A Running Tally of Metaphysical Phenomena

OK, Go

2008-05-10T19:22:00.003-05:00

It's up. Not yet 100% without issue, but it's there. If you use a blog reader of any sort, point it here. If you don't, you should really consider it if you read more than a single web site more often than about once a week. Go to Google Reader and start subscribing to stuff. You can check it like you'd check your email, and it will tell you when there's a new entry from BBC News, or me, or the IRS or Al-Jazeera, or whatever other Very Important Things you like to read.

In Response to Anonymous ()

2008-05-09T18:45:00.004-05:00

Yes, I am ever going to update my blog. Promise. I actually have a few entries you haven't seen yet even though they're already written. See, I have my web site all ready to go, designed, looking mezzosnazzy, etc. My cousin is hosting it for me, though, being the nice guy that he is, and it's taken a little bit of work to get it up and running. It involves FTP permissions and some technical goofery. And then there were the issues getting it to look right in Internet Explorer, which I'm still only 93% sure I got through. It's been a slow process. And see, the thing is, I've been holding off on putting new posts here because I wanted to wait until I could be like, "OK, new web site! Go."

And that still hasn't happened.

But it will. In fact, I'm hoping within the next day or two. That means I might as well go ahead and tell you: the blog is moving. Start visiting kentwalter.com on an hourly basis now, and with any luck whatsoever, you'll see the new site within the next 24 hours. Just don't bite me or anything if it's not there right away.

The new site is kind of meant to be:

A supplement to my resume if that ever becomes beneficial in any way. (Not that it is at the moment, but if there's one thing ~~being in Scouts~~ having Eagle Scout friends taught me, it's to always be prepared),
A mini-biography/profile, which is sort like the first point,
A place to put my "creative" writing, separate from my life and events writing, and
This blog, moved, renamed, upgraded, and injected with a new dose of self-importance because I laid it out myself. Except really just moved. And renamed.

So there you go. Start clicking, and one day, you, like me, will have success seeing my web site on the actual internet. I'm looking forward to it!

Kent

Zooooooooom!!

2008-03-26T13:35:00.006-05:00

You know what I just did? I just put an out-of-office notice on Outlook starting today at 5 PM. For the second time in a week! I'm such a grownup, seriously. Last week, my brothers came out and I took two days off, and then tonight, we're flying across just about the whole continent (better than flying across the country) to go hang out in VA for just about two weeks. Of course, we're pretty excited. There's excitement, then contagious excitement, then excitement where it's "Oh, that's cute." And then, "OK, too much." And then this. Sorry.

The initial idea was to go out and catch my friends in My Epic while they're in the studio. I've managed to get in the way at some point nearly every time they've reorded anything, and you have to keep a good thing alive. I haven't told Aaron I'm coming because I think highly enough of myself that I think it should be a surprise (you know, like a gift!). If you talk to him, don't mention it, OK? Then I realized that this little trip could be turned into a real live vacation just by flying back later. So we made plans to go to Lynchburg to see our friends and to Virginia Beach to see my family. We have a list of places to eat, things to see... places to eat... It will be good times. Also, if you're in Lynchburg and you have my number, give me a call! I'm sure I'd love to see you. Additionally, if you're in Lynchburg and I don't see you while I'm there, please please don't be offended! I really do love you. We have a short amount of time and a TON of people and places and things to see/eat.* We'll do our best, I just want to know that no one will take it personally if we don't catch you this time around. Don't worry. We'll be back at some point.

Some things of recent interest:
When Scott and Christopher were here, one of the things we did, in addition to showing them around Seattle, was to go out for some Geocaching. You, tech-savvy reader, may be all over this, but I had never actually done it before. Scott's mentioned it a few times, and I knew the overall concept, but having a chance to go and do it a little was awesome. Basically, the way it works is this: someone hides an object, usually some kind of elements-proof container somewhere on the planet, and uses a GPS unit to get the coordinates. Then they post those coordinates and some clues on a web site. Anyone can register, get the clues and the coordinates, and go hunting. The idea is that even with the coordinates, the treasure object is small enough and hidden well enough to be little puzzle, and that's where the clues come in. Some of them are pretty ingenious. We printed off four caches and set off to conquer. Short story: we were one for four. If you're reading this and have some hints on "Singularity" or "Sixth Sense," those two drove us nuts! The one we did find was in two stages. The first was a tiny magnet on the underside of a bench outside the library. The second was the cache itself, and it was located at the coordinates found on the tiny magnet at part A. The cache was a hide-a-key box magneted to another bench. There was a pencil and log sheet inside, which is how it usually is, so we recorded it and then moved on the get shut out everywhere else we tried to find anything.

So now I want to get a GPS unit. Really bad.

This is such an awesome thing to do! Being outside? Check. Hiking? Yeah, pretty much, check. Like hiking, except with a goal and at least nine more awesome? Check. Feels sort of like being Indiana Jones? Check. I'm going to start stacking my pennies up.

Also, I got a new game. (Speaking of stacking pennies.) It's called Power Grid, and it's A) a ton of fun, and B) much less off-puttingly complicated than the first read through the rules makes it sound. You really should check it out if you're at all board game inclined like me.

One more thing: Internet Explorer is stupid. If it would work like every other browser in the world and stop being so stupid, you'd be ~~ignoring~~ reading this on kentwalter.com like I planned on a while ago. Grrr... In any case, watch out for that, because it's designed and ready to go as soon as I get the IE thing figured out. Keep your eyes peeled.

* EDIT: Thank you, Urn. Yes, we will be eating TONS of people. Wish us luck.

So that's, what... once every geological age?

2008-03-05T15:37:00.002-05:00

Today is almost two and a half years since I put the first post up on this blog. Not my very first foray into putting content on the web (holy cow, did you know Xanga is still around?), but definitely my longest-running. So it's been 885 days (I found a web site to calculate this for me, because I am both nerdy and math-disinclined; actually, I can think of a bunch of situations in which this would be useful) since I started, and today makes fifty total entries. That makes an entry every two and a half weeks. I'm going to try to eventually steer that average to something under two weeks.

I guess I mentioned FATTT CAMP, the First Annual Table Tennis Tournament, Celebration, and Meeting Point. In keeping with the tradition of sportspersonship and idiotic naming built to accomodate juvenile acronyms, we started our next undertaking today: SIPPIE CUP. The Second Infrequent Ping Pong Independent Extravaganza and Competition of Unlimited Potential. Three matches in, and it's good times all around. I lost today (in the first round) but played a good match, I thought. It's double elimination, so maybe there's hope. It reminds me of this, which you've probably seen before:

Which, in turn, reminds me of this, which you may also have seen:

I like that stuff.

Alright, no huge things to report, so that's all. Keep an eye on things here, as they're about to get more awesome pretty soon. Thanks for checking in.

Kent

Get a Hobby. Seriously.

2008-02-13T18:04:00.010-05:00

I have some hobbies, and that fact is the thing that unifies the rest of these otherwise loosely related news items:

First of all, it turns out that my roommate's spouse's spouse's cousin's brother's roommate's roommate's roommate Adam is a budding sci-fi author, and he's looking for an editor. Or really just kind of a peer review sort of thing at this point, but it was cool to find out that I had something big in common with this guy I'd hung out with a handful of times. He's looking to write novels for a career, and I'd love to look to write novels for a career. I've just started reading, and it's pretty cool so far. I'm not a super-experienced literary editor or anything, but I did get an English degree with pretty high marks, which should have at least distorted my outlook on fiction enough that I can give all kinds of useless academic feedback. This should be fun. Watch for Adam Henderson on the shelves wherever books are sold.

Second thing. And holy cow, have I been waiting to say this for a while: there's a piano at my house now! Awesome! Kirsten's mom and her husband live in a place called Jubilee at Hawks Prairie. The residents are "active adults at play," which means that for the most part, the residents are retired but don't want to just move into a regular neighborhood and be "those old people that live down the street." (You could argue that some of the residents are kinda playing fast and loose with the phrase "at play," but it's a pretty nice place.) Anyway, since a lot of people there are retired, they're not planning on moving any time soon, and they can get all kinds of stuff that would be a big pain to move. Some friends around the corner got a baby grand piano to replace their old console, and they were just going to give the old one to the movers! Kirsten's mom stepped in and told them to stop in the name of love. She knew I'd wanted a piano for, like, longer than I've been alive. So we rented a cargo van from Enterprise and picked it up. The cargo van and the 90-minute drive to Lacey were all it cost. Well, that and a tuning, which we need pretty badly now that we moved it from a 70-degree house to a 30-degree nortwestern afternoon and drive it 90 minutes up I-5 to Redmond. They were happy to send it to a good home, and I was excited to find a place for it in our apartment and release my inner Elton, musically (and only musically) speaking. Everyone was a winner in my book. I don't have any pictures at the moment, unfortunately, but if you do a Google image search for Baldwin Acrosonic, you can find an idea of what it looks like. It's small but cool.

The same part of me that enjoys theme parties and such, and Risk games at work, found another outlet and secured my bid for the position of Official Workplace Hangout Enabler last week by putting together some quick tournament brackets and dragging seven coworkers into a ping pong tournament. It's the First Annual Table Tennis Tournament, Celebration, and Meeting Point. (Acronym FATTT CAMP; which came first, the name or the abbreviation?) It's going swimmingly. We already have a signup sheet outside the office for the next one. We're going to have sixteen people next time, ideally. Then will come the foosball tourney, the 8-ball (or possibly 9-ball; it's cooler) tourney, the floss fest, the toothpick caber toss, etc. Any ideas are welcome. We're gamers here at Xbox, remember. Hardcore, unapologetic analog gamers. We're so hardcore that we've probably already played your suggestion. But give it a shot anyway.

And then the other night I got this terrible itch to build something. So I made this awesome rocket, which was so obscenely manly that it actually started growing its own chest hair. True story.
I love building things. Sigh. I especially like building things out of paper. I remember going to some kind of week-long nerd day camp thing when I was a kid, and we talked about buoyancy and displacement and load bearing objects and all of this stuff, and we got two pieces of printer paper to build a boat that would A) float and B) hold the most pennies and then something about a tower that would withstand a siege of some sort. The details are fuzzy now because I'm old and have a receding hairline. Anyway, some time ago, I spent an excessive number of hours building this:and it was one of the coolest things I (or you!) have ever done. I just wish the picture would do that beauty justice. It's at my parents' house now, the product of the better part of a semester at college, several hours a week. I did a Roman Villa one way back in the day, and made a short attempt at some kind of colonial village before I remembered that Colonial America was the most boring place ever - more boring, in fact, than the surface of the moon, lifeless, even, as that place is - and stopped. Well, I used some of the fundage left on my Barnes and Noble gift card from Christmas to order this one the other day:

I can't wait to get started. These pictures make it look like these things could be built in a couple of hours, but they're so, so detailed, it takes forever, and when I finish one of these, I feel sort of like Hannibal must have when the first elephants made it over the pass. They're awesome, and I don't care what you say, even if it wasn't for the x-acto blades involved, these things are manly, and I am more awesome when I build something. Even something made out of paper.

So there's a slice of what is cool these days. Also, check out boardgamegeek.com. That's also what's happening in the streets, in the clubs, in the hot spots that you love. Get into it.

Alright, take care of yourselves. Have a great Valentine's Day. And like I tell somebody at some point every year, there's always someone to do something nice for, regardless of your situation. Have fun.

Kent

An Accomplishment in Cheese

2008-01-11T17:18:00.000-05:00

If you were really paying close attention a little while ago, you might remember me mentioning that we started a record of various cheeses. See, a lot of people go on and on about various social causes and things that are worth spending their time on. Building hospitals, tutoring struggling ninth graders. At my house, we eat cheese and keep fastidious notes. It's true. As it turns out, the number of weeks we have lived in Redmond and the number of cheeses we have sampled from the Whole Foods Petites Fromages program are the same. (That's why I haven't posted in a while; I got carried away on the culinary adventures and had to get the balance right.) We're at 15 of each now, which I feel is a pretty respectable number. The Official Great Cheese Caper Descriptions, Ratings, and Comments Chart (Sheet #1) is now full. And my life is such that this is news.

Highest overall rating from me:

Jacquin Crottin de Champcol

The funny thing is, "crottin" is a slang term for a horse/mule dropping. In this case, though, it's a reference to the shape of the cheese. It's a hard, crumbly goat cheese that's the best characteristically "goat-y" cheese I've ever had. A couple of inches across, white, and moldy on the outside if handled and made correctly. Looks like this:

Highest overall rating from Kirsten:

Roomkaas Double Cream Gouda

Ridiculously creamy, almost buttery, and 146% fat or something. It tastes every bit as good as something so unhealthy should taste.

The Acerbic Wit Award:
This goes to Kirsten for her description of a sample of Le Fournal Chaumes. To wit: "If 'earthy' means manure, then yes."

Creepiest Looking Cheese:
This'll have to go to Cahill Porter, which is made by mixing a dark beer into the vat when the cheese still liquid. Looks like this:

I could go on handing out awards for every little thing, but I remember being offered the role of a tree in a play when I was seven or eight... Some things you gotta learn from.*

I might just have actual news or something at some point. Until then, take care of yourselves. And start your own food list so you can send me notes.

Kent

* - Even at my young age, I knew to hold out for better parts. This tree fiasco was before my breakout role as the drowning kid in a Red Cross safety video. True story.

It Looks Like This

2007-12-10T21:11:00.000-05:00

When you try to make your face look as small as possible, you look awesome. Exhibits (A) and (B):

Theme Night!

2007-12-10T13:46:00.001-05:00

Not because it needed to happen, certainly, and not because either of us are really obsessed with Colin Firth (though we both agree he is pretty cool), but just because the name -The name! This one was too good to toss back into the water!- demanded it, we hosted the Colin Firthquake this weekend. The way it happened was this:

1. Read a list of natural disasters unlikely to occur
2. Got so cracked up over this idea that we decided it must occur
3. Assembled an event around the name

It came together well. Meghan has an Anatomy and Physiology final coming up for which she must know the ins and outs of the human brain. So she made a diagram of Colin Firth's brain and did a short presentation on his life and film career. Then I MC'ed a game of Colin Firth charades with movie titles and bits of information from the Wikipedia Colin Firth page. And then the main event of the night: a mash-up of the Victorian manners of The Importance of Being Earnest, the rough-and-tumble hijinks of a game of spoons, and the pace-tracking literacy of Horse. Thrills! Each time the name Ernest was spoken in the movie (and you know it's quite a few if you've seen it), everyone had to take a spoon from the table, and the last one to get a spoon got a letter. E-R-N-E-S-T. I spelled Ernest first, and I was out. We continued the elimination, removing one spoon from the game each round, until Kirsten and Meg duked it out and Kirsten won.

Also, compliments of the house artist, we each had little badges to wear.

For the girls:
And for the guys, even higher aspirations:The question you're probably asking at this point is, "Hey, can I steal your idea and have my own Colin Firthquake?" And the answer is ABSOLUTELY! The concept of staking a unique claim on any sort of idea is so nine years ago (except in Eastern Texas), and we sort of appropriated it from another source to begin with anyway. This is the age of open exchange. Go for it. While you're at it, The Fresca Fiesta and the Emilio Festevez are both begging to be hosted. Let me know how those go.
Adios,

Kent

Ultimate Truth

2007-12-06T16:53:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Urn for calling my attention to this.

O Weihnachtsbaum, O Weihnachtsbaum...

2007-12-06T15:03:00.000-05:00

Last year, we had just gotten married when Christmas came around, and we were over in Prague, enjoying the goofy language and the lights and the old city. It was amazing, and I wouldn't trade it away for anything, but it sort of feels like it's been two years since we've had a legitimate Christmas with family and a christmas tree and presents and maybe a candlelight service. All of those things. We're doing our best to make up for it this year, though. We have a steady stream of Christmas songs going and several Christmas movies lined in the Netflix queue (Next up is the Grinch. We've watched White Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas so far.) We have cookie plans and wish lists and shopping goals, and we even have a paper chain that we've been tending to each day. But up until yesterday, we still didn't have a tree!

Last night was the night for it, though. Kirsten got a tip about trees at Rite Aid (seriously), so we went to look, but they weren't selling them. They did have good deals on lights, though, so we picked those up there, and then the next place we thought to check was Home Depot. They had several kinds of trees and good prices (Noble Fir: $40. Douglas Fir: $20. Knowing what the heck the difference is between the two: Priceless.), and we had an awesome tree within about ten minutes. The guy doing the wrapping and the cutting off of the bottom inch of trunk was the nicest guy ever, too. He seemed like he's a retired guy with a few young grandchildren that are his favorite part of his life, and he volunteers a month of his time each year to come and wish everyone the most gently warm "Merry Christmas" they'll hear all winter as they buy their trees. I wanted to hug him.

We didn't have anything to tie the tree to the top of the car, so we put it in the trunk instead. Surprisingly, it fit pretty well. And we only live a half mile away, so we weren't afraid of anything crazy happening.
I screwed it into the tree stand Kirsten had gotten earlier in the day, and she said it looked like I got smashed by the tree. I agree. Smashed and eaten.

A few ornaments later...

...and we were ready for the topper, which we went and picked out at Target.

Even though this could easily be a music blog, it isn't. But I do have to make one suggestion: use Pandora. For those of you unfamiliar, it's pretty simple. You put in one song you like, and the folks who run Pandora serve up a bunch of music you'll probably enjoy as much. They use a huge database of hundreds of musical characteristics of each song to make it work. If you like a song, you can hit the thumbs-up button, and if you don't, you hit the thumbs-down, and it'll skip to a new song. You don't have to hit either button -you can just let it play- but if you do, it'll get more and more zeroed in on what you're likely to enjoy. It's pretty cool. Anyway, the reason I suggest it is that the creators were small enough to make "Christmas songs" one of the categories in their database, so you can enter "Jingle Bells" as your starting track, and *boom!* instant Christmas radio station with better variety than the mall. Try it out.

Whatever you do to get your Christmas on, make sure to really embrace it. Turn the music up! Decorate a stocking! Enjoy yourself, eat some unhealthy holiday things, smile at people... If it snows where you are, invite a stranger to take a few minutes to have a snowball fight (this happened to us recently at a bus stop and totally made our day) or build a snowman. Watch Charlie Brown (and then aspire to name your firstborn Linus). And slow down. Look around you, and enjoy it all. Get into it.

I'll be back later with more Christmasy things and leave you now with the illumination of our very first tree.

Kent

kirstenkirsten.com

2007-12-03T19:36:00.000-05:00

In case you didn't click the link in the last post...
We've bandied about it and wished we had Flash and generally protracted the whole process for quite a while, but I finally just brought my work computer home, downloaded the free trial of Flash, and cranked out version 2.0 of Kirsten's web site! She has some newer artwork up, and we'll be adding more as it's finished. So if you haven't swung by kirstenkirsten.com recently, now's as good a time as any. If you encounter any weird (non)functionality, let me know, OK? And also, if you're interested in buying any of her artwork or getting some design work done, drop her an email. I'm so proud her! You will be too. Have a look.

The End of the World

2007-12-03T19:09:00.000-05:00

And so it ended. The Middle East attacked Afghanistan, and, without so much as a misplaced grain of uranium, the world was conquered by red, which was me. I was surprised, actually. We knew it was a good name at the end, because the balance of power was tilted heavily in three different ways over the course of the last few weeks. Richard had it handily for a little bit, and then we trimmed down his guys and Urn was all over the place, yellow as far as the eye could see. Then Urn and Richard took Mike most of the way out, I finished him and got his cards, and that's when the tide turned. Chain reaction, got Richard's cards, pushed Urn back into Asia, he put up a huge fight down in Australia, and then it finally ended in that hotbed of political and military turmoil, the Middle East. Everybody played well.

We're going to play Risk again, but this time, we're moving to our new map, the Puget Sound! Yes yes. I thought it would be fun to try the same game on a different map, and here we are in one of the more geographically interesting areas of our country. It all came together. I used the long weekend we had for Thanksgiving to draw up a map from a little internet research. It's divided by county instead of continent like the original map, and Kirsten drew some awesome totem animals. Instead of a tank, a soldier, and a horse, this game has a salmon, a deer, and a seahawk, all rendered in the American Indian style that has almost turned into northwestern kitsch. Have a look:

This time, we're probably going to have all six armies used. We'll see whether we can keep this up without cutting into anyone's productivity too much. And if you're ever in Redmond...

Walking the Walk

2007-11-29T13:00:00.000-05:00

I went to the doctor recently for a general checkup. Collarbones are straight, no weird bumps or growths, I can cough properly with my head turned either direction, and my heartbeat is as steady as it should be. Everything was fine. It had just been ages (the early summer before spending a week at Triple R Ranch when I was twelve or thirteen, I think), so I figured that having health insurance was a good enough reason. (Next up: tooth cleaning and an eye exam. If you know of other fun things to do with insurance that pays at 100%, I'd welcome your suggestions. Just, please, no more tetanus boosters.) Regarding my exercise and diet, Dr. Carr was really happy to hear that I walk back and forth to work just about every day. It's only a mile and a half, and it only takes about a relaxed twenty minutes, but he was satisfied and said he wished more people would do it. It almost makes me want to reacquire a taste for the unhealthy things I was eating a few years ago.

We moved to Redmond on September 28th, a few days after selling my car and dropping our insurance premium by nearly half. We showed up with about a quarter tank of gas, and just yesterday, we filled up for the third time since moving here. That works out to a tank of gas about every three-odd weeks.

I used to work at an advertising company in Lynchburg. It was only for a few months, actually, but every morning when I got up to be there by 8 AM, I thought about the Classic American Workday and how it was only right and proper. So right, in fact, and so proper, that "the 9 to 5" is a euphemism for pretty much any job that doesn't pay by the hour. It was irritating to be forced into an 8 to 5 arrangement, even though tons of people do it and not every job looks like Rob Petrie's. I arrived bleary-eyed and half asleep every morning a few minutes before eight and waited in the hallway until a few minutes after eight when the first person with a key showed up to let me in. What I needed was not a 15-minute drive with BBC cricket scores confusing me to death. I needed a twenty-minute walk in the grey morning air, past the stretch that is particularly redolent of pine, to my cup of green tea and bowl of cereal. (I keep a bag of Life or granola or whatever on my bookshelf at work and take advantage of the free milk and bowls and spoons every morning.) It's refreshing, and it makes me feel awake and capable of thought.

An interesting thing about this walk is the opportunity to see a limited cross section of my Redmond neighbors. I say "neighbors" in a very large sense, of course, and "cross section" in a very small one. Some of the more noticeable items:

Everyone who is anyone runs red lights at this intersection, and if you don't, then you're out of the club. That is Redmond Way/E. Lake Sammamish Pkwy./180th Ave. It's a weird intersection with long red lights, so when people get a green, they get impatient and run through it on yellow as well as the first couple of cars after red. Keep your eyes open and you're fine, but if you trust the little white "Walk" symbol and charge out into the intersection as soon as it turns, you will be clipped off at the knees by an Audi or limited edition BMW, or at the hips by a foreign-made SUV. And then you can sue for the down payment value of a house around here.
The short Hispanic guy in the bright orange rain coat. I like that coat. And not in an it-looks-terrible-and-makes-me-laugh way, either. I genuinely think it's cool.
The Hispanic-looking lady waiting for the school bus with the Asian-looking kindergarten/possibly first grade student, who looks as eager as she does sleepy. Maybe he goes to Einstein Elementary...
All of the other normal people that I can figure out are either running late or early based on where I pass them on my walk. And of course, sometimes I'm a minute or two ahead of or behind schedule. I like seeing how variable it is.

But it is number five that really has my attention and makes me think I am possibly a creepy person. Oh, number five (except Blogger made it say "1" instead)!

The tall, very casually dressed and cheerful-looking employee of somewhere close by.

I have to tell you about this guy. I'm going to say 6-foot-4. He always has on a navy blue hoodie and a blank navy blue baseball cap. And the most memorable thing is that out from under this blank navy blue baseball cap is (not peeking out, but exploding) a mass of the most curly and thick black hair I have ever seen on a caucasian. It's his defining feature.

Now, I could pass someone like this once, and be like, "Nice hair..." and have that be the end of it. But for some reason, because I pass this guy, about my age, moving about as quickly, looking about as pleased to be walking, every morning, I think, every time I do, "Where are you off to, guy that would likely be my friend if we worked together or took a class together or something?" And that gives me suspicions about my creepiness. And then I think, "I must find out." And that confirms my suspicions. All I need to do is just go and see this guy putting pizzas out for sale at Whole Foods or grinding beans at Peet's Coffee, and that would be it. "I know where he works, I know where he's headed when I'm going to work. I can move on," I would say. Maybe he works underground. Maybe he's a window washer that was laid off months ago but has an obsessive compulsion to wash the same window every day and they don't want to harm his fragile psyche, so they let him. Maybe his great-grandfather invented the Barc-a-lounger. Maybe he's a professional cheese taster. Maybe he holds the world record for longest continuous kite flying from a seafaring vessel. Do I need to know any of this? No. (Although it is cool that any individual person has wacky, unique stories or traits like this.) I just want to know where the guy's headed, that's all. I am far too curious. I will not will not will not follow him around to find out, either. Except if I pass him on a Saturday when I'm not expected at work, I probably will. (To unsubscribe from this blog, just don't read it anymore.)

I have an excessive back log of material that needs to be mentioned here as soon as possible (I've written this bit here over a period of several days in between other stuff), so stay tuned for Puget Sound maps, musical research, Thanksgiving reporting, and other things that are silly and unnecessary.

Kent

I Made A Pie

2007-11-11T01:12:00.000-05:00

When we woke up this morning, we were faced with our weekly challenge: "How are we going to make today, a Saturday, extra awesome?" Because we do what we can to make the weekdays awesome, sure, but on Saturdays you get an entire day! If you think of something that takes eight hours, you just go out and spend eight hours doing it. There aren't nearly the limits of the midweek. Today, one of Kirsten's ideas for things we could do was to bake something. See, neither of us are anything to write home about when it comes to baking, so it was a good idea to take on this challenge and see if I could improve my average a little bit. A quick glance around the kitchen, and I saw the eight gigantic Granny Smith apples (they're from Costco, and I know Costco does the large packages thing, etc., but these apples themselves [I like dem] are very, very big) in the red bowl. I decided to make a pie. And then the more I thought about it, the more excited I got. I can't really explain exactly why, but I got into a mode where I had to make a good pie. I was pretty happy all day today, but I was just in this mood where I wanted to accomplish something and feel like I did a good job at it. We all get in those moods every now and then, right? (Right guys...? Guys?) And that something, my project for the day, was a real blue ribbon winner of a pie. I'm a firm believer that no one in the blog reading world really cares too much about minutiae like what you ate and cooked on a given day, and I normally shy away from that sort of thing. But today, this was important to me. So I thought, what the heck, I'll show you some pictures. First, I put together Kirsten's mom's recipe for Never-Fail Pie Crust, folded in about a half cup of sharp cheddar cheese, and let it relax in the refrigerator for thirty minutes. We at dinner in that time, and then I rolled out the crust, made the filling, sprinkled on the streusel topping, and then cut strips of crust so I could do the real live weaving thing on the top, like on Looney Tunes. (I regret to say that I didn't keep my head in the game, and some of my weaving is off.) That's when Kirsten entered the scene with the camera. (Note the red bowl.)

After the weaving, you cut around the top of the pie dish, like this:

Then you crimp the edges (that part's fun), and it goes in the oven.

And after thirty minutes...

And here I am stuffing the last bit of a slice into my mouth. This is my signature method of eating things that crumble. It feeds your hunger and automatically catches crumbs. It also makes Kirsten laugh, because if you eat things this way, you look like a castaway enjoying his first day back on solid ground.

I know it's just a pie, but it's a streusel-topped sharp cheddar and Granny Smith apple thing of beauty that was baked my me and actually turned out really well. If you'd seen me previous baking attempts, you'd gladly excuse my hubris in making a whole post out of something so mundane.

Also, I'm willing to give out the recipe. But you have to leave comments. Because people who run blogs like comments like puppies like alarm clocks.

Working With Gamers

2007-11-09T17:42:00.000-05:00

I had a great idea yesterday. See, I've had this situation in my life for a little while now, maybe eighteen months or so. The long and short of it is this: I really like to play Risk. Kirsten hates Risk. Like almost as much as I hate raisins. Can't stand it. So I don't play a lot of it, unfortunately. But all that is about to change. This morning, I invited three coworkers to an ongoing, one-turn-per-day game of Risk on the spare desk in my office.
The invitation said this:

Here at XOCDOC, we’re hard at work daily preserving, for posterity, the inner workings of an empire destined for greater, bigger, and more inexplicably frustrating things than any of us dare to dream. Together with the tools team, we provide the rough but delicate wicker framework that undergirds the plump cushion of operations in the deck chair that is Xbox Live. You think you know gaming, my friend? Pah! WE know gaming.

That is why the good people of 3363 have decided to extend the right hand of friendship and spirited competition to you (even while palming a dagger near our hips with our left) and invite you to experience the latest advancements in gaming technology. Lovers of real time strategy*, lucky rolls, long campaigns, bitter clashes of red vs. white dice, and all things warlike will find much to love as we embark on our new game together.
Experience for yourself the thrill of rolling a two and still pulling out a victory when your opponent manages only a single dot on his own die!
Be there as the tiny plastic cannon the size of Massachusetts becomes nine men, then seven, then six, then a horse!
Feel the adrenaline course through your veins as you occupy the indefensible European continent!
Own the indescribable feelings of shouting, “No! Not Irkutsk!” as the hordes swarm the border from Kamchatka!
All of these experiences and more can be yours!
Yes, we are talking about Risk. If you think you’ve played long board games before, well, buckle up, Pardner, because this is going to be a long and bumpy ride like you’ve never seen. So use that paid ten minute break at 2:00 PDT today to attend our opening ceremonies. Choose your army (current options are The Armada Azul, The Crimson Scourge, The Negro (that’s nay-gro, you know, Español) Murder Militia, The Grey Matter, and Los Caballeros Villanos Amarillos, though naming rights can be purchased for a nominal fee), place your mans, and hold on for dear life. One or two turns per workday means weeks of inspiring battlefield bravery, heartwrenching drama, and daring invasions before the final die is cast. Be there, or be elsewhere.

*Note – This game is not a real time strategy.

The players are the members of the Xbox Operations Center Documentation Team (XOCDOC, pronounced "zock dock") that share this office -that would be myself and Richard- and the two guys from the tools team that are just down the hall from us in another office. That would be Urn (Aaron) and Mike. The idea is that we get two paid breaks of ten minutes a piece each day, so we might as well use them to do something together. We'll play a round each day, or as close as time allows, and if it starts impinging on our productivity, we can skip a day when we need to.

Urn promises a bloodbath. I say he's all hat and no cattle, but we'll see what happens when the dice come up. Richard is acting a good deal more meek, feigning docility by reading the instructions again. We'll see if he inherits the earth, sort of literally. And Mike forgot to attend the opening ceremonies today, so Urn called him, and he came on up with the second half of his lunch to deal out the cards. This lackadaisical approach may also be one big head fake. We'll see. As for me? Well, I have a few strategies to use. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. I'll give you updates sometimes if I think about it. Wish me luck! (I know you're pulling for The Crimson Scourge.)

Nice timing

2007-10-29T11:29:00.000-05:00

I thought this was interesting. Just a few days ago, I went on a little rabbit trail about LP's and how much I like them, and then today, I open my ad-sponsored Google inbox, and this story is in the news feed. You might be interested.

In Rainbows

2007-10-25T14:35:00.000-05:00

I finally managed to find somewhere to listen to Radiohead's "In Rainbows" today. I'm planning on buying it at some point when I'm not recovering from a coast-to-coast move and it's actually out on CD, but for the mean time, I was grateful to find it being streamed on iMeem. I can only assume it's legal, because it is iMeem, after all, and they're legit.

Most of you that pay attention to this sort of thing (and I know some of you don't, and that's cool too) have probably heard about Radiohead's move to release this new album. Rather than generating a lot of buzz for months and months and advertising everywhere, they've just discreetly posted to their web page every so often that the album was proceeding well, and then all of a sudden, there was an announcement on the 1st of October that the record would be released to everyone in the world simultaneously on the morning of October 10th via digital download. On top of that, the price for the record was left completely up to the individual buyer, with zero pounds and zero pence an available option. The band was releasing the record themselves -no label support- which means that they get pretty much 100% of the money paid for every copy. It's an all-around great move. Enormous amounts of PR for free, a 100% cut of album profits (which is about 85-90% higher than what they'd get from a major label), and a challenge to the notions of any particular way that things have to be done.

But you can read about all of that anywhere. There's something else about this release model that I think is so cool. Let's go back a few years to, say, the early 90's. These were almost the last years of a really great phenomenon. Each occurrence of this phenomenon started when music fans around the world (or across the nation, or wherever) found out that their favorite band or arist was going to release a new record on such and such a date. Anticipation grew, there was no end of fan speculation about what the new record would be like, and every tidbit of information spread among the fans largely by word of mouth. A few months would pass, and then, depending on the popularity of the artist, fans would line up outside the record stores to get a copy of the new recording. Everyone would go home and listen to it, absorb the details, and then get together with their friends to talk about it. There was a simultaneous experience, and everyone was able to get involved. Music of all forms has always had a strong community aspect to it, but the Day One Record Store Queue was a really special thing. I'm not going to pretend like I'm old enough to have experienced it more than a few times myself, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate it, right?

I remember my first exposure to the technology of mp3's. This was back in the days when it made any sense at all to be a member of AOL, months after the time when they limited your minutes and there was a small surcharge to access a new frontier known as the World Wide Web. In the music chats, and probably elsewhere, people started to distribute these tiny, tiny files that you could play in a brand new program called Winamp. (But unless your computer was pretty powerful, you couldn't do anything else at the same time.) I was introduced to Napster some time around the beginning of 2000 ("It will find mp3's from tons of people all at once!"), and again, I won't pretend: I used it a little. Not much, because downloading music on a dial-up connection was too tedious. But enough that I can say I saw the revolution coming. My ear was to the ground when the stirrings started to gather steam and hint that there may be a stampede on the way.

A decade later, and no one that's inclined to do otherwise has to wait until an actual release date to listen to a new album. There just isn't quite the same feeling anymore of going to the record store on the first day, going home with a brand new record, and knowing that all over the world, or at least the country, thousands of people are experiencing the same thing you are for the very first time.

With the rise of the information age, it's become harder and harder to digest a new record without encountering, to some extent, other people's advice on what you should think of it, even before you've taken the shrink wrap off. Or clicked "Buy." It's too bad. But Radiohead took a step forward (backward?) with this release. No press copies, no early streaming, no opportunities for that core fan base to rub it in everyone else's faces that they heard it first. In the small hours of the morning on October 10th, everyone got the same chance to listen for the first time, at the same time. I wish I'd been involved. I mean, it's a very good record, yes, but I can hear that now. I wish I'd been able to listen to it for the first time knowing that scores of other people were listening to it for the first time. The internet has destroyed a lot of what we formerly considered to be "community," but this was at least a step back in the same sense as looking at the moon and knowing that your friends and family look at it too, no matter where they are. And that counts for something.

I also appreciate that the band realizes that it's worth it to turn this release into something that's only available online. I like innovation as much as the next guy, but there's something wonderful about having a tangible, physical record that is just truly inimitable. It's why I collect LP's. Yes, the sound quality is better on an LP, and yes, they're inexpensive, and yes, the hunt is as good as the purchase. But the biggest reason is that I can actually hold the music. I can look at the grooves in my hand and know that if my vision was a thousand times better, I could actually kind of see the music. I can pick it up and see cover art that’s a foot across, and I can hold that too. So you can call it a cash grab on the part of the band if you want, or you can look at it as simply a piece of installation art to be spread, one living room at a time, across the whole world (and there may be something to that, but for once, it’s installation art I can get into), but I still want the discbox. Call me crazy.

Getting Started at Microsoft

2007-10-02T23:20:00.000-05:00

Looks like it's been about ten days, and I have to tell you, quite a bit has happened in the last week and a half. Where to start?

We've moved to Redmond, for one thing. It smells like evergreens.
We'd made a couple of trips over before to look at things and interview and all, but now we actually live here. We're living in a place called Reflections at Marymoor, and that's Marymoor Park they're talking about. We went through the park today to have a look at it and see what all the fuss is about. It's really great! There's a Subway and a bagel shop inside the park (!), as well as a dozen baseball fields, a cricket field, soccer fields galore, a model airplane field, and an amphitheater, but one thing that I thought was awesome was the big, big public garden. You can rent a 10' x 40' plot for 45 dollars per year and plant anything you want. There are lots of nice flowers, and some people grow vegibbles that they harvest every so often. It's really neat.

Our apartment is a nice blend of amenities, location, and low rent. We're really happy with it. It's very new and clean, and the people that run the place are very friendly. It's apartment living, so that means taking the trash bags across the courtyard to the trash room and getting a key for a little mailbox, but it also means activity. People around, doing things, going here and there. There's also a nice fitness room, a big hot tub, a pool that's heated all year long, and a movie theater that we can use for TV shows or movies or games or whatever. It has free popcorn, too. I'll have pictures soon, but Kirsten and I agreed that we should be allowed to finish unpacking and putting pictures up and everything first, so you'll have to wait just a little longer (And besides, it's just an apartment, seriously.)

Right across the street is a wide gravel jogging/biking trail that goes about a quarter mile and ends up in a shopping center with a Whole Foods Market and a Chipotle, so that's just fantastic. Whole Foods sells the little leftover chunks of their fancy cheeses, too. They're the bits that are left when they're done cutting the nice looking wedges and stuff, and they're the perfect way to sample the freaky-looking and freaky-smelling cheeses without having to buy a large amount. They call it the Petites Fromages Programme. We've decided to try a new cheese at regular intervals and keep notes on the good ones. My brother Scott did something similar a few years ago, and I'm sure he is a much wiser and better rounded person for it, just the way we will be. The first two were Cotswold and Cahill Porter (rated 8 out of 10 and 6 out of 10, respectively), and we'll get another the next time we're over there at the cheese counter.

So we're learning our way around and getting to appreciate the things that are close by. For me, though, the biggest change, obviously, is my new job! I've only been at it for two days, but it's been pretty cool so far.

I had an orientation yesterday morning and then went on over to my office building. My manager had me do the ID card paperwork early, so my key card was ready when I got to work the first day. Most people do the paperwork on the first day and get their ID card, MS e-mail address, etc. a few days later. I had to go over to Building 8 to get my ID, though. My office, the Millennium D building, is a few miles away from the main campus of Microsoft, so the receptionist picked up the phone, punched a number, requested a shuttle pickup, and then told me to watch for shuttle #104 in three to five minutes. Sure enough, about five minutes later, a white Priusshowed up, and I had a nice conversation with the driver about Washington weather and the differences between this side of the country and the other (particularly, The South) while we rode over to Building 8. Then I said thanks, she said to have a good day, and I went downstairs to get my picture taken and pick up my ID. It took about five minutes, and the Building 8 receptionist got me another shuttle back to my building, only this one showed up in about one minute. That's pretty awesome! They even have valets to park everyone's cars in the morning. Everyone. Not just the head honchos. What a nice place to work! (I hear they also have a chopper or two to whisk people back and forth from SeaTac airport. Sweeeeeet.)

When I got back, I got the grand tour from Richard, the other tech writer, who's more knowledgeable than me by every measure, and probably nicer. He and I will be working together, and he's a really cool guy, so it will be a nice working environment. We get along nicely. After the tour, I read a bunch of documents through most of the afternoon to get up to speed with all of the technical stuff I have to deal with, did a network install of Windows and Office on the laptop they gave me, came home, and was asleep by 8:15. I think it was a combination of getting up at working man time, narrowly missing catching a cold the last couple of days, and trying to wrap my head around difficult concepts for a lot of the day. I got up once to dispatch a stowaway spider for Kirsten (It was living in Silverdale and had heard Redmond was nice. It wanted piece of the action as well.) and then went back to sleep until 7 this morning. I felt very rested this morning!

Today was finishing setting up my computer with all of the network stuff and then reading more information on the programs I'll be using and the concepts and technologies I'll be working with. I also had kimchi and rice in the cafeteria, and it was really really tasty. I owe my Korean students big time for turning me on to the goodness.

I guess that's about it. We really like it here, the job is nice, and the office is cool. I get to swipe a card to get through secured doors, drink all the tea or juice or whatever I want to for free, grab a shower when I jog or bike to work, and spend a little of my work time playing video games. Not a bad situation. I know this was kind of a just-the-facts post from the title on down, but I'll have some pictures and hopefully some good stories for you soon.
Stay tuned.

Kent

On Redmond (or, There are Giants in the Land)

2007-09-22T11:09:00.000-05:00

Some quick facts on Redmond for you, courtesy of (what else?) Wikipedia. It is a suburb of Seattle located across Lake Washington from the Emerald City. The population is around 46,000, as is the price of the average car. As "the bicycle capital of the Northwest" (and I think that's saying something), Redmond has bike trails all over the city and also has the state's only velodrome (I've just learned recently that a velodrome is a bike racing track with inclined corners like an F1 race track). The East Lake Washington school district had four entries in the 2006 ranking of top high schools in the country, and in Redmond, there is actually an Albert Einstein Elementary School. Doesn't Jimmy Neutron or somebody go to Einstein Elementary? Help me out here, someone. Redmond also has 23 public parks totaling over one thousand acres, including 17 miles of trails for biking, hiking, and horseback riding, which is not bad for the size of its population. You can read the whole article here. The point is, by pretty much all of the common statistical measures of desirability, Redmond is a pretty sweet place to live.

But life isn't run by statistics, not really, so there are things that we're excited about in heading to Redmond and things that are a little less desirable. Obviously, if the pros didn't far outweigh the cons, we wouldn't be going there, job or no job, but we still have to be realistic.

First of all, the crime rate in Redmond is famously low. It's a very safe city, and the legendary status of the Seattle area as an ideal place to raise a family is still pretty accurate. The schools are amazing. The climate, no matter what anyone tells you, is pretty awesome. (Grey a lot, rainy for a portion of the year, paradise most of the time.) All of that sort of general things. As for our place specifically, there are a lot of things that we really like. It's right across the street from Marymoor Park, which is 540 acres of fun. They have a big amphitheater there, the bike track, a free climbing wall, wifi coverage, baseball fields, cricket fields, all of that stuff. Plus, you know, trees and grass and everything. We're also just over a mile from work, and there are bike paths the whole way, so I've posted my car on Craigslist, and the first potential buyer is on the way over tomorrow morning to look at it. We'll keep Kirsten's, but just getting the chance to slim down and simplify by getting rid of one of the cars (and its monthly payment!) is a breath of fresh air. We also live a few hundred feet from a Chipotle, a Whole Foods, and the Brown Bear Car Wash, for whose logo I will unashamedly use the word "cute." Beyond that, ten minutes' drive will get us to anything we need. Groceries, a really nice library, bagels, a cool outdoor mall, etc. Plus the easy proximity to Seattle. So yes, the word is Location. And the public transit is extensive, clean, and cheap. I could go on and on, but it would just be babbling. Redmond is a nice place to live.

At the same time, though, there are drawback or difficulties, both practical and intangible. First of all, like any city that booms pretty suddenly, there's a whole lot of traffic around Redmond. It's a strange city for us, and we don't know how to get around very well or what the best things are to do, and when you add crazy traffic to that, it makes the adjustment that much more difficult. We also know Meghan and Ryan, who are really cool, and no one else. It's not like you usually get a break knowing everyone in a place before you live there, but that's still another thing that will give us a challenge when we get there. Meghan and Ryan are great, but it's not like they're going to be around every minute of the day, so we'll have to make some more new friends.

The bigger issue that we'll have to come to grips with, though, is that Redmond, no matter how you slice it, is a yuppie town. The median income is in the 70's, I think, and there are European luxury cars every time you turn around. New housing boasts "From the low millions!" as a selling point, and apartments commonly go for upwards of two dollars per square foot. It's not that I'm opposed to living with wealth around me, and I'm certainly not jealous. I have a salary that pays our bills and still makes us live on a budget and watch where we spend money, and I'm fine with that. Living in an affluent place brings up a lot of complicated thoughts, though.

I don't want to be a yuppie. If I end up doing well in my job and getting raises and making a nice salary, that's fine, but I don't want to be eaten by my career, either. I'll work 40 or 45 hours a week, maybe 50 in an occasional week when there's a lot that needs to be done, but I refuse to sell my soul. I'll have a family at some point, and I'm not going to abandon them. And after the job, I'm still going to be surrounded by a lot of people who have no grounding whatsoever in reality. (I don't mean all wealthy people. I'm just saying that it's easier to be a snooty rich person when you're rich.) I don't want to be in a position where I never have a chance to touch the lives of people who are needy and troubled and desperate. I believe in vulnerable, authentic community. I believe that anyone who says that they believe in Jesus and all that He lived and taught is either willing to get their hands dirty and be His hands or is delusional. Given the choice, I'd rather live across the street from someone who's desperately trying to get over their addictions and fix their ruined life than someone who's never known a truly difficult life. This all means cultivating a life of attentiveness and diligence. There are needs everywhere, and people that are hurting. It's just a lot easier to ignore them and stay put when "the bubble" is staring you in the face. It's so clear that God worked all of this out, getting us to Washington, giving me the right thing to say in an interview, giving me a great job that pays just enough, giving us a place to live... We're so excited knowing that He has very big reasons for all of that. It will just have to be a daily discipline to walk it out every day and not just say that I believe in it.

Another challenge that comes with living in a boom town is that it will sometimes be difficult for me, personally, to be accepting of everyone. It's an ideal of mine to love everyone, but I'll be honest: I'm too critical a lot of times, especially if I think someone is pretentious or conceited. I know that rich people are just as lonely and in need of real community anyone, but I think I have the tendency to leave that to someone else sometimes. I wish this wasn't a part of who I am, but I'm afraid it is. And really, if the lifestyles of some of the people Jesus encountered didn't lead Him to write them off, where on earth do I get the right to dismiss anyone out of hand? I usually assume the best about anyone, but if there's one thing I can't stand, it's snootiness. That does not give me the right to assume the worst, period. It's easy to vilify anyone that you don't see eye to eye with, but it doesn't make it right. So keep me accountable on this, won't you? I have no idea what it will mean, practically, to keep me accountable, but I'll let you all brainstorm.

At the end of the day, the question has to arise: "Kent, you used to be so punk rock. You used to stick it to the man at every opportunity. You were an archetype of the modern revolutionary. And now this?" (There may be variations.) Don't think it hasn't played across my mind like a Vegas marquee ever since I first entertained the thought of moving out here. Why live where there's traffic? Why work for The Man as just another workforce sheep? Why live in such a complicated place? Why not just keep it simple, be free from corporate monsters, and run a bakery or something? Or, worst of all, why not be a writer like you always wanted to be? Well, I can't say I have the conclusive and comprehensive answer for all of that. I can say, and call it a cop-out if you want, that I have prayed my way here and believe with all of my heart that God has taken us exactly where we're supposed to be. I can tell you that I still want to be a writer, and I still will be. I can also tell you that while it's easy to champion folks who find a creative way to start a family and break free of all that modern culture dictates at the same time, that doesn't make their actions morally superior. When I was 16, I wouldn't have listened to what I'm saying now, and I can tell you that my heart wants to explore its angst over growing up and see what's valid instead of just dropping the issue altogether. Most of all, I guess I can say that it's not all fun and roses, and it's not easy in some ways, but that I don't regret taking the steps that have brought me here. It's just something new, and just like any other time of my life, I have to decide every day to make the most of it and leave a trail of improvements in every area I touch. I guess in that sense, it's no new challenge at all. I'll do my best to keep you informed along the way.

Thanks for reading, and I'm sorry for the length. I'll get some more pictures soon, and more great reporting. Stay tuned.

Kent

...and the food was fun, too.

2007-09-19T15:22:00.000-05:00

Preface

You should go to Redmond some time. It's pretty nice. And you can come and visit us there, because we're moving. Soon.

My interview was yesterday at one in the afternoon. After some communication with the hiring and managing people for this job, we set up the interview time, and I started studying. I read about SQL. I read about XML. I read about Microsoft, and about Siemens, and about Xbox, and about Redmond. Since it takes about two hours to drive to Redmond, and traffic, sometimes unpredictably, can be horrendous beyond words, we left just after 9 yesterday morning. What we planned on doing was to drive to the office where I was interviewing so we'd know exactly where it is, then call our friend Meghan and hang out until the interview. The directions were good, and we found the office, then caught up with Meghan. She and Kirsten dropped me off at the office and went to hang out. I called Mike, the contact between me and the two people I was interviewing with, and during the ten minutes he took to get down to the lobby, I got over my jitters. I had been pretty quiet and reflective all morning, kind of going over my thoughts in my mind as Kirsten quizzed me on the way over. Mike took me up to the third floor to the Xbox conference room, and there were two pretty friendly guys in there ready to ask me some questions and hear what I had to say. And I left my quiet, pensive self downstairs and gave them all of the energy and passion and enthusiasm they could have wanted. I was so happy with the way the whole interview went. I was able to take my time to think clearly, and they asked some things that I had prepared for. Ultimately, these guys are smart enough to know if I'm not the person for the job, no matter what kind of answers I feed them. If I'm good for a job but not this one, they could figure it out. So in that sense, the pressure is a little smaller. So I told them about how I'm a very curious person* and how much I'd love to work there. I wish I could remember some of the specifics, but I really don't. Not any of the interesting stuff, anyway. About 40 minutes after I started the interview, we were shaking hands and telling each other how much we enjoyed meeting each other, and then Mike took me back downstairs to the front door. We talked a little on the way out, and he told me that he thought I'd done well and that he would let me know by the end of the day. (Wow!) This was a good sign in my mind. First of all, if I'd completely blown it, I'd probably have some idea myself, for one thing, but he'd also run it all by the other guys as well. Secondly, if they had a lot more people to talk to still or hadn't eliminated some of the previous interviewees, it would take longer than three hours as well. So it sounded positive. Well, sure enough, thirty minutes after my interview ended, my phone rang. It was Mike. He asked how I felt like the interview went and then offered me the job. All of the paperwork, salary negotiation, etc. is still getting moved along, but once we get through all of that, it looks like I finally have a job! It's so exciting. They'd like for me to start at the beginning of this coming week, but we have to find a place to live first, and then move there, so it may be more like a week from now. Either way, we're on our way across the water to Redmond!

I've already been asked a couple of times what I'll be doing exactly. I don't know every single detail of the day-to-day job just yet, but I do have the fortunate position of having a job I can actually explain, unlike a lot of the people in Redmond. First of all, it needs to be said that I'm working at the world headquarters of Xbox. If that's not cool, I don't know what is. The people who run all of the operations of Xbox Live and manage all of the data going back and forth are all really brilliant, and they're great at what they do, but the issue that they have to deal with is that all of this great knowledge is sitting inside people's heads. This makes things difficult sometimes, so I will be working with all of these brilliant computer nerd types to get all of the information from their heads into some kind of deliverable format, either on the Web or in print. They need to have troubleshooting steps documented, installation or update processes recorded, etc., so that's what I'll be doing. I'm excited, because it means that I will always have something more to learn, something to do, some area of technology that I get to come up to speed on straight from the mouth of an expert. One of the questions they asked in the interview was why I wanted to leave my job teaching. I told them that I didn't. Technical writing, to me, is teaching. I get to take ideas straight from the source and help to share them with someone else in a form that will help them understand. Ideas are just waiting to fly around, get shared, and make things happen, and I get to facilitate all of that exchange. I can't wait to get started. I imagine I probably can't take a bunch of pictures, but I'll make sure to report on as much as I can to give you an idea of what the place is like.

III

We have friends in Redmond (Meghan and her husband Ryan), so we joined them at the end of the day for a little celebratory dinner at a place called Trader Vic's. It's a little fancy, but it's one of the many, many places around the area where Ryan gets a discount for working for Microsoft, so we got to enjoy it. I asked our server whether I should get the Phad Thai or the Lamb Curry, and he said they're both good but that the lamb curry is "funner" because there were things I could add to the dish myself. OK. I went for it, and it was the coolest meal EVER!! It was indeed funner. The lamb curry stew was in a plate with a rim, and there was another dish that fit around the edge of it and had several little sections for various toppings/accoutrements, some of which made sense and some of which were a little more unlikely (but still tasty). There were also raisins, which are the worst thing in the world. The WORST. I ignored them and went with the other things. It was fantastic. A little of this here, a few more sunflower seeds there, maybe an additional flake of coconut on that spoonful... Every bite was customized. Fantastic. I didn't get a photo of the meal, so I drew this version once we got home. I've preserved all of the intricate details the best I was able, but it should be noted that both the stew and the chutney looked a good deal less amoeboid than my drawing. Click to zoom. For, you know, detail.

So now we're on the hunt for a place to live in Redmond. It's like hunting for a job, except that you apply to give someone a ton of money instead of applying for them to pay you. There are all kinds of nice places around Redmond, but it can be pretty pricey, so we have to weigh our options before we jump into something. They'd like me to start working on Monday, but it may be a few days after that before we can get settled. Wherever we end up, I'll make sure to give you pictures and a full report. We're really excited, and the way everything has come together, it's really clear to us that God has brought us here and has things for us to do in Redmond. It will be great to see how it all happens. When I have a chance to sit down and put it all down, I have a lot of thoughts about Redmond and the new culture we're jumping into. Some happy, some apprehensive. Stay tuned. Thanks for reading!

* - I gave them my spleen story:
I am addicted to Wikipedia. Not in a spend-tons-of-time-daily sense. Just in the sense that if I don't know a particular fact, I am all over Wikipedia like trucks on highways. So when Kirsten and I were engaged and I wondered aloud one day exactly what a spleen does, Kirsten had to slow me down and have me rein in my curiosity, almost on a dare. I asked her when I could check, and she said, "After we're married." That was about four months away, so I just stuck the question in the to-do stack of my mind and got on with my life. Skip forward a few months. Kirsten and I stumbled into our new home after traveling a full day or so home from Prague, I set my bags down, got a drink of water, took out my computer, and looked up "spleen" on Wikipedia. I imagine I slept better that night than I had for months.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

2007-09-16T22:48:00.000-05:00

To my left, the "Ascot Opening Day" scene from My Fair Lady is playing, and it's as priceless as ever. If you have never seen this movie, see it. Immediately. Even if you're the sort of person who doesn't like musicals. If you are the sort of person who doesn't like musicals, there are a couple of songs you'll want to skip ("On the Street Where You Live," anyone?), but on the whole, you'll still find something to love at least three times a minute through the entire excessive duration of the movie. Promise.

Anyway. Kirsten's mom gave us Mariners tickets for the game today vs. the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, so we took the ferry over and walked to Safeco Field. We discovered on the way over that it was LUNCHBOX DAY (!) for children 14 and under. Or, in Kirsten's case, for children at heart who smile largely and say "Hello!!" to the high school kid who's working at the gate and thinks they're cute. I think I may use the lunch box at work in the future. It's a nice souvenir. Kirsten likes it too.
We were on the top deck on the third base line, and it was nice view of things. It looked like this:
We were sitting just a couple of rows in front of a boy named Gus, who had the privilege -and I don't know just how he got it- of stealing second base during the seventh inning stretch. There was a corporate sponsor for it, of course, and he got to run out of the break in the outfield wall, charge down to second base, pull it out of the dirt, and bring it back to his seat as a souvenir. I never played baseball as a kid, and I've never really been a big fan myself, but this made me wish I could go back and fix things because... Well, gosh, second base!

Jock: I totally caught this foul ball!
Ten-year-old Gus: I stole second base.
Jock: I'm ashamed of my arrogance.

The scoring started in the third inning with a home run by Tampa Bay. Seattle answered with their own home run in the same inning, and then from there, I don't remember exactly what happened when, but a bunch of bad pitchers from Seattle gave up some nice hits that were handled poorly by fielders of both in- and out- persuasions, and by the end of the afternoon, they dropped the game 9-2.

If you haven't been keeping up with the Mariners (and I haven't, I've just been informed), you know that it's been a tragic season. Three games out of first place, and then they dropped 15 of 17 games and they just can't pull out of the nose dive. (Root, root, root for the home team / if they don't win, it's the same...) But it was still a ton of fun to watch. The stadium's nice, and the crowd likes to cheer, and it's just a cool spectacle. There are also legendary garlic fries. When you eat them, insects and wives keep their distance for weeks, and you have to buy a new toothbrush. It's pretty awesome.
There are also salmon things and fish and chips and clam chowder and clam strips as well as the normal concessions like hot dogs and pizza. It's very Pacific Northwest.

The mascot for the Mariners is the moose, and he wanders around through the whole game giving high fives and posing for photo ops. He also delivers prizes to people whose seats are chosen at random, and someone fairly close to us got the coolest prive ever today: 121 bags of Chee-tos. Incredible. He was picked for the prize over the park PA and the scoreboard, and then, "Let's see what he's won... 121 bags of Chee-tos! Brought to you by another corporate sponsor."
It was a really fun day, and I'd go again. I'm not stepping in line to pay a ton for season tickets, but it would be fun to go back every so often. Especially if we start winning. Come visit us some time, and we'll take you too.

And this is more or less without context, but Kirsten snapped this picture of me when I was looking at the Sound from the Bremerton ferry dock. I'm used to these telescopes costing a quarter, but Washington is cooler than other places, so it's free.

The Onion Strikes Again

2007-09-16T01:01:00.001-05:00

Pitchfork Gives Music 6.8

Photos

2007-09-14T22:15:00.001-05:00

I thought it would be good to show you a few pictures I've taken since we moved here. After all, I've told you how the area is so pretty and everything. I definitely haven't taken pictures of everything pretty, but I'd like to give you a little taste of life up here and the scenery.
A couple of weeks ago, we drove from Port Angeles, where Kirsten's Grandpa lives, 90 minutes or so away, up past the Olympic National Park, past Crescent Lake, to one of Kirsten's favorite spots, Second Beach. (We also passed First Beach, but we stopped before Third Beach. For real.) Crescent Lake is amazingly blue as well as amazingly deep. There's an old story about a couple in the 20's who went from Forks down to Port Angeles (or something like that) and drove on the road that goes a few feet away from the edge of Crescent Lake. They were buying a washing machine. The folks who sold them the washing machine were the last people to see this couple alive. Somewhere between the appliance store and their home on the other side of the lake, they ran off the road and into the lake. And this lake is deep enough, and the sides steep enough, that some divers just recently found the couple, their car, and the washer at the bottom of the lake. I may have botched a small detail or two, but that's more or less the story as we heard it from Grandpa on the way past the lake. It was a beautiful day, and it was hard to tell the difference between the reflection of the blue sky on the surface of the lake and the blue of the water itself. I took this picture out the car window as we drove past. Click to zoom in a little bit.
We got to Second Beach, and even though the weather there was really grey and a little cold, I could still see what a special place it is. After a mile-long trail through the woods of an indian reservation, we came out onto the beach at a huge pile of sun-bleached driftwood that we had to climb over to get onto the beach itself. Again, click to zoom.
The rock formations and cliffs in and near the water made it look like pirate ships should come into view at any minute. As far as I know, the Pacific coast west of Washington and below Alaska is not exactly a pirate-infested area, but it was still fun to think about. Check out the pine trees way up on top of this solo rock. (Click it.)
There was also a little hole in the rock where the tide came from two directions and splashed up all violently every so often and sprayed every which way. Pretty cool.
Second Beach also has a bunch of tide pools that fill up at high tide as well as big rocks sitting in the shallow surf, and both of these have a bunch of little creatures and plants to check out and, in some cases, avoid stepping on barefoot. Kirsten found a really cool little creature, an Ochre sea star, Pisaster ochraceus. There were quite a few of them around. We spent about two hours at the beach altogether, but our toes were freezing, and the wind was making it pretty chilly, so we didn't stay the whole afternoon. Second Beach is a really great place, though. The next time any of you visit, we'll have to see if we can take a trip all the way over there. You'll like it.
A little closer to home, in Bremerton, is Gold Mountain Golf Course. Kirsten's dad offered to treat us both to a round of golf recently. I'd gone right after we got here and made solid contact on about three swings total (That's out of eighteen holes, so close to... let's see... 200 swings altogether?), so I was about ready to take a pass on one round and be Kirsten's caddy. It was nice that way, and much less frustrating. It was a nice day, and the course is beautiful as well. Here's a picture from a spot where I remembered that I had a camera in my pocket and snapped one before running to catch up with Kirsten and give her the right club.
And here's Kirsten teeing off on the next hole. Notice the new haircut.
Aren't golf courses pretty? I think so. Frustrating, awful, godforsaken, and whatever else you want to call them, for sure, but pretty.
And that about wraps things up. Kirsten did take this picture of me offering resumes to anyone that wanted one from me in downtown Seattle. I was hoping someone would come by, take one, and offer me a job on the spot. No such luck, but it's a fun picture.
We've said on many occasions that we should be taking more pictures of our life. If we start taking our own advice more, maybe I'll do a photo blitz like this again. Stay tuned. I hope you enjoyed a little glimpse into what we've been up to. (A lot of what we've really been up to involves lying around the house like unemployed slackers with no friends, reading books, or watching excessive amounts of Food Network, but that's not nearly as exciting.)
Tune in Tuesday or Wednesday for interview reporting.

Kent

Phone calls, bus routes, and crash courses

2007-09-14T00:57:00.001-05:00

Well. After weeks and weeks of nothing at all, it looks like the job search may be getting somewhere! How exciting! I think most everyone who reads this has at least a bit of personal interest, and I know that quite a few of you have been praying for us as we get settled here, so I'll give you the whole long story.

A couple of months ago, I got an e-mail from my cousin David, who does something or other at Microsoft. He doesn't park next to Bill Gates or anything (mostly because he lives in Atlanta), but he's been at things for a little while, and he oversees projects of various sorts. He's associated with some people who developed a sort of training program a little while ago. A few of Microsoft's partners, project managers, etc. got a hold of this program and liked it, so David and the Adventos crew wrote version 2.0. Four hundred and something people at Microsoft started using the second version, so Microsoft bought the whole package and commissioned the creation of version 3.0. David contacted me to see if I'd be interested in editing the documentation for the whole shebang. It's great experience on my resume to have Microsoft contract editing experience, and it's also helpful for me to learn a lot of terminology and technology that's in use in the IT world. I barely understand all the concepts myself even after editing and doing rewrites on the whole thing --actually, I don't think I've got quite all of it-- but if you're more technologically inclined than I am, or if you're just curious, you can go to the website at www.sdlcinabox.com to see information on the program. It really is pretty interesting, I promise.

Fortunately, it looks like these lines on my resume worked the magic that my other experience couldn't quite do. I got an e-mail last week from a job I didn't even remember applying for. (Not really saying much; there have been time since we've been here that I've put in five or six resumes a day for a few days at a time. I lost count ages ago and lost track of specifics before that.) Siemens IT Services does consulting work for Microsoft in Redmond, and I've been told that I applied for a Technical Writing position with them. The recruiter sent me a preliminary interview questionnaire, which I filled out (and edited for typos, grammatical problems, and formatting issues) and sent back with an updated resume, and then the next afternoon, I scheduled a phone interview with the hiring manager. Went through that phone interview, sent writing samples that the hiring manager asked for, and then today, got another e-mail requesting a face-to-face interview at Microsoft in Redmond this coming Tuesday. Sweeeeet... It's all gone pretty quickly up to this point, which makes me think that there aren't loads of other people in the running. All the same, though, I need to make sure to go in and really impress them. The job is in Microsoft's offices in Redmond, and the position would be working with a team of Microsoft employees under Microsoft managers. So I'm guessing that the interview process might just be similar to Microsoft's infamously grueling process. I don't think it'll last eight hours like Microsoft's typical interview, but I'm preparing myself for difficult questions and a lot of thinking on my feet.

I'm also preparing myself to back up my claims of basic reading knowledge of XML, JavaScript, and SQL. I think I know the basics pretty well, but my idea of basics may be a little different than theirs, so I've been looking up tutorials and practicing my coding and basically devouring every reference source I can get my hands on. By Tuesday, I'd like to be able to see my skill as thorough reading knowledge and passable practical knowledge. That's my biggest item of homework over the weekend. That and figuring out exactly which bus(es?) I need to take from Seattle to Redmond to avoid walking several miles. Can't show up late, you know.

The job itself is pretty nice. The team that developed the Xbox is basically a collective of some of the brightest minds at MS, and the complex technical issues of system and software development for the system are almost entirely in the heads of these programmers and engineers. Microsoft needs a technical writer to take this stuff out of a bunch of heads and put it into deliverable document form, so that's what I would be doing. It probably wouldn't be too tough to transition from a Siemens contract job to a full-time job at Microsoft, and from what I hear, it seems to be an exceptionally great place to work.

Between the first contact on this job and today, I've had one and a half other interesting contacts. The first is with a company called Attenex. They do some sort of document review and capture software that I didn't take a long enough amount of time to really grasp. (Not that I think it would take long. It just looked wicked boring.) They're looking for a technical trainer to go places and teach clients to use their software. The job would pay very well, but I think that the amount of travel would make it less than desirable. I went ahead and replied to the recruiting e-mail by applying, and I'll see if I can get some more information, but I just get a little too much of a marriage wrecker vibe at the moment.

The second contact was from a tutoring company that is recruiting new tutors. It also pays well, and I'd have the option to work as much or as little as I like as well as doing house calls or working online. If it's legit, really pays what they say it does, and has enough demand out there, I may even do it a few hours a week from home. If any of you out there want to check it out, maybe even apply to do some tutoring yourself, the web site is www.goodgradesnow.com. We can keep each other informed on the whole thing.

OK. So, not a lot of entertainment this time around, but there's some news for you. Thanks SO much to all of you who have shown an interest, prayed for me, asked about how things are going, or just stayed where you are instead of moving out here and clogging up the job market even more. (Of course I'm joking. You should all move out here so we can see you.) Thanks for reading this too. Amanda told me that she follows the news closely, and I told her I would give her a shout out for it. So... Hey Amanda! Thanks for reading. Express your devotion, kids, and you could get your fifteen seconds of internet fame next time. Cause blogs do LOVE comments, for serious.

I'll try to remember to get back on here Tuesday soon after the interview and let you know what happens. In the mean time, if you have any interviewing tips for me, by all means, send them along.

Love you all. Take care of yourselves.

Kent

Not Pine Country

2007-09-02T19:32:00.001-05:00

Did you know that pines aren't native to the Northwest? If you just said yes, remind me to to reprimand you the next time I see you, because no you didn't. Kirsten's grandpa (and I get to call him Grandpa too, which is great, because it's been a while since I've had one of those) told me so, so I know it's true. The evergreens you see here are mostly firs. I was surprised and intrigued.
Anyway, pines or no pines, this area is beautiful this time of the year. It's been overcast maybe four days since we've been here, and it's gotten up to the low 80's a handful of times. For the most part, it's just paradise. And there are parts of the year with a fair amount of rain, but for the most part, it just gets grey a lot, so we're really happy to be here.
We've both been around the house quite a bit, because I still don't have a job, and we don't know many people. We've been reading a lot (Kirsten sat down the other night and didn't get up until she had read The Great Gatsby cover to cover), and we're both getting pretty good at Guitar Hero (I'm two songs away from getting five stars on every song on hard on GH2). But it's not like I haven't been doing my best to become employed. I make daily checks to the careers section of Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Nordstrom, as well Careerbuilder, Monster, and Craigslist. I've also made three trips to Seattle to make a big resume blitz and cold-call a bunch of businesses. If you can think of any resources I'm not exhausting, I'd love to hear about them.
In the mean time, it sure is nice to have someone like Kirsten's dad. He's letting us stay with him, and we buy some of the food, do some cooking for him, keep the house nice and tidy, and hang out in the evenings. It's a great provision. All the same, it is going to be nice to have our own place and feel like we're really settled in. More news as it unfolds.

Chutzpah?

2007-08-14T00:29:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is a Seattle day! We haven't been there yet since we moved to Washington, and I'm really excited. I love Seattle, and it will be nice to go over there again. I've printed twenty resumes, and I'm going to do my best to get all of them into the hands of people who can actually do something with them. We'll see what happens.
What I'd really love is to live either in Downtown Seattle or close to the ferry dock on Bainbridge Island. That way I could leave my car at home and either walk or bike to work every day. The weather's not always perfect for that, but I think it would be more than worth the chance to stop driving. For either of those situations to work out, though, I'll have to work in just the right place. Fortunately, my first choice of location (Downtown) also has the highest concentration of employers, so I'm going to chase down anything I can.
We've found an apartment on Bainbridge Island that is right across the street from the ferry terminal, and we both really like it, so tomorrow's job search will be within a mile or two in any direction (but mostly east and north) from the ferry dock in Seattle. I'm going to go to the tallest office buildings (Washington Mutual Tower, Two Union Square, and Columbia Center) and visit every floor. And I'm also going to visit the hiring managers for a few Craigslist posts. I just figure that the temerity to show up uninvited and initiate an interview myself may just end up working in my favor. That whole go-getter attitude or whatever. In any case, a day spent in Seattle is always cool, and we're going to make it a lot of fun. I'll be sure to let you know what comes of it, and when I have a job and we have place to live and I'm getting exercise and enjoying my commute every morning reading a book while someone else does the driving, I'll let you say you always knew it was going to work out. Stay tuned.

Kent

Settling In

2007-08-06T00:51:00.000-05:00

So we made it all the way up here to Washington, and it was almost disappointing how simply it all went. I was bracing myself for an epic, possibly miserable, trek of gigantic proportions. You know, some kind of Kerouacian journey of self-discovery and lasting transformation, etc. But it was a really easy trip. Every night, we finished driving, and it was like, "Eh, that wasn't so bad..." and then the next day was the same thing. I'm grateful, but in a way, it's almost like I wanted to feel a little greater sense of accomplishment. I guess the writers of the great road stories and the sojourners that finish their trip more enlightened are very different from the married couple moving on the cheap and getting there as quickly as possible. We could have made the road itself our destination if we had really tried, but the truth is, Silverdale, Washington was the target, and we weren't kidding anybody. Maybe next time I'll stretch it out to a month and see what happens.
Some highlights of the trip:
A sign in rural Virginia, down by Tennessee, that advertised "Tuesday Nights, Unlimited Meats, Soft Serve Vegetables." (Someone didn't read that book about commas and stuff...)
A town called Bucksnort. There was some conjecture regarding how the name may have come to be. There were also towns called Troutville and Bovina. These names were a little more straightforward and consequently excited less conjecture.
Gas was a little less expansive in price range than we expected. $2.56 right before 81 South in Virginia to $3.09 in Aurora, CO.
Animal sightings included buffalo, a herd of sheep being babysat by a single llama, clouds shaped like a whale and a backstroking bear, little four-legged creatures that looked like impalas but probably weren't since impalas apparently aren't indigenous to the US, and finally, a pirate captain-sized parrot perched on the shoulder of a man driving a pickup truck through Oregon.
I also have some pictures for you. Here you go. First is a really interesting rock formation in Wyoming. It looked like pebble piles that had been blown up by Wayne Szalinski.
There was a variety of rocks and topography in Wyoming. It was actually kind of impressive how many different types of scenery were in one corner of one state. Here's another view from the car.And then in one part of the trip, we actually got to go through a tunnel that went right through a mountain like in Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons. Coooooool! I was so excited that I had to point, even though it's not polite.
And then one more picture, and I wish it could do its subject justice. I realize you can't see it much, but if you click, you can see it a tiny bit better. It's the best we could do with a simple camera from a car. On the way up here to Silverdale, we saw Mt. Rainier. Contrary to what you may have heard, northwest Washington doesn't actually get all that much rain, but it is overcast pretty often, so a sighting of an unobstructed Mt. Rainier is something to appreciate.
There you are. Washington. It's really great to be here. I know this is a good step for us, and I'm excited to make new friends and do all sorts of new things. It will be great. At the same time, it's not the easiest thing in the world just yet. Making new friends will be great, but missing my old ones is tough. I haven't found a job yet. I don't know my way around. You know, all of the normal difficulties with moving to a new place. Plus my family is all back east, so that's tough as well. I do know that all of the adjustment and the settling will be an adventure, and I really do intend to keep you posted on here. I'm not that regular with my posts usually, but I would really like to be, so keep checking in, and hopefully I'll have new pictures and news and stuff for you a little more often, or at least consistently, than I have in the past. I'll do my best. Just leave a comment every now and then so I know anyone is actually reading. In the mean time, pray for us as we get started, and let us know how you're all doing as well. Bye bye.

Kent

Up To the Evergreen State

2007-08-04T00:04:00.000-05:00

I have a lot of thoughts about this trip. It was fun, not nearly as grueling as I braced myself for, and overall, worth the driving to see some of the things we did. Just about all of my thoughts beyond that, though, will have to wait. We never got too drowsy on the road or too antsy, but now that this drive is actually behind us and I'm allowing myself to get sleepy, it's all catching up to me. We're at Kirsten's mom's house in Lacey, WA, and our trip is pretty much over. We'll head up to Silverdale tomorrow evening, and that's where we're stopping, but it's only about 90 minutes, so it doesn't really count. We kept some statistics in a little notebook, and I have a lot of pictures to post as well, so this isn't the last I'll write, but I have to get some sleep. I'll give you the quick summary: Western Idaho was not really gorgeous, the first part of western Oregon wasn't any more interesting, west-central Oregon was unique and big and grand, central Oregon was flat and barren, and then once we got to the Columbia River, which is the border between Oregon and Washington, it was incredible, breathtaking scenery all the way to Portland (about three hours) and then cozy, pretty evergreens up here to Lacey. It was not a bad day, and not exhausting all by itself, but at the end of the week, it was all I needed to finish me off: I'm thoroughly exhausted. I do want to tell you about some other things and show some pictures, though, so stay tuned, and I'll do my best to put some more on here tomorrow night from Silverdale. Thanks again to everyone who helped us make this move, whether you packed, painted, prayed, whatever. Your kindness really means a lot to us, and we're so honored to call you our friends and family. Watch for more very, very soon.

Kent

Denver to Boise

2007-08-03T11:11:00.001-05:00

Today's trip was the longest by a lot. We got here a little under thirteen hours after we pulled out of Denver. That was with a stop at Taco Time (slogan: "It really is."), a couple of gas stops, and a little delay just north of Denver. So we actually made decent time -mark another one for Google Maps- but it was still a long day. Yet again, though, it was pretty cool how far I was able to drive without getting sleepy or antsy. I really haven't felt burned out yet at all, which is miraculous and really convenient.
We only went through the northeast part of Colorado, which isn't too mountainous and majestic, but a little while after we hit Cheyenne, Wyoming and started heading west, the landscape started to get a little more interesting. There were a handful of really dramatic moments, a lot of mountainy desert looking places that there is probably a specific geological or geographic term for, and bits of flatness. The flattish parts in Wyoming were cool, though, because there were still occasional ridges, so when the interstate coincided with those, we could see a long, long way, and I really liked it. The best roadside mountains were in Utah, but they are very few in the far northern part of the state, so the real breathtaking grandeur of the Rocky Mountains is still connected in my mind with motivational posters and such. I'll see some 14ers in person at some point in my life, I'm sure. We got some pictures of some of the better parts of Utah and Wyoming, but honestly, I'm so tired that I just don't feel like grabbing them from my camera, resizing them, and uploading them. Maybe I'll get a couple on here later. I'll try, how about that?
The drive itself went well again. No complications, all good directions... No complaints. Drowsiness only started to sneak up on me at the very, very end, and then we got here to Uncle Scot and Aunt Rhonda's house, and it was all over. Their daughters Sydney and Angela are here too, so all six of us had a late dinner (yummy burritos), and now we're about to turn in for the night. This time tomorrow, we'll be falling asleep in Washington! Very exciting. I'll give you the grandly conclusive recap when we get to the Evergreen State. Until then...

Wichita to Denver

2007-08-02T09:45:00.000-05:00

Today was, I believe, the longest single stretch of one road that we'll encounter on this whole trip. 416 miles of I-70 West from Salina, Kansas to Aurora, Colorado, which is just east of Denver. My Uncle Tim and Aunt Marci live here with my cousin Matthew, who is home from college for about another week before he will head back to Oklahoma. He plays the drums and is a big music guy, so we talked bands and things tonight, which was nice. We also had the best meal of the whole trip so far, and on the very same day as the hands-down worst. See, this afternoon, Kirsten and I were both getting a little peckish in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, so she pulled out the atlas to find out what the next town was along the interstate. Wilson, Kansas was right off I-70, and it was named in the atlas, so we figured it was probably a pretty decently sized town and would have something worth eating. Wrong on both counts. Wilson promotes itself as "The Czech Capitol of Kansas," which sounds all cool and exotic until you think about it for a minute and realize that that makes about as much sense as "The Heaviest Concentration of Peruvians in All of Nome, Alaska": it doesn't take much. I imagine there was something like, "Wait, you're telling me there are no other Czechs in the entire state of Kansas? That's ridiculous. Fine, well, then we're the Czech capitol of the state! Ha!" We had driven through Wilson looking for Wilson before we realized what had just happened. The only place to eat was a small local place called Made From Scratch. And, I mean, it was made from scratch after all, and that means quality, right? What it really meant was this: a convenience store emptied of its merchandise racks, filled with portable tables and chairs, and supplied with a small assortment of chaffing dishes, each with a different sketchy food. It all looked like it had been prepared the day before, left out, reheated, and left out again. And yet the adventurer in us (it should actually be noted here that Kirsten had the good sense to turn the place down on first appraisal and that I insisted on the grounds that it would be an Experience) went ahead and stayed. I have been to a dozen countries, met a variety of people in my life, and been in lots of interesting and unusual circumstances, but I can confidently say that I have never felt more out of place than I did today at Made From Scratch. It was an Experience, for sure. After we were done being polite and being watched intently by (all?) the citizens of Wilson, we got back on I-70 and then stopped about twenty miles later for some McDonald's. But we have a good story now, so I guess it's all good. The rest of Kansas and the first half of Colorado were kind of surprising, Kansas because it was actually kind of scenic and nice, and Colorado because it's intensely boring until right when you get to Denver, when the Continental Divide springs up unexpectedly and pelts you with all sorts of majesty and everything. It was too cloudy today to really see legitimate mountains (remember, we stopped a few miles short of Denver), but I'm hoping for some good mountain scenery tomorrow. On the way in, we saw a herd of buffalo (seriously), and we were going to exit to see "the largest prairie dog in the world" until we realized that it weighed 8,000 pounds and so was, clearly, not a real prairie dog. And if it was, we wouldn't want to get anywhere near it anyway. The evening here at the Walters' place has been very pleasant, and dinner was delicious. It's a shame we can't stick around to see Denver, but tomorrow is a LONG day of driving, so we have to head out nice and early if we want to make it to Boise with our sanity intact. Kirsten says "Helllooooo!" to you all, and while this little trip journal has been all about us, we have been thinking of our friends back east as well, and we both hope that you're doing well and having as nice a week as we are. Do let us know how you're doing. We'll look forward to talking to you soon. Stay tuned for the Denver-Boise leg of the journey. Good night.
Kent

Memphis-ish to Wichita

2007-08-01T08:47:00.001-05:00

I have heard, and I believe it, that Pennsylvania has the worst roads of any state in the country. Oklahoma and Arkansas, though, could give PA a run for its money. Imagine the rib cages of 90-mile-long dinosaurs laid sporadically along lengths of American highway. Then imagine driving over them. That was sort of like what large portions of yesterday's roads were like. Other than the lack of upkeep on the highways, though, the trip here to Wichita was pretty easy. It's actually feeling like these days of driving are passing really quickly. The drive here certainly didn't feel as tedious as nine hours should have, for which we were both very grateful. Kirsten said on the way in that what she would most like to eat was a big bowl of pasta, and as it happened, we went the wrong way on the exit for our hotel, found a mall immediately, and found an Old Chicago restaurant outside the mall. Kirsten had Chicken Alfredo, I had Chicken Parmesan, and then we came back here to the hotel. I finally got to sleep about 4 hours later. Kirsten was pretty much asleep when we walked in the door. And then the sun woke me up bright and early this morning (I didn't have a windowless bathroom to sleep in like at Christopher and Bethany's house), and I'm feeling good and ready to get to Denver. Kansas and Oklahoma have actually not been as ugly and boring as I've heard, actually more sweeping and grand, really, but some big mountains will be a good change of pace all the same. Thanks for keeping up with the travels. I'll write from Denver.

Kent

Knoxville to Memphis (Almost)

2007-07-30T21:39:00.000-05:00

We had originally planned to drive from Lynchburg to Memphis today, but my brother Christopher and his wife Bethany live here in Cordova, just a few miles outside of Memphis, with their two kids, Rylee and Brady, and we wanted to spend more time with them today, so that's why we drove to Knoxville last night. We're here at Christopher and Bethany's place, and Rylee and Brady are asleep now. Rylee turned two in June, and she's not quite on top of her list of uncles, so she was calling me Uncle Scott all day. Scott's my other brother, and she just saw him pretty recently, so that explains that, I guess. I think she's pretty much got it now, though. We'll find out in the morning. Here we are with the four Tennessee Walters.The trip down today went pretty well for the most part. I was getting a little sleepy for a little bit while we were listening to an audio book, but once we got to talking and actually hanging out again, I woke back up and got us to Christopher and Bethany's house with no complications. We went out for dinner at Jim n' Nick's, which is a good old southern kitchen barbecue place. You know, we're in Memphis, we gotta get barbecue. It's just what you do. Especially since we're leaving the South behind, and there's a big question mark over the whole getting good barbecue in the future thing. To make the most of our southern food experience, Kirsten had fried green tomatoes for the first time.
Tomorrow is long trip through Arkansas, which I've never been to, Oklahoma, which I've managed to avoid, and a little bit of Kansas, which I have also been spared up until now. I hear it's pretty boring landscape, but all of this discovery of new places has got me pretty pumped, so hopefully my curiosity will keep me awake and interested. We're staying in Wichita tomorrow night, so if anyone knows of any good places to eat there, let me know. Send me an e-mail or call. I'll check in with you tomorrow and let you know everything goes on the road, and I'll probably have some more pictures as well. See ya!

Kent

Lynchburg to Knoxville

2007-07-30T00:11:00.001-05:00

I feel kind of bad writing this at 5 minutes to one in the morning after the last week of summer classes and several exhausting days of moving. I know that this is a very big deal, and as we crossed over the border from Virginia to Tennessee tonight, I thought about the fact that we're not going to be driving right back to Virginia in a few days. All of our things are headed west, and the landlord has the old key; this is it. So I wish I wasn't so tired and ready for bed, because I want to describe all of the details and do the whole event justice. It's a cross-country road trip, for goodness' sake. Oh well.
We pulled out of Lynchburg around 8 PM. Kirsten was a little bit weepy in her eyeballs, and I was a little bit weepy in my heart. I just didn't show it as much, I guess. Lynchburg gave us a few raindrops as we were headed into Forest, and I told Kirsten that VA was crying just a little bit because it's going to miss us too. I thought about how it's kind of cool that we can drive the entire width of a pretty good sized country on roads that are mostly well-maintained and well-connected, and I wonder how the roads are across China or Russia or Australia. Can drivers in other large countries drive from one end to the other and count on the whole network of roads being smooth to navigate and reliably accessible? Probably so, but I don't know... It's an interesting thought.
Anyhow, very easy trip down to Knoxville, and a smooth arrival with the exception of some weird construction and lane shifting right at our exit. If we had a little more time, we might be able to visit Dollywood or maybe Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies, which we laughed at when we saw the sign. Kirsten and I pictured very small sausages doing back flips and catching treats from trainers in wetsuits. But then, we are both pretty tired.
Enormous thanks again to everyone who came over yesterday and packed up our stuff. I still can't get over how efficiently the whole thing went, and I wish I could find better words to tell you all how much we appreciate you. We love you all, and we will miss you. We are looking forward to seeing you again next time we're over here or when you can make your way out west. Tomorrow: Knoxville to Memphis, and hopefully some photos for you. Bye for now.

P.S. Because Kirsten and I both forgot that I was supposed to carry her over the threshold after the honeymoon, I carried her over with great ceremony as we were leaving the house after it was all packed up and empty. Here we are leaving.

No Shortcuts

2007-07-09T13:20:00.001-05:00

I guess there are some times that being resourceful and innovative just doesn't pay the dividends you'd like. After doing a lot of searching and investigating and dragging of routes on Google Maps, I have discovered that if you're going to drive across the United States, you just have grin and bear it. You have to drive a long time. A really long time. Like at least 40 hours or, in our case, more like 46 or 47. We're going Lynchburg to Memphis (my brother and sister-in-law's place) on the first day, Memphis to something halfway to Denver on the second, that place to Denver (my aunt and uncle) on the third, Denver to Boise (Kirsten's aunt and uncle) on the fourth, and then Boise up into Washington on the last day. I was really hoping for some kind of wormhole or something awesome like that (it's just the sort of thing that would hide out in the middle of nowhere in some place like Kansas), but even if any do exist in the US, it's unlikely that you could drive a Toyota into them and equally unlikely that they would be published (even on the internet, old reliable thing that it is). The resulting realization from my research, and a reality that is settling a little more heavily on me every day like some kind of dead thing I have to carry around, is that I have a really long drive in front of me, and there's nothing I can do about it. So what I want to know from you is this: what do you do to make long drives interesting? It will probably be just Kirsten and I making the drive, but there's an outside shot that two of our friends may be able to come with us. Either way, we need some entertainment. Anyone made a ridiculously long road trip before that you want to share about? How did you make it tolerable? We're dying to hear about it. Let me know. Thanks ahead of time.
Also, while I'm at it:

The second night will be a stop in either Kansas City or Wichita, the former by way of Missouri from Memphis, the latter by way of Oklahoma from Memphis. Any input on which is better?
Going from Denver to Boise, anyone know whether a lot of northeastern Utah is better than a lot of southern Wyoming and a little northern Utah?

Any tips on this whole thing would be great. Fire away. Thanks.

If You Use Firefox...

2007-06-28T09:50:00.001-05:00

I think I may have found a way for you to subscribe to this blog so that you get updates whenever I write something. This is good for people like me. If I added content every single day, then you could just check in each day, but since I'm so irregular, it might help to have some kind of notification in case I start writing interesting material. Go to http://kentwalter.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss, and you should have the option of subscribing with Firefox's Live Bookmarks. If you use Safari, I think you just have to bookmark the feed page, and in that case, you could just bookmark this page itself. I don't know, I'm still figuring it out myself, so if it doesn't go perfectly for you... My apologies.

In case of flood, proceed uphill. In case of flash flood, proceed uphill quickly.

2007-06-27T15:12:00.001-05:00

I know it's lazy to just hop on the computer, post a link to what someone else has written, and pop off. I also realize that the topic of asinine warnings/instructions/disclaimers has been beaten to death in one epidemic e-mail forward after another, but just in case it's been a while...

Also...

2007-06-26T14:18:00.001-05:00

Two things.
First of all, I listened to Svefn-G-Englar again this morning and realized that it really is perfect. A few years out, and it looks like it'll be timeless after all.
Second. Guilty pleasure, schmuilty pleasure. "Pop! Goes My Heart" is awesome.

Relocation

2007-06-26T13:53:00.000-05:00

Many people will tell you that Lynchburg is a black hole, and they're kind of right. I can't even count the friends that graduated from school, with plans to leave town and everything, and stayed right here. Almost as many as have graduated school, left, and then somehow found their path headed right back into town. (Guilty.) The main arteries of this town run in a sort of circular way so that if you go far enough on any of them, you somehow end up where you were before, still in Lynchburg, kind of like Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle. Or Joust. It must be the same with the roads elsewhere, all leading back to Lynchburg, because people just keep coming back. Well, Kirsten and I managed to break free of the black hole, I believe. That is, unless its pull is strong enough to lead us back all the way from across the country. See, we're moving out to Washington at the end of July.
The short version of the story is this:
In March, I found out about the possibility of my position here at Liberty (teaching in the English Language Institute) becoming a full-time, salaried, benefited position in the coming year. Benefits mean free grad school, and Liberty's starting an M.A. in English, so I decided to apply for that. I got accepted, and that was the biggest reason we planned on staying here for a little while. As it turned out, the full-time position didn't happen, I can't afford tp ay for grad school myself, and my job may be disappearing as well, and those circumstances put me on the job hunt. The Seattle area is where we want to end up at some point anyhow, so we figured it was as good a time as any to go. I don't want to sound like it was a snap decision, either. There were prayers involved, and a long and quite detailed list of pros and cons (Leaving behind the raccoons that dig through my trash in VA vs. living where bears and mountain lions occasionally come to visit, for example; of course we opted for the more adventurous option. Also, better salmon but no Chick-Fil-A. I trust you can see the gravity of this decision.), and we really feel like we're taking a somewhat measured and very good step.
We're heading out there with no jobs lined up, though, so it sure will be an adventure. If you know anyone in the Seattle area that A) wants to hire me in some sort of writing position, B) is just cool and wants to hang out, or C) is both a lottery winner and an exceptionally altruistic person, do let me know, won't you?
I also considered resolving to be more regular with my blogging, but then I had to step back, examine myself, and accept the fact that while moving clear across the country on faith may be entirely reasonable, expecting myself to actually hold to a writing schedule is entirely out of the question. Like they say, I may be stupid, but I'm not dumb. All the same, I would like to be writing more. It's amazing how creativity increases with exercise. We'll see what actually comes of this.
One more thing: anyone have experience using buses and bikes to commute in the greater Seattle area? I'm intensely interested. Talk to me.
I'll try to post from the road as we make our way across the country in a few weeks. Which is to say you'll probably hear from me when we have our first child in a couple of years or something.

A good thing gone horribly wrong

2006-12-10T16:59:00.001-05:00

Dear Sheetz-
I have been so faithful to you for nearly a decade now. I love what you have done for food. I love having a reliable choice for late night snacking. I have a friend whom I idolize for the sole reason that he is from Altoona. I have gone hours out of my way just to drive the streets of your fair city on the way to lesser destinations. Time and time again, you have rescued me from hunger and given my friends and myself a place to go on a cold and foodless night. I have trusted you.
That is why this is so painful for me.
I'm afraid that, barring a swift reversal of MTO policy, I will never darken the doorway of a Sheetz again. You see, I have been betrayed. I stuck with you when post-4 PM MTO's went up a dollar. I was faithful and true when extra ingredients rose in price to accompany yet another increase in late night pricing. When the amount of meat and toppings fell sharply, I still found myself unable to resist your siren song. The white bread was switched to something of lesser quality, at least at my local Sheetz, and I uttered nary a syllable of complaint. But now, oh Sheetz, you have sold me out. Not just that, but you have misled both myself and your public willfully and horribly. "New lower prices!" That's what the menus say. But it just isn't true. You have taken from all of us the largest food-related reason for our existence: the late-night cheap sub. Lower prices? My favorite sub just went up by almost four dollars. I see the advertising gleefully telling me that I "pay only for what I want on my sandwich," but the fact is, Sultan of Sandwich, all I really see is a new charge for what I would continue ordering anyway. This is not fun, and, MUCH more importantly, it is not customer-centric. It's enough to make me forsake the place that I have loved, cuckold that I have now become, and relegate my nocturnal quests to the 24-hour fast food drive through, taking with me only the memories of when I ate "Better Food, Fast" instead.
It's not too late, Master of Munchies. All we ask, realizing that some prices really have gone down, is for our Smokehouse subs and our Club Combos to remain a deal at 4.99 between 4PM and midnight. It seemed like there were times when the world was crazy and unpredictable, and everything was crashing down around us all, leaving us in the dust of desolation, and the MTO... Well, it was the only sure deal in town. I don't know what to do with myself anymore. Save me. If you correct this wrong, I will persuade each and every forsaken, hungry soul on the east coast to forgive you and forget the whole debacle. Please move swiftly; our livelihood depends on your merciful decision.

Kent Walter

I Was Going to Refuse to Dignify That With a Response, But...

2006-11-30T11:20:00.000-05:00

OK, first things first. This entry is exclusively for hardcore music geeks. Feel free to skip it.
Now.
I don't particularly like to go on rants. It makes me an annoying person, and whatever it is that's sent me off on a rant usually ends up making me pessimistic for a few minutes, which is not a good way to be. So I apologize in advance. But sometimes, righteous indignation is just so deserved...
It's so easy to rip Rolling Stone to shreds anyway, miserable piece of slanted, purchased "journalism" that it is. Never an issue sincere, never a positive review unpaid by the label, never an opportunity missed to blame everything that is wrong with the world on anyone that isn't politically off the map to the left. But I would like to direct your attention to a couple of years ago, when Rolling Stone published yet another of their ridiculous "Top x00..." lists, for this one really takes the cake, even more than the infamous Top 500 Albums of All Time, which admittedly started out with flair but quickly descended to ludicrous lows. I'm referring to the Top 100 Guitarists of All Time list. This is a blog, and I have unlimited space (thank you, Google, for purchasing the entire planet and giving it out for free), so I could put the whole list here for your reference, but that would be obnoxious, so just click that link. And then come on back.

Where on earth do I begin, and ultimately, what's the point of pointing out ridiculous oversights, ommissions, and subliminal marketing tie-ins in Rolling Stone? (Yeah, and cars have moving parts, right.) The more of a nerd you are, the more you could probably pick this apart. A lot of you are probably a lot wiser than me, so you'll probably pick up things I won't. But. A few thoughts:
70? After practically inventing finger tapping?
17? Wait. On the list at all? What?
Kurt Cobain over... Well, over 88 other guitarists?
No Alex Lifeson. No Paco de Lucia. No Django Reinhardt? No Chet Atkins?! Andy Summers, Phil Keaggy, Eric Johnson, Joe Satriani, the list goes on...
Greenwood/O'Brien but not Verlaine/Lloyd?

OK, it's absurd that a little list like this would put me in a negative mood, so I'm going to stop. In defense of Rolling Stone (and there's a phrase I never thought I'd say), I wouldn't want the job of putting together this list either. For every improvement I made, I'd add a shortcoming, I'm sure. I just wanted to point out that this magazine is absurd and should never be trusted for anything beyond flammability. Sorry to be all negative. See ya.

Kent

Discovery and Reward (or, Thanks for Your Attention)

2006-11-16T09:49:00.000-05:00

Catchy music is an interesting and dangerous thing. A song with a good hook, a melody that you'll hum in the shower, etc. can be a good thing, but when catchiness is emphasized to the neglect of substance and EVERY other aspect of songwriting (I'm talking to you, Fergie et al), things are off base. That's not my point, but it's related.
In my quest for musical enlightenment and the sublime nirvana of exquisite taste, I find that I'm willing to be patient through songs that unfold more slowly, on more repeated listening than, say, "SexyBack." The pro to the situation is that I get the chance to appreciate things more layered and subtle than what's bumping in the Civic that's next to me with the purchased Type R sticker and ludicrously bush-league spoiler. The con is that I end up spending a lot of time convincing myself that I appreciate and understand something that ultimately turns out to be a waste of time, and I run the risk of ending up one of those people that's unable to realize that Sonic Youth ever put out something truly awful. "It's so weird, it must be brilliant," says the part of me that wants to be elitist. "I won't remember it when it's done," says the part of me that aches to return to being an average Joe Q. Listener. I'm caught between ridiculing the institution of music radio and admiring those who can make it there, being caught by a hook and looking down my nose at anyone who makes their music so obvious. And it's so subjective: why is "Robot Rock" more valid than "London Bridge"? (You could argue that emphasis on music without attention to the performer vs. emphasis on performer without attention to the music makes all the difference, and I know I'd agree with you, but the fact is, I'm still horribly capricious.) So when something happens like this morning, I have to just take it at face value as awesome.
Maybe you've experienced this. The order of events goes like this:

You get a new record.
You identify a few favorites.
You play them over and over and over and pump them every chance you get. ("Bro, you got the new Jeezy too? Check out track 6, dude. Seriously. Thank me later.")
The other songs take a back seat.

At this point, several things can happen. You may realize that "Toxic" is a genius piece of production and is awesome (before you point out my inconsistency, let me point out again the above formula of emphasis: song over performer) and justly skip the rest of the record forever, or you may decide that if one song is great, the rest of the record deserves your attention (Hello, "Flagpole Sitta"!) This morning, somewhere around the third and a half step of those first four, I jumped right to The Moment When I Decided to Just Play Through the Record In Order. You know that moment. And here's what I found, and the point of all of this. Maybe you can relate.
Track 1, nice. Track 2, nice. Track 3 is a segue, but hey, now that I've paid attention, it's become, in my mind, a composition worthy of its own attention. Now I'm in the zone. Track 4, one of those favorites, but I get to listen past what's immediate about it. Track 5, picking up details, diving deeper. Track 6, appreciating the layers, enjoying the discovery. And then, bam, track 7. Oh wait, this is one of the ones I skipped to before, and this time it ambushed me. I was so busy appreciating the record as a whole and the flow between things and the breathing space and natural progression and creative beauty and inspiring substance that comes about when not every song is a radio single that I completely didn't see this one coming. And, hey, what do you know, it's even better! It has a context. It has a home. And now I've gone from seeing the surrounding moments as padding on a present to being great in their own right.
Maybe I'm the only one I make any sense to. But I think that you may have experienced this before. If not, there's always a first time. Listen deeper. Or maybe just really listen.

Kent

Edit: I wasn't going to put in the actual names, just the tracks, for the universality of the message and all of that. But I caved. So. Track 7 is 'Turn On Me' on the new Shins record 'Wincing the Night Away.' At first you'll be ashamed of picking the obvious choice as your favorite, but then you'll dig it and realize you don't have to impress anyone.

Of Tolls and Crossings and Foods: New York City

2006-10-17T13:46:00.000-05:00

I am at work yawning some and recovering from my weekend trip to New York City. The same three of us that went to Paris -that is, Lindsey, Kirsten, and myself- took on the Big Apple for a few days, and even though it got kind of chilly there at times, we were, on the whole, not nearly as cold as the often-miserable experience that was France. Midtown Manhattan has a lot of tall buildings (and people and automobiles too, see, because it's this big city...), so sometimes it's sort of like a series of wind tunnels. When that happens, it's pretty cold.
I forgot my camera at home like a big dumb, and Lindsey's quit working most of the time we were there, also like a big dumb, so I don't have pictures to put up, but I thought I'd just run down some of the highlights for you. Just a few:

Not going to the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, or most of the other things that are touristy. I very much prefer walking around a city and seeing the way it breathes and moves and goes about living to gawking at its makeup and jewelry. Cities are like people to me in this way, I guess. Kirsten takes on cities in the same way, and I think Lindsey does too, so we just walked all over Manhattan and looked at things and enjoyed ourselves.
H & H Bagels/Zabar's. Seriously, if you haven't been to these places, you just can't really give them the proper attention from your imagination. H & H is a no-frills bagel shop that doesn't tout itself as anything, not even no-frills. (Because, seriously, how pretentious is it to boast about a lack of frills? But how often is it done?) Here are the best bagels ever put into my face, hands down. They have just a few options: plain, poppy seed, sesame seed, sourdough, everything, cinnamon r***in (it's a bad word, seriously; that's how disgusting those things are), and blueberry. I went and got sourdough, everything, and sesame seed bagels for us in the mornings. Then I went to Zabar's for spread. Just go to www.zabars.com and look at what's there. Appetizers and quiches and fishes and breads and several hundred varieties of cheese, and it's all really, really good. The best way to start a morning in New York: a trip up to 80th and Broadway and a couple of bagels (one sourdough, one everything) with Zabar's garlic and herb spread. Amazing.
My new jacket from H&M. I didn't have a really warm winter coat, and Kirsten and I said a while ago that we were both going to to get each other a gift from New York, so she decided that her gift to me was going to be a warm jacket for Prague and wherever else life may take us. I found one I loved in the 5th Avenue H&M, but the small was just a little too small, and they didn't have a medium. At the time, I didn't find another jacket I really liked that was under about 300 bucks, at H&M or otherwise, so we went to all of the other H&M stores in Manhattan (and there are five others all over the place) over the next two days. In the very last one, about an hour before leaving town, I found the same jacket, but only in small, and another that I hadn't seen before and actually liked more. And this one was too large in a medium but perfect in a small, so my quest was finally complete. Huzzah!
Washington Square Park. Still my favorite part of New York. We were only there for about ten minutes on our way to somewhere else, but it was still great to be there, however briefly.
Spamalot. The on-Broadway adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail co-written by Eric Idle, one of the original members of the Python troupe. The film was made for £150,000 in 1975, some of which was donated by Pink Floyd (yes!), and now it's made it all the way to Broadway. Very good show. Very Monty Python, with Gilliam-esque, clipped paper style sets and props in parts, ridiculous songs, and crazy props. It was very self-aware, with lines about the fourth wall and being on Broadway and songs like, "You'll Never Succeed on Broadway Without Any Jews" and the twice-reprised "The Song That Goes Like This," about the obligatory emotional duets in Broadway shows. Really enjoyable, really funny.
Way too much very good food. A weekend-long binge of delights, for serious. Mudslides and cheesecake on Broadway at midnight? Sure. Sushi and katsudon two blocks from the hotel, one-dollar hot dogs that take four seconds to eat, rudely served pizza, and overpriced Reubens? Check.

The only negative part of the whole experience, pretty much, was the 50 dollars in tolls on the way up and back. That is an outrageous amount of money. Oh, oh! And and and! Paying five dollars to exit the airport and go to the parking lot after paying two bucks for the subway ride there from Manhattan. That is inexcusable.
It wasn't my first or my second trip to New York, and it wasn't for very long, but Kirsten had never been, so there was an element of wonder and newness to things, and it was worth the driving and the tolls and everything to go and relax for a bit and enjoy what may have been the last big trip for The Travelers Three. Next stop: Prague. And that will be a cold affair, but it will be my honeymoon too, so...
I'll post pictures of New York if I get the chance.

Kent

Seven Degrees of Separation

2006-08-08T12:56:00.000-05:00

OK, so Wikipedia. I have to compartmentalize my feelings for it. As someone who’s curious, really likes trivia and facts, etc., I love it. More comprehensive than pretty much any other encyclopedia, constantly updated because its electronic, and it’s just so darn proletarian, with everyone under the sun chipping in to make it what it is. On the other hand, the educator in me cringes every time I see it listed as a “scholarly source” for college class writing assignments. Because it isn’t. But it’s a great source of information, lots of fun to look through, and pretty useful most of the time. Anyway, I came across this today, and I thought it was great fun. It is The Seven Degrees of Wikipedia. The idea is to go from one entry and link to something entirely unrelated in less than seven steps. For example, let’s say I want to go from “wonder bread” to “koine Greek.” I can pulls this off in only four steps: “wonder bread” to “calories,” “calories” to “European Union,” “European Union” to “languages,” and “languages” to “koine Greek.” This is a lot of fun. There are a few rules, of course.
Disambiguation pages are not to be used. These are the pages that come up if you put something like “rock” and Wikipedia wants to know whether you mean the substance (“Look at that rock.”), the transitive verb (“We will, we will rock you.”), the intransitive verb (“Dude, that rocks.”), or the music (“I like to listen to rock.”).
You may use the back button and try different routes.
You can't edit a page to make your journey shorter.
You can’t write a computer program (or use someone else’s) to do it for you.
If you can stay within the rules, then go nuts. Here are a few to get you started. Leave comments if you have good puzzles or good answers.
Papaya to Penguins.
Unicycle to Aardvark.
Marlon Brando to Micropachycephalosaurus.
Existentialism to Mitochondria.
Sombrero to Cumulus.
Velociraptor to Submarine.
Have fun, and let me know what you find.

Kent

New job, new music, new plans for December

2006-08-01T13:14:00.000-05:00

It’s the first of August, and I know I haven’t posted anything on here since March, when I was in Paris, life was, well, cold, for one thing, and I was half way through a semester of school. I know that very few people read blogs for the updates on what people are up to, ultimately. I mean, sure, the few people out there named Walter and the handful that ask about me might want to know what’s going on, but really, the –and if you only knew how much I hate this word– blogsphere is a lot like the real world: it’s populated by a lot of people, a few of which stand out. I’m not trying to stand out, and I really couldn’t care less whether I get famous for my blog or for anything else (besides, how likely is it that this could make me famous, honestly?), but my point is that people read other people’s blogs not because they want the daily update (unless the writer is in, say, France, or better yet, Japan), but because they want new information. Intriguing ideas. Commentary on modern life. Observations on the world we live in. Wit. All of the sort of things you don’t get when I do nothing but say “here’s what I’ve been up to while you’ve been doing things in your own life that are just as interesting to you as my life is to me.” In other words, why should you care? So as I fill you in on the last few months’ activity, I’ll try and throw in a good share of musing on love, writing, art, sales, summer heat, driving with the windows down, and maybe good music. Possibly food.
It is with a mix of ecstatic joy, bewilderment, and shame that I come to you today with the announcement that I am getting married. Not just in the sense that any eleven year old with a dream can say “I’m getting married” abstractly, but in an actual, we-have-a-date-and-there-will-be-a-real-live-bride sort of way. The shame comes in because this happened almost two months ago. At the same time, I don’t feel too bad, really, because if you’re just now finding out, and this web page is the source of the info… Well, that should sort of say something right there. Updating my web page is sort of low on the list sometimes, and I’m not apologizing for it. The ecstatic joy comes because, well, I’m getting married. After years of praying for just the right person, waiting, raising my standards to irrational levels, and fending off the minute by minute attacks of female after lascivious female, I am now engaged to Kirsten, and I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it. Which is where the bewilderment comes in. How on earth did someone like me end up with someone like her? I know I can’t be the only one scratching my head on this one. I’m geeky and unsure and can be pretty fumbling sometimes. But I guess that’s part of what love is about. When Kirsten and I were first starting all of this, she was concerned that I’d get tired of this or that about her or that such and such would freak me out, and I can’t see any of that. They say love is blind, but I say it’s just focused. When you have an eye on what matters, the essentially trivial things like the geek factor of an English degree or a stumbling social sense start looking like the distractions they are and fall away. Love means a commitment to stepping beyond the insecurities we find in each other to take on the rest of what we find, which is beautiful and perfectly suited to each other. So anyway, we’re getting married in December, right after the end of the fall semester, and that will really be the start of something new. We put the whole story of the journey, the engagement, etc. up on The Knot if you want to read it. It’s a good story.
The other really big news of late is actually the same reason I’m sitting here writing all of this. I have down time at a new job that I just started yesterday at Prototype Advertising here in Lynchburg. I’m working full-time until school starts, dropping back to two days a week after the start of the semester, and then coming on full-time after the first of the year when I get back from my honeymoon. And yes, I realize I had (still have, for a semester) a great job at Liberty. I know I was teaching, and it was great, and I found something I love. So why the switch? Well, it’s nothing too scandalous. I was sort of in a bit of a career limbo working at Liberty; without my master’s, I couldn’t teach full-time, and I could only teach Basic Composition, which is a good class and all, but most of all, I couldn’t stay long term. To keep teaching, I need to go back to school, and if I don’t keep teaching, I need to look around for another job anyway. So it’s not like I could stay forever, and I understand that. So the opportunity came up to work here at Prototype as a full-time copywriter, and I had to jump on it. The people I work with are nice, the company’s first-rate, the pay is good, the insurance benefits (which I didn’t have before, being part-time) are crucial going into a marriage, and besides all of that, the job is great. I get to write for a living! Advertising copywriters are the people who come up with the wording for the advertisements you see in print or on television or hear on the radio. We work with the artists to achieve an overall concept, so after we write a paragraph about shoes, the artists put that text into the shape of a shoe, etc. So I’m writing advertisements, letters, brochures, radio and TV scripts, you name it. Some of the work is concepting, too, so if I decide that the new client would best be served with a radio ad about a bobsledding aardvark, I brainstorm until I can work out a concept, and we go from there. The guy who came up with “Your Way, Right Away” for Burger King? Probably a copywriter. “Pizza, Pizza.” Copywriter. “You’re in good hands with Allstate.” “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” “For fast, soothing relief, nothing works like Preparation H.” I wasn’t in the room when those taglines were first uttered, but there’s a good chance that a copywriter came up with each one. So not only do I get to write for a living, which is a big part of my dream job description, but I get to write creatively pretty often as well, so I’m excited. This represents, of course, the most thorough commercialization of art that the business world has to offer, and I know that there are a ton of artists of various sorts who despise that. Duchamp in the graphic art world, Bukowski in the literary world, Roger Waters and a million others in the musical world… And as much as I agree with them that a person’s primary artistic expression shouldn’t be motivated by pay, I think that’s just another reason to make a distinction in what I do for work and what I do for expression and “the arts.” And maybe they’d all agree with me. I don’t know any of them personally. (And from what I know of them, I don’t know that I’d like to, honestly.)
Virginia is unbearably hot for two full months out of every year and every other day for two more. The long term goal is Seattle. That way I can stop wishing for the sweet release of death every time I get in my car when it’s been outside and not running for more than an hour. Even so, come Seattle, amen.
I took up a self-imposed challenge recently. I figured there was no way that an entire decade of music deserved to be written off entirely. If ever there was a decade that seems to deserve it, though, it’s either the 60’s or the 70’s. I didn’t quite have the ambition to take on the 60’s, because I don’t have any strong leads there, but I can enjoy the Clash or the early Police records any day, more than almost any other music I own, so I thought I’d have a go at the 70’s and see where things ended up. I’m pleased to say that I’ve fared well. I only found one record that I’d never heard any of at all, but there was plenty that I hadn’t given enough attention to, so there were brilliant new discoveries, even from names I was familiar with, and it’s been a good month. A few recommendations for the next time you’re in a discovering mood and have a couple of bucks.
Meddle by Pink Floyd. Ahead of it’s time in a big way, like everything they did, but seriously, I mean AHEAD of it’s time. Andrew Lloyd Webber blatantly ripped off “Echoes” for the most famously recognizable broadway instrumental part ever, the main scary song from The Phantom of the Opera. Pink Floyd put this album out 15 years before.
Marquee Moon by Television. Part of the NYC late 70’s punk scene running out of CBGB’s and the like, but way different from everyone else. Cool guitar interplay, and it sounds pretty timeless. A cool surprise from a name I’d heard of but ended up wishing I’d paid attention to a lot sooner.
Pink Moon and Five Leaves Left by Nick Drake. I’d heard probably half of these songs before, but it was good to hear the rest for the first time, and I appreciated Nick Drake a lot more after listening through both of these records. Pink Moon has one of those interesting, predicted-his-own-death sort of stories to it, too, but depending on who you believe, Nick Drake committed suicide, so maybe it wasn’t that prophetic. Good music.
Chairs Missing by Wire. Post-punk band doing weird stuff with recording techniques and electronics. People who think that “challenging” records have just started coming out in the last few years have never seriously listened to jazz or to this record or 154, the one after it. Or a bunch of other stuff.
OK, well, my down time is at an end, so this is coming to an abrupt ending, but there it is. Until next time…

Kent

More late reporting...

2006-03-18T23:34:00.000-05:00

Hello and welcome back to the program. It's been a couple of days since the last pictures and info, and I do apologize if you wanted something more a little sooner. It's not like I could blame you. :)
The last I left off was Wednesday evening. So let's see...
We got up a little earlier on Wednesday (still not saying a whole lot), got dressed and ready, and went our metro stop ("ours" because yes, we owned it personally), Les Gobelins, up to Chatelet, transferred to the Number 4 train, and got off a few stops later at the Musee du Louvre stop along with two thirds of the rest of the passengers on our train. The Louvre itself is across the street from the steps out of this station, so we were facing it when we came up to the level of the street. This part of the building looks almost like something with some sort of government function. Very tall and square with regularly-spaced windows. As we walked through the arched entrance, we were in a large sort of breezeway underneath the whole thing, and then we continued on and were in the big courtyard with the famous glass pyramids. After waiting in a short line, we took the escalator down into the larger pyramid, and we were finally in the museum foyer. Quite a lot of pomp and overture before finally making it into the actual museum, but it was really fitting. The museum was so impressive! Every room had ornate sculptures and impressive paintings on the ceiling and the molding high up above us, there were tall windows and grand staircases, and corridors of the museum went for ages and ages in all directions. Just the facility itself was huge, elaborate, and awe-inspiring, and that wasn't even the point of the place. The works of art! Just the sheer volume of the artwork was overwhelming. Every culture that has contributed significantly to the world of art was represented, from the Etruscans and pre-Hellenic Greece to Renaissance Italians to French painters of the 19th century. One of my personal favorites was the sculpture of Psyche and Cupid by Antonio Canova. Good sculpture is impressive anyway, but this one was not only a technical marvel but a beautiful scene as well. We also saw the Mona Lisa (not very big, but very well-protected at the museum), sculptures by Michelangelo, incredible carvings from the Northern Renaissance, Louis David's pictures of Napoleon... The list goes on and on. I don't know where to begin as far as posting pictures, because I could go all day, so I guess just shoot on over to Google to look up some of this stuff if you're interested.
As great as the Louvre was, it also offered up one of our biggest disappointments of the week when we discovered that its collection stopped around the year 1840, which meant no impressionists or moderns at all. No Van Gogh, no Monet, no Picasso, etc. We were really, really looking forward to these a LOT, so it was a big disappointment finding out that yes, it was true, the world's biggest and most famous art museum really was missing this stuff. Here is what our faces looked like when we found out.

As we were going through the Louvre, there were two things that I was thinking about. The first was the whole idea of artistic integrity vs. technical ability vs. aesthetic merit. These three things, when you get right down to it, are what qualify some artists to have their work in a place like the Louvre, and they're so difficult to determine. By artistic merit, I mean the messages, meanings, symbols, etc. in a piece. The "intellect" behind it, if you want to call it that. Technical ability meaning the skill of taking a blob of colored stuff off a palette and making it end up doing what you want it to on a canvas or paper or whatever. And I guess "merit" isn't really the word to use concerning aesthetics, but what I was thinking about was in relation to me and my personal taste, because yes, that may make me selfish in the grand scheme of artistic appreciation and all, but at the same time, it was my eight and a half euros admission price, so there you have it. Anyway, I was thinking about how most of the great classical work was loaded with meaning, symbolism, cultural reflection, etc., as well as technical ability, but how most of it just isn't stuff that I particularly like as far as the picture itself. It's like if you compose a perfectly shot piece of photographic genius. Great lighting, superb contrast, etc., but it's a picture of, I don't know, a gum wrapper or something. Nice job on the photography, but it's not a picture of something I care to decorate my home with. These paintings were the same way a lot of times. Gigantic painting of Napoleon crowning himself. Enormous historical bearing, great skill in the painting, certainly deserving of a place in the world's greatest art museum, but not a picture that I particularly care for. And then, of course, you have all of the artists who painted hum-drum, everyday things and ordinary people because these pictures represent the common man, and blah blah blah. And I love that. I appreciate what they were doing, and I like the pictures of farms and kids and bedrooms and bowls of fruit. I am really, sincerely into it. So it's not like every picture has to be a breathtaking sunset. Anyway, I'm just kind of blathering on here, aren't I? I have no real point with all of this, no nice conclusion for you, no message. I was just thinking about all of this sort of thing as I was going through.
The other thought that I had, and there's more of a point here, is how rich the mind of God is and how far-reaching it is that we were made in his image. In all of our depravity and the great distance we are from salvation on our own, there is still within every person a spark of the divine. Not the nature of the divine, of course, but more like a deeply set thumbprint. I was thinking of this as I was looking at the sculpture of Psyche and Cupid. It is such a beautiful picture of an embrace with so much tenderness and warmth and all of the things that should be in an embrace- protection, longing, trust... And it's all based on ideas and deities created by human minds to explain and put a face on the longing in every human heart for communion with the source of all beauty and love. Every human being has an innate attraction to things that are beautiful because whether we realize it or not, we are born of the creative mind of the same one who made the whole idea of beauty in the first place. As I was looking through the museum at all that was there and being blown away by it, I was reminded of how great of a scheme God came up with to show his glory even through the endeavors of people who don't know him. If he can use the foolish to confound the wise, like the Bible says, there doesn't seem to me to be any reason that I can't look at the art of an individual who had no idea that they were glorifying God by showing off his handiwork and worship God through it. If there is nothing redeeming or ultimately worthy of worship within any human being anyway, all of these creations, in any way that they're appealing, are a testament to a creator, and I was in awe of Him again looking at all of these things. Maybe I even make a little bit of sense here. Who knows? Anyhow, moving on...
After getting over our brief and very slight disappointment at the Louvre, we decided to head over to Montmartre, the highest and pretty much the only hill in Paris, and have a look at the city from that vantage point. We took the train over to Gare du Nord, which you've probably seen in movies and stuff at some point. The ground floor of the station has all of the platforms for trains that go to other cities in France, as well as the Eurostar line to London, and the station has at least three levels of local and regional trains under the ground floor. It also has a small mall with a candy shop (or that's what I hear, anyway; we were all too health-conscious to find out for ourselves, naturally) and 200-ish other stores. The train platform at the top was not in black and white like it should have been, but it was still easy to imagine teary-eyed lovers, handkerchiefs, big puffs of steam, sappy music, etc. Very picturesque, and very famous too. Here's a picture.

After we left Gare du Nord, we took a brief detour through McDonald's, because the McChicken is different in Japan than in the USA, and I wanted to compare France to those two. You know, high gourmet survey from various world countries. So I was full of McChicken when Kirsten and Lindsey got their most expensive meal of the week in a nice, authentic French Brasserie. Try to explain that one to a waitress in rudimentary French and sound sensible. This meal was when Kirsten and Lindsey discovered that "well done" doesn't exist in France. Everyone survived, though, and we carried on to the outlying part of Montmartre.
We were looking for the Moulin Rouge, specifically, and if we'd thought it through a little bit, we probably would have been a little more on the lookout for the shady part of town we ended up in. The clubs around Montmartre (but not the Moulin Rouge itself, according to Kirsten) were the birthplace of the can-can, and that was like a hundred years ago, so you can probably imagine that it's not the most squeaky clean area in aught-six. It wasn't anything too horribly embarrassing or decadent, but we were all pretty glad to be around during the day. I can only imagine the difficulty we'd have navigating a neighborhood that houses the Sex-O-Drome after dark.
On the way back home, we went through Montparnasse, which is supposed to be a fairly artsy part of town. I wanted to head that direction to find one of those street artists that rip you off on a portrait of yourself and get ripped off. Montparnasse wasn't noticably artsy, and we didn't see any portraitists, but as it turns out, it was pretty close to our apartment, and we didn't even realize it, so that saved us an additional metro ride. We went on home and geared up to siege Paris with a vengeance and take it over by force on our last day.
Thursday actually started off with a bit of a whimper. We took the number 4 train all the to its terminus at Porte de Clignancourt, where there is apparently one of Europe's best flea markets. The prospect of great deals on chintzy and ridiculous stuff that we'd be ashamed to own when we got back and got a bit of perspective was just too much, and we wanted to make sure to go and be suckered out of a large portion of our remaining funds. As we got off the metro, we realized that it had been upwards of an hour since we'd had some sort of pastry in our hands. This is an indictable offense with the amount of great pastries in France, so we ducked into a little shop and recharged before heading over to a couple of guys to get directions to the flea market. Turns out the flea market is only open on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, so that put a hit on the first portion of our day.
As it turns out, it wasn't too much of a problem because it just gave us more time to take in Montmartre, which was my personal favorite part of the whole trip. Thursday contained Montmartre done properly, and it was fantastic. We took the directions the map offered and climbed the Martyrs' Hill to the Sacre Cœur church at the top. This church looks sort of like a cross between the Taj Mahal, some sort of Mosque, and an orthodox Christian cathedral, which is what it actually is, apparently. There are a million steps up each side of the hill, all swarming with tourists snapping photos, and yet somehow, even the crowds don't manage to ruin this area. It wasn't so packed that anyone was actually in the way of each other, and the view facing either the magnificent church or the lofty view of the city in front of it more than made up for the lack of solitude. We went down the stairs facing the front of the church (we'd come up the side) and took some pictures of the carousel and this famous spot before taking to the neighborhood for the rest of the afternoon.

The area around the foot of Montmartre is full of tourist shops full of lame t-shirts, postcards, Eiffel towers in all sorts of colors and sizes, mugs, etc. We picked up some postcards and mini-posters and looked around some of the shops that were full of cooler stuff, and then I finally steered the caravan toward what I'd been looking forward to all week, the famous square with all of the portraitists, Place du Tertre. There are so many artists in this area, so many degrees of talent on display, and so many different degrees of expense involved in purchasing anything. After looking around at everyone doing the charcoal and chalk portraits and thinking "ehhh..." we spotted the only guy in the whole square doing any sort of "artistic" portraits in watercolor. He was definitely a real artist, and we could have scanned a black and white photo into photoshop and made it look like charcoal anyway, so we thought we'd see what he was up to. By the end of the day, we'd purchased a portrait of Kirsten, a portrait of me with Kirsten, and a really fantastic portrait of Lindsey. The guy was very friendly, spoke good English, and was eager to talk about our ideas on art, Kirsten's background in art and design, and our trip. He also only asked fourteen euros for each portrait, which was a steal. Here are Kirsten and I looking as glum and serious as possible while getting our portrait done. Because, you know, it's the arts. No joking matter. Yikes.

The girls had the fantastic idea of making me look like an ugly goober by having dress-up night on our last night in France. They both had dresses and nice shoes and earrings and the whole deal, and I was certainly not punching my weight by any stretch of the imagination haging out with them, but they let me anyhow, for whatever reason. We went out to take pictures and then had our best dining experience of the whole trip at a nice French restaurant around the corner. It wasn't too horribly expensive, especially considering the quality of the food, and I was even able to get flaming crepes, so it was well worth every second and every penny. We had a great time being all sophisticated, and there is a good amount of photographic record to prove that my girlfriend is positively the most radiantly lovely lady on the face of the earth.
Exhibit A:

After cleaning up the apartment and packing, it was just a train ride or two up to the world's least convenient airport and a trip home. You've all traveled before. You know how it is. There's really no way I can recap every single thing we did in France, obviously, even in a post as obnoxiously long as this one. If you're reading this and you can get with us at some point to look at all the pictures and hear all of the stories, it would be great. Ultimately, though, I can say that it was a really hospitable and lovely country, a lot of fun, and well worth your time if you ever have the chance to go. Thanks for sticking with me through all of my longwindedness. (Although if you've read all of the Japan ones, you know it could have been much worse.) So ends the travelogue. A bientot.

Late reporting

2006-03-15T03:09:00.000-05:00

Alright, so it's actually day four, but by the time we were in last night and settled down and done drinking Orangina and getting the laughs over silly things, it was late, and we were tired, so I just went ahead and went to bed, realizing that you all are between six and nine hours behind us, so I can be a little late and, since only like two people in the world are reading this anyway, things will not all fall apart.
Yesterday was our day to exhibit a cavalier disregard for cliché and go to the Champs Elysée, l'Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower all in one day. Lindsey and Kirsten slept in really late, and I couldn't, so I got up, left a note, and went around the corner to the pastry shop and the grocery store for some vittles. I got three eclairs at the pastry shop and the fixings for a few omelettes then came back here and made breakfast in bed for Kirsten and Lindsey. They actually got up by the time the eggs were ready (Lindsey thought the eclairs were breakfast), so I had to herd them (can you "herd" two people?) back into bed so the whole thing would have the effect it was supposed to.
After we ate and got ready to go, we stepped out into a really, really pleasant day and made our way over to the metro station to make the trip and the one transfer over to the Charles de Gaulle Etoile station, where the Arc is located. I know the thing is really big, and I wasn't sure which direction it would be from the escalator out of the station (though I really should have thought about it more, since I do know which was built first), so I was actually turned the wrong direction on a bad hunch when we came out. I heard people gasp, turned around the right way, and was pretty much blown away. The Arc de Triomphe is really really big, yes, but it's also just really beautiful. I wasn't expecting a big pile of cinderblocks or anything, but the level of detail and the styling of all the sculpture on the arc are really fantastic. It was not a letdown. There is a HUGE roundabout round about the arc, and I was sort of wondering about how in the world we'd dodge the hodge-podge assortment of cars (there are no lanes on Parisian streets, just people doing their best to avoid hitting each other) when Kirsten saved my life by pointing out a pedestrian tunnel that goes underneath the whole thing. We went through, took a bunch of pictures, horsed around, and before we left, asserted our dominance by licking the Arc de Triomphe. Kirsten figured it would be a good idea, and it sounded 100% logical to me, so we conquered our first monument of the day with a Léchez de Triomphe. On to l'Avenue des Champs Elysée.
You can see some pictures when we get back, but I'll sum up this road with one word: overpriced. You have not seen exorbitance until you've been to the flagship Louis Vuitton store and seen a twenty-eight thousand-euro suitcase. All of the employees have those cool earpieces with the spirally phone cord-looking wire, like secret service agents, and there are security guards outnumbering the clerks and sales staff by about three to one. This is because there is a vast array of items that could easily fit in a handbag (especially if it's as big as some of the monstrosities actually on sale in this store) and sell on the black market for the GDP of a small country. Unreal.
We did manage to visit one of the places of the Champs Elysée that wasn't too insanely priced: le Quick. It's France's answer to McDonald's, basically. Lindsey really really wanted to go and get a "le Magic Box," France's answer to the Happy Meal (and Kirsten and I secretly wanted to live vicariously through her and be there when she ordered her le Magic Box), so we ducked in for a moment. Normal fast food. Nothing to report.
We spotted the very top of the Eiffel Tower from the roundabout, so we set off in search of the thing. We were going around corners and zig-zagging and crossing streets (Pretty much every street in Paris is completely straight, but no intersection is square; all of the roads go at angles to each and make a bunch of triangles where they come together. It's crazy.), and after about twenty minutes of walking, we came around the end of a really tall apartment building, and *BOOM* there it was. Like the arc, this monument was not overrated at all. It's not the highest monument in the whole world, but the view from the top, mostly due to Paris's nearly flat profile, is absolutely incredible, especially at night. We were there for sunset and then stayed to watch the light completely fade and the lights start turning on. It was eleven euros to go to the top, and worth every cent. I've included pictures.
After we finished up in the tower, we headed down to the plaza underneath it (HUGE!), and Kirsten and I managed to lose Lindsey for about 25 minutes or so. Turns out she was taking pictures, and we were going to go to this horseshoe-shaped building to get a picture of the tower twinkling (they have a bajillion lights on it, and they twinkle every half hour for ten minutes, I think all night long). Lindsey got past us somehow when we stopped to wait for her, we scoured the plaza, she scoured the area by the building. It was freezing cold. Not a great time, basically, but we caught up with each other, everyone agreed that it was no one's fault, and we headed home. Everything was fine. We got dinner at a pizzeria about a half mile from our apartment, and when we got back, we looked at the day's pictures and called it a night.
I really wish Spring Break would last forever. Vacation is such a nice thing, and I know that it's such a privilege and that the times in life when we can sleep until whenever and do whatever and be accountable to no one and nothing are rare. In a few more days, it will be back to a busy life. But even though the break will be over and it'll be back to work for all of us, we really do have it so good. This has been a great bonus.
I'm too tired to give you the whole rundown on today. I'll do it in the morning maybe. I stopped this entry when we went out this morning and picked it up after we got back, only you can't tell where. Ha. Today, in a nutshell, was the Louvre, Montmartre very briefly, and a little jaunt through Gare du Nord, which was great. Tomorrow, the rest of Montmartre, hopefully a portraitist, one of the world's greatest flea markets, and whatever other grand finale stuff comes our way. Should be great. Don't miss the next episode.

Kent

Day 2: Our... dame? (& c.)

2006-03-13T17:44:00.000-05:00

Day two. Still in Paris. Still alive. Still kicking. Et cetera.
We went to see the world famous Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris today, and let me tell you, that thing is hooooooooooj. As a veteran of world cathedrals named Notre Dame (the other being in Montreal and having been visited by yours truly a few years back), I feel qualified when I say that this thing had an Official Largeness Rating of 9. There are lots of little sculptures (and big ones), paintings, votives, committed catholics, noncommitted catholics, tourists, and flagstones inside the cathedral, and we all just loved it. It turns out that it's not too painfully far from where we're staying. We were on a corner doing our best impression of hopelessly clueless tourists -mouths open, cameras out, necks craned upward; not really, we were just looking at a map- when a guy came up in desperate need of some English practice. In such need, in fact, that he was willing to break the strict Parisien Moral Code and converse -in English!- with a trio of hapless foreigners. He told us that it was "not so far by feet" to the cathedral, and we found that he was quite right. We used the map to guide us, turned a few corners, and then all of a sudden looked up and saw the church looming just ahead. I don't know why I was thinking we'd need an exact address or something. It's such a gargantuan building.
After chasing some pigeons around the square in front of the church and horsing around with the cameras for a few minutes, we walked along the river for a bit and then went to wander aimlessly for the rest of the day. One of the first things we happened to see was another legendary landmark I'd hoped to see and had no idea was so close to Notre Dame, the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, Paris's largest (only significant?) English-language book shop. I wish I could describe how great this place is. It's not really a huge bookstore, actually it's only the size of a TINY house, but it is absolutely PACKED with books. Every surface that a book can stay on without defying gravity is pretty much covered. It would be a nightmare for a claustrophobe, but I'm not one, particularly, so I thought it was awesome. Not only were there a BILLION books, but at the top of a steep and inCREDibly narrow staircase was a section marked with a sign that said, "The books on the second floor are not available for purchase, but you are welcome to sit and read, and use these books for reference." On that second floor were several seats, and -get this- two BEDS in a room off to the side. Blankets and all. Apparently they get new linens every couple of days or so? But the idea is that if you want to come and curl up with a good book and get a nap in the middle of your tourism, you can. The whole shop was very, very cozy and home-ish already, seriously, and it was definitely a highlight of today.
The rest of the day was spent walking around and looking at different shops, eating in a little sandwich shop that was NOT warm enough inside (Did I mention it's about 35-40 degrees here and windy? 40 degrees is cold.), and making our way through several narrow pedestrian streets that had a TON of restaurants (Greek ones especially, oddly enough). We stopped for coffee and warmth at a little place called Malongo. It was a rather disorienting experience. Let me tell you why. We walked in and were greeted by an East Asian-looking guy (looked Indonesian, maybe?) who spoke perfect French (of course). I ordered drinks for Kirsten and me, but it turns out that the machine needed to prepare hers was broken. My grasp of French is a little tenuous, so I kind of lost some of the details when James started going on about the machine. He realized it, so he switched to perfectly fluent, British-inflected English. It was jarring. I think he was British. But this guy -his name became James, for reasons you already know if you paid close attention to my Tokyo exploits last year- was playing the three nationalities card, and it was a little tough to keep track of. Anyhow, after Malongo, we went over to the Jardin du Luxemburg, where we saw some guards, the Palais du Luxembourg (le Sènat), a nice little pond, a kid that was DEATHLY afraid of ducks, and some statues and whatnot. We wandered on home after that, and we were devastatingly cold by then. At one point, we did find a grate blowing mysteriously warm air, and we huddled over it for a few minutes. By the time we approached the apartment, Lindsey was nearly frozen solid, and Kirsten's feet were killing her, so I carried her the last little bit of the way home.
After we thawed, I went down to the grocery store and got some things for my World Famous Alfredo of Gastronomic Felicity (this time with ham, which was a personal hit) and made dinner for us all. We are all so grateful for having an actual apartment with a kitchen and everything rather than paying more (more!) for a third-rate hotel room an hour's ride outside the city! This is the life, seriously. We're right in the thick of things, and it's just great.
After dinner, we went looking for a 24-hour convenience store (we ran out of Orangina, and this is unacceptable), but in a country where it's illegal to be industrious (35-hour maximum work week), this is a pretty tall order. We came back empty-handed and -surprise!- cold. We're all winding down for bed now, which means that I've been banished to this side of the wall between the rooms until time for the tuck-in and bedtime story. Here are pictures of Notre Dame, the bookstore, the vent (mmmmmm...), and the three of us in the living room/dining room/kitchen. Tomorrow is the big tourist-y day, I think. The Champs Elysée, l'Arc de Triomphe, and some sort of tall thing. And a lot of walking around between vents. A bientot.

Kent

In France

2006-03-12T16:42:00.000-05:00

Well hello there.
I was in North America less than twenty-four hours ago, and now I'm in good old Paris, France, sitting on a futon that will be my bed for the next few nights, with une omelette, un peu d'un patiserrie chocolat, et d'Orangina in my estomac. The trip over here was uneventful for the most part. Charles de Gaulle International Airport isn't really anything too impressive. Actually, it's downright ugly in parts- certainly not the luxurious Parisian architecture I expected. It's not too terribly confusing, and neither are the public transit systems, so we made it to our apartment at Rue Pascal without too much difficulty. It took a couple of phone calls to Monsieur Thiriet and a little bit of shivering out in the one-degree-celsius weather that we were all a little underdressed for before we actually got into the apartment building and into our apartment, but we're all settled now, and Paris is fantastic. I wasn't too tired when we got here, but Kirsten and Lindsey were completely exhausted -Lindsey's ears took a major beating on the plane, so she was ready to sleep for a while if not die- so I went out to explore a little and take a few pictures. We are definitely right in the thick of things here, and there is a lot of activity right in our neighborhood. The door to our apartment is right next to the door of a cafe, and the cafe itself, I believe, is directly underneath where I'm sitting right now, just down about 30 feet or so. To the right outside our building is the famous Marché Mouffetard if you go down a block or two. Big old outdoor market next to a cool old church with nice bells that were tolling noon or something similarly eventful when we arrived. All in all, it's pretty much what we expected, but with friendlier people so far. There was even a guy playing nice music on an accordion for spare change in our metro car today. "Welcome to Paris," he said. We're talking about doing Notre Dame tomorrow, as well as whatever else is in that area. Should be awesome. I'll put up pictures. Here are a few from today. Enjoy.

Kent

Getting Started

2005-12-07T01:27:00.000-05:00

Alright. Well, I promised a friend of mine that I would write something else on here within a week, and then I came and realized how long it's been since I hit you with anything. Sorry for the absence. I know you all hang on my every word. All four or so of you. All four or so of you other Walters. Anyway, I had started this thing back in October and never finished it, and it's just as applicable now as ever, so I thought I'd give you a little bit of what I was thinking about in the small hours of the morning several weeks ago.
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I like to write, and I teach writing, and most of the people that know me know both of those things. So I'm asked from time to time, mainly by my students these days, "How do you get started when you write?" I never know what to say without sounding like either a jerk or some intentionally obtuse literary type. And you know what type I'm talking about. An example:
"Oh, I really thought the Proust piece was just a little, I don't know, overreaching."
"Mmm, quite. Though his exploration of consciousness both in terms humanity and as a medium... That was powerful."
"Certainly."
And they both walk off without a clue as to what the other was saying. But daggone it, aren't they so literary. Gag me. But anyway, I was saying how I'm afraid I'm going to sound like one of those people, because usually, what I do to get started is to, well, just start. And I know that probably sounds like I have this opinion of myself that I'm burning a different fuel from the rest of the pack, but I promise you I don't. What usually happens is that I'll have something that I've been learning or reflecting on, and then all of sudden, something like a fortune cookie or a habit I see in myself or around me, or maybe just a small, normal thing happens, and I'll have one of those moments where I say to myself, "Yes! That's exactly what I'm talking about!" An instaneous metaphor, if you will. And then I never have any idea how it's actually going to work itself out as a string of words. I have to just sit down and start to think through my fingers, if you can call it that, and eventually, in my obnoxiously protracted way, I bring it around to something that occasionally makes any sense at all. Most of the time, if I'm trying to actually make a point, I'll explain it in terms of the fortune cookie or the ice cream cone or whatever. (Eliot, the New Critics, and some of the type I mentioned earlier would call it an objective correlative; I just think of it as solid writing.)
Well, that's what I've kind of arrived at today. I've never push-started a car by popping the clutch, and I don't really know the mechanics of it. I have, however, gotten a pen to start writing by scribbling furiously until ink came out, and I have popped the clutch on my brain by just writing until it starts working for me. And I think it's similar enough with a lot of things in life. If I spend all of my time worrying about whether I'll be able to pull something off, it'll never end up happening at all. Sometimes you just have to realize that there are times when you can do all the planning in the world and it's really not going to do a whole lot for you once you're actually in the thick of things. And then you just grit your teeth, and before you know it, the ink's on the page and somehow better than you thought it would have been.
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So. Not anything you didn't already know, I'm sure, but maybe at least one will go and tame that hyena or build that house or whatever. Get moving! Until next time...

Travelogue

2005-10-08T02:16:00.000-05:00

Have I told you that I went to Japan for a little bit earlier this year? Cause I did. It was amazing. While I was there, I sent a travelogue of sorts back to friends and family here in the US just about every day. I still have all of these, and I thought I should share them with you. The thing is, they're thirty-something pages altogether, and that is too much to go on here. So I just thought I should direct your attention to "Twelve Days of the Rising Sun," where you can read all of the chronicles. I'll warn you now that they're all very long and were almost never proofread at all. At all. I'm serious. In addition, until I get a ton of free time to post all of the photos referred to in the letters (or decide to actually use the time, more accurately), you'll have to hold your horses on the visuals. Anyway, it's bad writing and all, but if you're interested in what the trip was like, the blow-by-blow in all of its long-winded glory can be found at http://kentosaninjapan.blogspot.com. It could bore you, so read at your own risk.

Night Life

2005-10-07T10:32:00.000-05:00

Boy, is it ever. I'm a pretty curious, exploratory kind of person. I like to go and find out about things I didn't know about before, try things I know I'm not good at (yet), see things I haven't seen, etc., etc. This is a good thing, I believe, but it can rear its ugly side from time to time in the form of restlessness when I should really just be settling down. I have determined, though, that if I ever start having complaints about the job I have now, I am nothing short of the world's biggest ingrate. I won't bore you/make you jealous with all the details, but here's a basic rundown:
I am a university instructor teaching basic composition. I have incredibly fun and highly capable students, a course that interests me, and three sections of the same course, which means a much lighter load when it comes to planning. Everything is going well with my students and the actual class periods. And here's the kicker, the point of all of this, and how it ties in to my fortune cookie: in my incredibly light work hours, I don't begin until 2:45 in the afternoon, and I'm done by 7 PM. (I know you all hate me, and I'm sorry.) Last night is just one of a string of examples of why this schedule works well for me, the guy who's always stayed up late and been at my most productive and enjoyable after sunset.
I went with a couple of my students and a few of their friends to Buffalo Wild Wings last night a little after 7. Somewhere between our server Gina and the kitchen, our food took basically forever to get to us. She was really nice, attentive with the drinks, etc., and I don't know exactly what the deal was, because she seemed more or less on the ball. Anyway, in the long wait time we had, we were playing the trivia game on the little Playmaker you can get there. If you've been, you know what I'm talking about. (If you haven't, shame on you, because Buffalo Wild Wings is awesome.) One of the questions was "What was Elvis Costello's first certified platinum-selling record?" The answer, of course, is My Aim is True, which I answered before the choices even showed up. I warned them not to sic the music trivia on me. Anyway, I had Elvis Costello stuck in my head for the remainder of the evening, which ended up being ironic later on, and that's why I share the whole trivia part of the tale with you.
After dinner, I headed over to continue my search for a couple of CD's that were recently, um, confiscated in a government operation. This is how I've decided to refer to the recent incidents, since it makes me sound cooler than being the victim of random property theft. I got to Best Buy eight minutes after they closed. Because the night life is not for all people, only those with the right fortune cookie, places like Best Buy can get away with closing at the practically-sunrise time of 9 PM. I went over to Target and managed to find two CD's ('X&Y' and 'Dookie'), but still left without the two I was most interested in replacing ('We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes' and 'Talkie Walkie'). Right as I was looking at a CD of Air Supply's greatest hits (they always catch you at the worst times!), I hear, "Oh my gosh, it's Kent Walter!" My friends Chris Misiano and Brian Shesko and their girlfriends Allison (that's the ironic part I mentioned earlier) and Dayna, respectively, were stocking up on candy before the 10 PM showing of "Batman Begins." Brian heard I was replacing CD's and went through the music section making ridiculous suggestions of what must have been taken. "Oh, here it is. The Kenny Chesney Collection." "La Bouche's greatest hits. It's a shame that's gone." He brought me "Hysteria" by Def Leppard and offered me a rousing version of "Pour Some Sugar On Me" right there in Target's music section, but I told him that that one was, fortunately for me, not in my car when everything went down and was consequently not stolen. It also was not in my house. Or on loan to anyone. Or, in fact, in my possession in any way. So I was doubly fortunate: I didn't have "Hysteria" stolen, and I don't own it either. I can die happy.
After remarking on the lameness of Target's clearance candy section (84 cents is still a little steep for a Wonka bar, given the size of those things, and who wants a collector's tin of Bratz Starstruck Marshmallows, even for two dollars?), we headed over to Movies 10 and took in the awesome spectacle that is "Batman Begins." If you don't think that this is the best super hero movie ever made, you are a ridiculous person. And that's the bottom line. I don't even have time go into it all. Christian Bale went from like six pounds in "The Machinist" to pretty much a beast for this movie, the acting was great, the moral questions and lessons are incredible, the whole storyline is full of great character drama, and if all of that, as well as a thousand other things, didn't make this film ludicrously stacked, it has Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman in it. By now, with the string of incredible films he's done, and this movie on top of it all, Morgan Freeman has become not just a legend but an adjective as well. "Dude, that was so Morgan Freeman." is both a perfectly acceptable sentence and a high compliment. (This is a comandeered idea.) We can more than forgive the guy for the occasional "Dreamcatcher" or "Edison." He's playing Nelson Mandela pretty soon, for crying out loud. The guy deserves a medal. If you haven't seen "Batman Begins" for some reason, complete your humanity by seeing it. You'll be glad you did.
I drifted far from the initial point of this, which was to say that my fortune cookie was pretty darn insightful. The freedom to go see a movie that ends at 12:30 AM on no advance notice is a privilege that not every employed person has. I better not take it for granted. Or I would be an ingrate.
Other, shorter observations: Thrice will soon take over the world, and Coldplay already has. Goldfish still make the world go round. I need seating. More on that one another time.
Take care of yourselves, everyone, leave a message, do something today that will outlast you, and have a great day.

Tires, Thieves, and Tea

2005-10-04T12:14:00.000-05:00

European Café has excellent green tea. It makes me wonder what I’m turning into, really, because I never would have described any tea in the world as excellent six months ago. Credit two weeks of inundation on my trip to Tokyo for my change of heart, I guess. That and some reading up on all of the crazy health benefits of this stuff. Antioxidants, etc. If you know me well, you might know that I’m better at avoiding bad-for-you things than I am at going after good-for-you things. I do try to keep healthy, though, and reasonably active, so the health benefits of green tea are a draw for me.
I’m sitting in European Café (with ‘E-Pro’ by Beck playing in the background) because Tim is not at Goodyear until two, which is also the time they’ll be able to pull my car in. Here’s the story.
Some time over Saturday night, someone went into my car, which I am 99% sure was locked, and took some things, one of which was my car kit out of the trunk. You know, the black zippered thing you never actually use. Jumper cables, jack, probably a flare or two, a piece of junk flashlight. All of that stuff. Well, I don’t know if it was just coincidence or whether it was related or what, but on Sunday afternoon, I came out to see that my left rear tire (the stern port, or port stern, or port bow, or whatever it would be; somebody help me out here?) was flat. Yeah. Wack is right. I’d driven to church and back on it that morning, so I’m not sure how slowly it leaked, when it was punctured, etc. But because my jack had been –ahem- jacked (sorry), it was a bit of an ordeal putting on the spare. In the process, my roommate –and I blame nothing but his hulking strength; no hard feelings- sheared one of the bolts right off the, um, round metal thing. Rotor? So one of the lugs had a chunk of bolt in it. I went to Goodyear and got both of these things fixed yesterday. They patched the tire and put on a new bolt, and the manager, Tim, who I know from having served several times at Outback, gave me a good deal on the whole process. Tim is 100% quality. Very good guy.
Fast forward several hours. I went to dinner with a couple of my students after classes yesterday evening, and when I came out, my tire was flat again. To make a long story short, I ended up having a couple of friends help me with a jack after some phone calls, some waiting, and some fortunate turns of events. In the process, we discovered that the two lugs that Goodyear put on with their air ratchet thing were stripped out. So right now, I have three lugs on three of my wheels, instead of four, and hopefully I’ll be able to get the whole thing straightened out without paying any more money. We’ll see. The iPod’s gone, though, as are the CD’s. Boo.
Buffalo Wild Wings opened and is blowing minds left right and center.
I got to tell my students, and myself, “Welcome to October!” It’s such a nice time of the year. Changing leaves, cooler weather, hookups galore, lowest power bills of the year… Glorious. Also tells me that ski season is on the way.
It’s creeping in toward two o’ clock. My tea is now cold. The Beck CD is skipping. I get the message. Take care, and I’ll write to you again soon.

Greetings (and My Dilemma)

2005-10-02T11:35:00.000-05:00

I'm sort of torn on this whole thing.
See, I have this distrust of the state of communication in the world right now. Really in the last several years. It all comes down to my faith in the analog medium to represent everything. The friends of mine who know about all of this are very accommodating to me and my ravings.
It comes down to this. Communication -and I mean real, meaningful, authentic communication- was never intended to consist of ones and zeros. I hate what advancement has done to communication. I find it acceptable to spend an hour on the phone with someone who lives ten minutes from me. I send e-mails to people who need encouragement or patience or an apology when I have the opportunity to go barely out of my way and end up across a table from them, sharing a couch, whatever. I converse without the opportunity to reach across from me and make physical contact at the moments when it should punctuate what's being said. Because this is part of who I am, and because I hate it about myself, I am very reluctant to publish on the internet things that are personal to me, things that I feel belong in the context of personal contact.
On the other hand, I can have a deeply affecting encounter with -to give one example- Leo Tolstoy, who's been dead for 95 years this November, and all because I have his words at my disposal, and words mean something. People in literary circles talk about the "death of the author," meaning the disappearance or very infrequent emergence of an author's personality, beliefs, etc. in a literary work. There is no such thing. An author can't hide behind his work without leaving traces of himself any more than I can hide a fish in my closet without the secret eventually coming out. Tolstoy shows up in his fiction, his theological reconstructions, and his polemics against organized religion and hypocrisy. Whether I love him for his warm descriptions of love, cry over his portrayal of grace, or grieve at his incomplete understanding of the gospel, Leo Tolstoy has achieved immortality, and all because words have meaning.
So what does this all have to do with me.blogspot.com? Well, back to my dilemma. So much of me rails against the idea of everything about this. There is no need for all of the weeping emo kids who seek some cathartic purging and release by having the six people who read their Myspace cry with them after the next breakup. It makes me sad to see that people can type instead of apologize. Or forgive. Or change. This is the culture responsible for the death -or at least the thorough maiming- of spelling, grammar, coherence, and the process of putting thought through fingers to words and well-communicated ideas. I hate everything about it.
And yet...
I say I want to publish my writing. I say I want an audience. I want to look back and know that I've left something bigger than myself. And, like it or not, in the same way that royalty gave way to patrons, patrons to merchants, merchants to publishing houses, and then vanity press started taking a larger hold on the market, this whole idea of publishing globally and instantaneously, despite the juvenile results in its juvenile stages, is actually worth my time. I don't care about being famous. But those with an audience have changed the world over and over, and the word is the catalyst. So I can bury it all in the mean time, or I can get it out there before my earth-shattering debut masterwork is in physical book form. :)
I could have just said, "I used to loathe blogs, now I just dislike them and have found the appeal to outweigh the repulsion." It would have been pithier, and, come to think of it, probably better writing, brevity being the soul of wit and all. But when have I failed to waste more of my readers' time than strictly necessary?
Anyway, hi. You can read things here if you want. Leave a message.
Beep.