Dance With The Mantis, Note The Slim Chances

*OK, this post was supposed to go out on Friday.  It didn't.  I edited it a little to make it slightly less annoying.

Happy Halloween. Hopped an earlier shuttle this afternoon but I'm not sure what I am up to this evening. The SF Castro Halloween event has gone away as of late because of stabbings and shootings. I mean if you aren't willing to take some risk of getting stabbed or shot why don't you just move to Mountain View. Had a few beers at the El Goog Halloween bash so the commute may get interesting about half way through. My costume was a last minute type of affair this year. Same as last year frankly. I went as a Mazda Miata owner - complete with double popped collar, white Livestrong bracelet and slimebag hair. No one had any idea what to make of me. Its my own damned fault I guess for making such an authentic douche bag. Failed costume ideas included Silent Bob, Bearded Woman and my personal favorite Walter from The Big Lebowski. My team came decked out big time though. Other people will post pictures I am sure.
I took the last three days off of work because Jason, Heather and the kids were in town. I have to admit, they ran me ragged the last few days. Between the touring, eating and wrestling with the nephews I am gassed. The week's events included Fisherman's Wharf, the Presidio, Monterey, a trip to San Leandro to visit the grandparents, a visit to Google, a 49ers game, shopping downtown, a visit to Tea and basically food consumption at every stage of those events. It was good having everyone in town and the apartment - while pushed to maximum capacity - held up OK with six occupants.
Bladder update - pain beginning.
This weekend is going to be made up of being lazy, laundry, restocking our fridge and a little football. I've been playing Metal Gear Solid 4 the last couple weeks and while it started pretty slow (this is the first one I have played) it has gotten better as of late.
Bladder update - traffic has slowed, aaarrrgh!
Been watching Gravediggaz videos in honor of Halloween. I didn't know that one of the members was from Stetsasonic - thank you Wikipedia. Just got off the freeway, time to figure out the bathroom thing.
Trick or treat.

*Update, the SF library has a lovely public restroom.

Capture Food With Lasso Loops

Shuttling north.  Wednesday down, two more to go.  Lots to do in the next couple of days to get my ducks in a row for Jason and Heather's visit - they get here Friday.  Looking forward to seeing those guys and taking some time off next week to show them around the city and the rest of the bay area.   Like I said, lots to do before then.

I have become mildly obsessed with Mario Kart for the Wii thanks to my coworkers and just spent the last 10 minutes learning about cheats and short cuts to give me a much needed advantage over my coworkers who are freakishly good at this game.  I was feeling good about beating my nephews soundly and repeatedly while I was in Anchorage but it turns out they weren't quite the experts that they said they were.  Lets just say they would get served at my work.

Pretty gassed at this point.  The 8am start this morning meant a 5:30am alarm which just ain't right.  If I didn't stay up til midnight last night reading my new book it probably wouldn't have been an issue.  But shit, what fun would that have been?

The first game of the World Series is on right now and apparently the Phillies are up 2-0.  I am rooting for the Rays in the series because I like BJ Upton (come to the Giants BJ) but also because I want to buy a Phillies hat but if they win the World Series I will look like a bandwagon idiot.  

Pretty cool hat though.   Go Rays.

Speaking of sports, the 49ers just fired Mike Nolan and are replacing him with Mike Singletary for what appears to be the rest of the season.  I have to say, I am not that impressed by the move.  I mean, the 9ers aren't playing good football, but Nolan is not necessarily the reason for this.  He was brought in to retool the team with Alex Smith and after the issues between the two of them I feel like Nolan deserved this year to see if an Alex Smith-less 49er team could peroform reasonably.  No one expects O'Sullivan to be a stand-out this year but if the team can finish strong and fortify in the off season Nolan's year will have been a success.  Oh well, I like Singletary, the jury is out on Martz still, if the offense doesn't average 25 points the rest of the season I am going to vote that they dump him and O'Sullivan.  Maybe they can go to Seattle and run a Starbucks together in the offseason.  Oh, and yes, if they bring Holmgren to San Francisco I am going to rock an Upper Playground logo shirt everyday for a week.  

Given the economic crisis I would like to encourage everyone to grind just a little harder than normal.

My Soliloquy May Be Hard For Some To Swallow But So Is Cod Liver Oil

Headed back to the city on a bit of a later shuttle than normal. Meeting ended at six. I am pretty pooped from two back to back 8am starts. An 8am meeting means that I have to get up at 5:30am to make the 6:30am shuttle which gets me in at 7:30am but ensures I am ontime for my 8am meeting. That's too early.
Listening to Ready to Die right now. I made a run through my music and put some older albums on my ipod, stuff I have been wanting to listen to for a while but was locked away in the depths of the external hard drive. Meant to put the ATLiens album on there but somehow I missed it. If you haven't listened to the ATLiens album lately, or ever, do so immediately. In my mind its one of the best hip-hop albums of all time. Concept is legit, production was crazy and Outkast was still at a point where they had something to prove. They took a departure from the first album and ran with that junk. Proof.





See, told you. Oh and if you don't allow embedding on videos you upload to YouTube you are dumb.
A few more videos from Outkast which weren't embeddable but are worth referencing.
Player's Ball
Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik
Atliens
Elevators (Me & You)
Go to school on that.
Watched the presidential debate last night, or the replay at 9pm and couldn't stay up until the end. See my earlier comment on getting up at ungodly hours. I thought McCain came off pretty desperate in his taking shots at Obama. The terrorist thing to me is completely ludicrous and comes off as a pure scare tactic. I am pretty amazed that McCain has been willing to jump in line with the Republican party techniques of manipulation of the public through misinforming them so whole-heartedly. He is definitely not getting mavericky with it. The election is getting pretty ugly at this point though, the campaigns are taking pretty severe digs at each other.
Speaking of Sarah Palin, or more specifically Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin, did I mention that when I was back in AK I was at a VP debate (re)watching party on the Saturday after the VP debate at my brother's house and we were actually playing a drinking game around the word "maverick" when Tina Fey made reference to doing the same in her sketch? Pure magic.
Grind hard.

I Was Told "Dust Yourself Off and Try Again"

Shuttling home.  Pretty tired at this point.  

This was the 5th weekend in a row that I didn't spend at home.  This is a bit of a record for me considering I am pretty much a homebody.  

Made an effort to go camping for the weekend which was thwarted by a park ranger doing his best sheriff of Malibu impression from The Big Lebowski.  That said, the weekend was still a blast and part of my feeling tired has to be attributed to the massive quantities of beer I consumed.

Speaking of Lebowski, I was looking for a clip of the sheriff of Malibu for my earlier comment when I came across this gem.

Pretty funny.  There were other attempts with like the Flintstones and He-Man but they mostly sucked.

Big next couple of weeks.  Reviews coming due at work, Jason, Heather and the kids headed to town the week after next.  The big Wurm/Hitchcock wedding and Mike and Maria headed to town for that big event.

Luckily I have this sizable commute to spend up on blogging inanely and keeping all of you up to date on all of the intricate details of each one of those.

OK, commute was pretty speedy, about to hop off the shuttle.  
Grind hard.

Young Carter, Go Farther, Go Further, Go Harder

Wednesday down two more days before the weekend and the man trip camping trip. Looking forward to just sitting around and doing nothing other than smashing beer cans into my head after pouring their contents into my gut.

Lots of craziness the last few days. Spent last weekend in AK visiting the fam and looking at a house that the wifey and I decided to buy. Here are the reactions that I have gotten from the various people I have mentioned this to over the last few days:

"Are you fucking crazy, man?"

This was in reference to the economic issues facing the world right now. The answer to this question is a hearty maybe.

"Alaska, huh? So, you moving home?"

Yes Alaska. No, we are not moving home in the near future but someday we hope to live in the house we purchased. For the time being my brother and his family will be living there.

"Was the house cool?"

Uh duh.

"Sarah Palin has really gotten to you, huh?"

Sarah Palin did not factor into the decision but yes, she has really gotten to me, mostly in the sense that she is a magically talented woman.

Evidence. (Credit goes to M,P,S)

The only way that could have been better is if it were this:

Kia's trip to Korea is unfortunately being canceled because she has a monster ear infection. If you want details you can check with her but needless to say she is in no shape to hop a 12 hour plane ride to Seoul in the next two days. This is disappointing obviously but there will be other opportunities to visit what Albert describes as a wonderland of fantastic awesomeness.

Watched the second half of the presidential debate last night and felt like McCain was really drilling home more rhetoric than substantial points. I continue to be concerned by the fact that this technique has worked repeatedly by presidential candidates over the last few elections and it has somehow become unreasonable to call bullshit on people in debates. I guess this is one of the (many) reasons that I wouldn't make a good candidate.

Me (in a debate): "Well, in response to your point, YAAARRRRGGHHH!!!!! BULLSHIT, BUUUUULLLLLLSHIIIIIIIT!"

OK, computer is about to die.

Grind hard.

Handle Hammers With Elegance

Sitting in the lobby at YouTube right now watching the screens flash by some sampling of video content.  Without audio, it makes absolutely no sense.

Meeting DP up here in San Bruno so he can give me a ride to SFO which is within shouting distance of where I am sitting.  Headed up to AK to handle some BI over the weekend.  Back early Monday after a red-eye.  Good times.  Looking forward to being home even if its just briefly.

Not particularly looking forward to the five hours of flying that is required to get me there and the five that it will cost to get me back on Sunday night.  Its interesting though that after flying across the ocean the five hours up to AK does tend to clip by fairly quickly.  One complaint I do have about the AK flight is that it doesn't generally have good entertainment options.  British Airways had some pretty legitimate movie screens in the headrests on the SF to London flight.  I ended up watching like 5 movies on the way back because I was trying to stay up.  The Forgetting Sarah Marshall movie, or whatever its called, was the best one.  I was pretty surprised by this because the movie looked absolutely horrible from the previews.  Watched Ironman again and was happy that it was watchable again within a couple months of first seeing it.  Watched Kung-Fu Panda too which was pretty legit but unfortunately represents Jack Black's continued decent into mainstream movies without edge.  Get that paper though Jack.  Speaking of Kung-Fu Panda, when I was in China one of the nicknames I managed to pick up was "panda" mainly due to my dead on panda impression and good nature but also perhaps due to my rotund physique - jerks.  When Kung-Fu Panda came out people basically though this was the most awesome thing ever.

Dan's here, grind hard.

I Gotta Handle My B I and I Do

Shuttling to Mountain View right now. Brain is operating at about 50% capacity mostly due to the extended vacation but probably also due to the time change. Stayed up for like 26 hours yesterday in order to deal with the jet lag thing. So far this has worked well but I was basically a vegetable last night. We will see how I am doing this evening but I was able to get up at 6:30am this morning and slept through the evening pretty well.
Overall the vacation went well. Got to see about a ton of stuff in Bavaria and Austria. A lot of it would have been pretty difficult to swing in the time given if Kia's grandparents weren't there to shepard us around. I have about a billion photos which I will try to boil down to a reasonable amount before posting. Photo management is one of my least favorite things. This trip gave me an additional appreciation for a few things.
German beer - pilsners mostly - which I wasn't a huge fan of going in but I am going to chalk this up to the bottling and importing process messing with the taste of German beers in America.
German dislike for other Germans. There were some pretty clear lines drawn prior to and during my trip around the incompatibility of southern and northern Germans but was further emphasized during my trip.
WWII scars on the country. For some stupid reason I assumed this was going to be much less apparent but anytime WWII, Hitler, Nazis, etc. came up it was a pretty damned sore subject. Lots of my jokes over the last two weeks ended with a "too soon?" - just kidding.
Its going to be an interesting week at work to say the least. Short one, so just a few days to ease back into the swing. This is good. I need to get my head back in the game a bit.
Speaking of the game, I took some brutal fantasy beatings during my trip to Germany. Dave brutalized me in the Fantasy Baseball finals and I lost two weeks in a row in my Fantasy Football league. Party's over, I'm back bitches.