Chicago and VU Homecoming

Spent Wednesday through Sunday with Erik Keith Matt Ken Mark Tim Tara Kristen Kari Kristine Kathleen Bob Jon and lots more…

Wednesday
Direct flight on Southwest, oh yeah – brought snacks and “The Good Lord Bird” – smooth sailing.  Beautiful and brisk at Midway.  Walked around with Revco blasting in headphones.  Trying to find the pizza place where Keith was hanging, while simultaneously navigating Erik there.  Keith got mad that I didn’t get there sooner.  Erik wouldn’t install an app that would have shown him my location, so drove around without finding me for an hour.  Finally we all got to the pizza place.  They whined, I got mad, slapped Erik and Keith, Keith got pissy.  Off to a capital start!!  :P

Matt showed up and reminded us how to chill.  He’s doing great, teaching art to 35 high school kids at once (wha??) on the south side of Chicago.  We went to the art studio where he works on lithographs done on these blocks of limestone that he gets (from Russia I think?).  Beautiful stuff!  Wish I’d bought one…  Well, I misbehaved there and that was the end of my Wednesday night.  My Pulp Fiction moment without the adrenaline or fun.  Live and learn!

Thursday Keith and I got up to run (I was 100% recovered) and headed out of our swanky Hotel Lincoln digs straight into… camels?  Yep we were running through the totally free totally amazing Lincoln Zoo!  It was early so we didn’t see the lions, tigers and giraffes until later, but we did catch the seals before we were through the park…

…onto beautiful views of the city from the beautiful wetland preserves around Lakeshore Drive.  Absolutely stunning, full of all kinds of native plants fish and birds, with the Chicago skyline as a backdrop…

 

9.0 A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

The audio book is like listening to Douglas Adams sarcastically spinning yarns that turn out to be true.

“You have been extremely – make that miraculously – fortunate in your personal ancestry.  Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides, has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so.  Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result, eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly, in you.” Continue reading “9.0 A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson”

Bad beer night

Gary and I headed out for a minor adventure last night, into the mysteries of Raleigh Beer Week.  How big would it be?

We got started around 7pm and had a couple concrete events off raleighbeerweek.com – here we go!  First to Tyler’s tap room where there were 12 brewery reps on hand.  We were hoping for the cavernous place to be filled with sample beers, but all we found was a recommendation from a rep from Victory brewery in PA.  I almost always stick to local dark beers but because the rep was cute I ended up with an Ale that was so spicy we didn’t finish it – I NEVER don’t finish a beer!  :-)  Tasted clovey and cinnamon-ny.  Meh.

We gave up on the crowded place after watching two or three poor barkeeps pulling as fast as they could.  There were two highlights: watching the girl pull a brew into a hot glass and watching it crack and explode in her hand (she was ok and seemed somewhat entertained by it as well, ha); and another barkeep explaining the mechanical tap that pulled the precarbonated beer from the keg like they did in the 1500s.

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Next it was off to Foundation for a new local brewer’s keg getting tapped before it was officially available.  Now, I love Foundation, Jane and Larry and I watched their barkeep work drinks for a mesmerizing hour and I developed a serious mancrush on the guy (that’s four, Green Gartside, David Beckham, Sam Rockwell, should I be worried about switching teams?)…

So… the board in front of a long line of bearded hipsters read “Belgian Dark Stout”… omg I’m pumped… we chatted with the brewer, a nice fellow with a generous smile and a massive beard, he explained that the brew process was extended to let bacteria consume the extra sugar that was “unused” by the yeast.  And we recognized that it was described as a “Belgian Dark SOUR”, not stout.  Sour.  Remember that.

My man was reduced to pouring a thousand glasses for the thirsty crowd,  wasted talent.  The place was packed.  So we headed to the entrance where there was a small space left.  By the time we got there, we started to realize that something was up.  By the time we focused and figured out what it was, Gary was puckering and shaking his head wildly.  Bless his honest soul.  The rest of the bar, myself included, continued to make polite smalltalk and work very hard to avoid puckering as to reveal the big fat sour elephant in the room.  The way-worse-than-lemon-juice-concentrate-level-of-sour elephant.  Eventually he convinced me to abandon my post and stop the posing, and we headed out feeling like someone had twisted the life out of us.

As a final effort, we headed to the roof of Raleigh Times to cleanse the palette of the evening’s misadventures with a single good old fashioned Canadian ginger ale.  It never tasted so good.  :-)

All in all, I have to say I have never had so much fun drinking such disappointing beer.

UPDATE: Raleigh Beer Week has been deadly.  Monday with Gary, Tuesday with Bill and Stephen, Wednesday drinking a big Tripel bottle with Jon, and off to Tir Na Nog on Thursday with Stephen and Bill, with Stephen and me staying to finish off the strange perversions of the TNN staff – they took two Lone Rider minikegs and polluted Sweet Josie with cocoa nibs and coconut, and destroyed some Peacekeeper with some horrific rum thing or another.  Ha.  MORE BAD BEER ohs nos…  and here comes the weekend…

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Oh and I actually started beer week early… as in 9am Saturday early… after the Raleigh 8000 run with Gary…

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UPDATE UPDATE: I took Friday off!  Whew I needed that!  :-)

The Amazing Race 21 contest

Amazing Race 21, time to go around the world again!

  • Pick the team you think will win, and pick the team you think will be eliminated next.
  • If your winning team is eliminated, you have to pick another. Least picks wins!
  • If your losing team is eliminated, you score, and get to pick another. Most scores wins!

are listed in finishing order:
Team Relationship Position (by leg) Roadblocks
11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Tim & Marie Exes 1st Tim 1, Marie 1
Nicole & Travis Married ER Doctors 2nd2 Nicole 1, Travis 1
Rowan & Shane Theater Performers 3rd Rowan 1, Shane 1
Chester & Ephraim Former NFL Teammates 4th Chester 1, Ephraim 1
Nicky & Kim Baseball Wives 5th Nicky 1, Kim 1
Ally & Ashley NHL Ice Crew 6th Ally 1, Ashley 1
Leo & Jamal Cousins 7th Leo 1, Jamal 1
Jason & Amy Dating 8th Jason 1, Amy 1
Tim & Danny Best Friends 9th Tim 1, Danny 1
Brandon & Adam Childhood Friends 10th Brandon 1, Adam 1
Hoskote & Naina Father/Daughter 11th Hoskote 1, Naina 1

Team Relationship Symbol
Rachel & Dave Army Wife & Combat Pilot D
Brendon & Rachel PhD Student & Event Hostess R
Vanessa & Ralph Dating Divorcees V
Art & J.J. Border Patrol Agents A
Bopper & Mark Best Friends B
Nary & Jamie Federal Agents J
Joey “Fitness” & Danny Trainer & Club Promoter F
Kerri & Stacy Cousins K
Elliot & Andrew Twins E
Dave & Cherie Married Clowns C
Misa & Maiya Sisters M

WIN PICKS

Viewer Ep01 D
Ep02 D
Ep03 A
Ep04 A
Ep05 A
Ep06 D
Ep07 D
Ep08 B
Ep09 D
Ep10 D
Ep11
Ep12
Larry J J J J J J J J V V V A
Jane E E E A A A A A A A A A
Andrea K K K K K A A A A A A A
Mike E E E V V V V V V V V A
Wren/Rei/Nick J J J J J J J J A A A A

LOSE PICKS

Viewer Ep01 M
Ep02 C
Ep03 E
Ep04 (K)
Ep05 K
Ep06 F
Ep07 (J)
Ep08 J
Ep09 (B)
Ep10 B
Ep11 V
Ep12
Larry B B B B B B B B B B A A
Jane R R R R R R R R R R R R
Andrea R R R R R R R R R R R R
Mike C C R R R R R R R R R R
Wren/Rei/Nick R R R R R R R R R R R R

Why are we stuck with mediocre progress in the 21st century?

Thanks for Ubuntu Mark! :-)

My brother and I were debating progress. I am quite frustrated that technological innovation in this millennium seems so stalled. Sure we’ve had the PC laptop cellphone tablet and smart phone, wiring us all together, and they’re innovative and great. But they’re basically just consumptive devices we use to shovel sensationalized images and sounds into our orifices to stimulate our ever-dulled senses.

Great innovators of the past brought us philosophy, plumbing, democracy, unlimited food, equality, the weekend, space travel, a leisure society, and so many paradigm shifts that jumped us forward in massive leaps. We are long long overdue for the next.

Perhaps we are mired in the early stage of the information age. We drown in it every day. We spend many of them just caught up in the torrential flood of information with our jaws agape.

Perhaps cycles are required. Perhaps it is the age of the right-wing redneck, pushing progress backwards in hopes that he can consume and destroy a lion’s share of resources just because his great grandfather did. That age will certainly not last too long before it implodes on itself.

Perhaps there are too many of us, and we’ve come so far that any one of us would have to spend a lifetime just to become an expert on the existing knowledge in a specific area, with very little chance to extend it.

But I still believe each of us should try to contribute. Our individual passion is our greatest strength.

Here’s an awkward debate on the subject

Mark Shuttleworth says it right: “Individuals are innovators”!!! He’s got it! You have to be a crazy, obsessive, arrogant, megalomaniacal wacko and drive well past where any reasonable group of people would go.