.

The screen is spinning...quit it.

For some reason I've become very odd...er since getting the flu. Making

stranger comments than normal and drawing juxtapositions between things that don't correlate at all. Its...its pretty down right annoying to everyone around me. Anyway, when I start feeling better I'll get back to draining my stupidity upon this page in splashes of alliteration and inner-political studies instead of snot and fever sweat.

Softball tomorrow is going to be...painfully pain. Hooray.

LET'S GO RACISM, LET'S GO!!

Science News!

1. Hurricanes to try to personify Americans better.

2. It's other use is to keep large fishing villages warm in the winter.

3. Perverts need not apply.

4. Study also shows that oxygen keeps mammals alive.

5. Marking the first time anything of importance has been found in Oregon since the inception of the trail blazing video game.

6. By the year 3000, we should have everything under control...right?

It got cold all of a sudden. I blame el Nino. Stupid...Nino.

My horoscope for this week:

"Virgo: (Aug. 23—Sept. 22)
The sun and moon themselves will fall madly in love with you and set about vying for your affection by showering you with gifts, so, unfortunately, you'll be killed Thursday afternoon by a dozen roses and a box of chocolates traveling at near-orbital velocity.

The best recourse to people dying horribly of avian flu is to just shoot them if they take a step toward authorities. It's Martian Law, people. This is the best idea EVER! Thank you Mr. President, but they’re not zombies.

“Sir, Demos, Knight of Mars!”

Bro!