Alan's Skew

From the Archives: Last Day at Generation

Category: My World

This past weekend I was cleaning out one of my boxes of magazines and photos from SUNY Buffalo and discovered this photo of the Production team at Generation Magazine on the night we put our last issue to bed. I'm pretty sure this was late April or early May 1990.

From left to right: Evan, me, Annemarie, Tom, and Chris.

Merry Christmas

Category: My World

Melissa and I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2007 has been a very busy but wonderful year for us. With my going to India in March, our getting engaged in June, buying a house in July, moving in August, and getting settled over the last few months, we've had a lot on our plates. Throughout this crazy year we have been blessed with the love and support of our family and friends and for that we are immensely grateful.

An Unfortunate End to My 2007 NaNoWriMo Adventure

Category: Writing

My tendonitis started bothering me late last week. For anyone not familiar with my experience with it, back in early 2003, I was out of work for several months because I had it very bad in both arms. I was experiencing shooting pains from the elbow down my forearm into the nerves between my middle and ring fingers on both hands. I couldn't type, I couldn't hold a pen, the vibrations from driving even hurt my hands. Luckily, a consultation with a hand surgeon and a nerve conduction test confirmed that it wasn't carpal tunnel, and so no surgery was required. I was able to make a full recovery through rest and physical and occupational therapy. Eventually I was able to return to work, but only on the condition that I be hypervigilant about taking frequent breaks and being careful not to spend too much time on the computer. Taking a year off and changing jobs went a long way to strengthen my arms and improve my attitude toward overworking my arms. It's been almost three years since I've had any serious symptoms, that is until now.

It turns out that the last few weeks of working the day job, at which I'm typically at a computer for 8-10 hours, then coming home at night and spending another 2-5 hours working at the breakneck pace NaNoWriMo requires has had a siginificant negative impact on my arms. I started feeling the twinges of nerve pain in my fingers mid-last week. With that in mind, I took a few days off over the Thanksgiving holiday, hoping my body would have enough rest to recover so that I could make the final push to finish my NaNoWriMo novel without further difficulty. Alas, that is not the case. I spent a couple of hours tonight writing another 3,000 words, bringing my total word count up over 26,000. But with these few hours of work has come the frightening and familiar series of sharp pains shooting ever stronger through both arms.

I will finish this novel, but I will not be finishing a draft of it this month. Perhaps if I were closer to the 50,000 word goal, I would push through, but given that I would have to write over 5,000 words a night for the rest of this week, I don't think my body could take the stress. It is far more important that I maintain my health so I can continue to work at my day job. So, all of that said, I'm officially calling it quits on my attempt at completing a draft of a novel in a month. I've learned a lot doing this, but those lessons are the subject for another entry at another time. Now is the time for a heavy dose of Advil and a good night's rest.

18,201 and Trying to Get Back on Track

Category: Writing

Long hours at the day job today, but I still managed to squeeze in some time after work to pump out an above quota day's worth of writing: 1,794 words. This brings my total word count up to 18,201.

The good news about today's effort is that I climbed out of the rabbit hole I went down yesterday while chasing that plot bunny, and came out to find myself able to resume one of the original subplots of the story.

I'm still ~5,400 words short of where I should be, but I think I can overcome that this weekend as I lock myself in the house while Melissa goes out to do a work project all day Saturday.

For now, it's time for bed.

16,407 and Attack of the Plot Bunnies

Category: Writing

Okay, I'm knocking off for the night. I broke the 16,000 word mark, so I'm giving myself the rest of the evening off.

I'll admit it, I invoked the power of a plot bunny--one of those amusing but meaningless tangents that likely will not make it into the final draft, but worked well in the short term for keeping the creative juices flowing.

In case you wondered, I killed off one supporting character (SC) with this plot bunny (not literally), but I compensated by introducing seven more. I guess meeting Richard Russo and hearing him read from his latest novel last week really inspired me. Oh, shoot, I didn't blog about that event...well, maybe later this week if/when I'm blocked again.

NaNoWriMo Update: 15,213 Words

Category: Writing

Okay, as you can see by the subject line of this entry, I'm slowly trudging along on my effort to write a novel in a month.

I have had a few good days, mostly over the weekend. The weekdays are a real bear given how much time I spend in front of a keyboard for the day job. I'm just not able to endure a 16-hour day of sitting at a keyboard, as my inflamed tendinitis is starting to remind me.

To see my progress on the novel, keep your eyes peeled while visiting this site for one of the widgets a fellow NaNoWriMo author, Paul Hawke, has developed. He's created a few, including the one to the right. This is a simple display showing overall progress and how I did on any given day. Light green and red show where I was above or below the goal for the day, bold green and red are reserved for days where I did exceptionally well or monumentally badly.

Now I'm sure some of you who check this site shortly after I post this entry will notice the discrepancy between the word count in the subject of this entry and what the graphic says. The reason for this is that I generated the graphic earlier in the day, before updating my word count. If you don't believe me, you can view my NaNoWriMo profile on the official site.

RED SOX WIN 2007 WORLD SERIES IN FOUR STRAIGHT

Category: My World

THE BOSTON RED SOX HAVE JUST WON THE 2007 WORLD SERIES IN A FOUR-GAME SWEEP OVER THE COLORADO ROCKIES!!!

I've been fighting a cold all weekend and I'm exhausted, but I stayed up to watch the game. I couldn't be happier!!!

Now I'm going to bed. :)

Taking the Plunge...Writing a Novel, that is

Category: Writing

I'm excited (and somewhat nervous) to announce that I'm taking the plunge and signing up for National Novel Writing Month. Here's a description, from the NaNoWriMo web site, of what I've committed to doing in November:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Now most people who know me, know that I've been talking about writing a novel forever. Well, it's finally time that I put fingers to keyboard and start pumping out the words. The goal, as stated above, is to generate quantity, not quality. Anyone who knows anything about my writing habits knows that this will be an extraordinary challenge for me not to revise as I go along. But, as the rules say, that's what December is for.

Please wish me good luck on this endeavor, and I promise not to be too cranky as the month wears on and I'm trying to crank out this first draft.

Red Sox Win ALCS!!!

Category: My World

The Boston Red Sox have just won the 2007 American League Championship Series. They beat the Cleveland Indians by a score of 11-2.

Watch out Colorado, here comes Boston!

GO SOX!!!!

Checking out the Back Forty

Category: My World

So we finally got around to exploring the "back forty" of our property, the area beyond the picket fence that borders the grassy portion behind the house. Perhaps the most intriguing part of this area is the chicken coop. Yes, I said chicken coop. Here's a photo:

We spent about two hours clearing the brush and junk from around it. In the process we found some interesting items, including these:

The scrap pile

Snowblower with weeds in the engine block

Mass DPW safety cone

Rodent trap

Oar from inflatable raft

Mysterious metal thing...

It's a solar panel!

Spammers Killed Comments on this Blog

Category: My World

Until recently I had taken this blog offline. Aside from my being incredibly busy with Melissa, the day job, and minor problems with blog mail notifications, the single greatest reason I haven't been blogging was the onslaught of spam.

Initially I had set up the site so that comments would be posted without my reviewing them. I received the occasional spam comment offering male performance enhancement, videos of things I didn't want to imagine, and of course, mortgage refinancing for born-again, lesbian gamblers. While annoying, the volume of these types of comments was manageable for a while, about five or six per entry.

Around September 2004 I started receiving a higher volume of spam comments and had no choice but to change permissions on comments on the site, as noted in Blog Comments Now Require Approval. That worked out okay until March 2006, when my posting of Tour of the New Apartment coincided with some new advances in automated blog comment spamming technology. In the course of a few days following that post, the blog was deluged with spam comments. I was pretty busy at the time and was able to log onto the site for a few days. Then, when I finally had a spare moment, I logged on to discover over 9000 spam comments were awaiting my review. That was more than I could handle. I updated the site to shut down all commenting and, shortly thereafter, decided to halt all blogging entirely. The maintenance was just too much work.

Now I've decided to bring the blog back online and I still have a backlog of 3600 spam comments waiting for me to review. I'm slowly chipping away at that pile, adding them to my list of banned IP addresses with the hope that it will slow down the spammers once I bring comments back online. Until I clear that backlog, I'll be keeping comments turned off for all entries on the site. I'll be working with my buddy John, who's servers host this blog, to implement some automated spam control on his end. We'll also be upgrading to the latest version of Movable Type, which has some new whiz-bang spam management features. I'll keep you posted on our progress.

In the meantime, if you want to send me a comment that you'd like posted about the blog, send me e-mail and, assuming it meets the criteria for an appropriate comment, I'll post it.

Alan's Skew coming back online

Category: My World

I'm happy to announce, that after a 17 month hiatus, Alan's Skew is coming back online. As many of my family and friends already know, there's been a lot of changes in my personal life. I'll be posting a few select details as the mood strikes me in the coming weeks.

We Bought a House

Category: My World

It's official: Melissa and I have bought a house. It's a ranch with 4 bedroom, 2 baths on 1.5 acres in Chelmsford, MA. Here's some photos, click on them to get a closer view.

Front View		Kitchen		Living Room
Bedroom 1		Bedroom 2		Bedroom 3

We closed on the sale today and we're moving in tomorrow. More photos to come.

She Said Yes!

Category: My World

Last night I proposed to my girlfriend, Melissa, and I'm very happy to
announce that she said, "Yes!"

Here's a couple of photos of the ring:

Blog Notifications on the Fritz

Category: My World

I discovered last night that my blog's e-mail notifications are on the fritz. My buddy John has been doing some maintenance on the server where my blog is hosted and neither of us realized that this work affected the notification application.

He is going to move my blog to a new server in the next week or two, so hopefully we'll have notifications working again soon.

Tour of the New Apartment

Category: My World

As I recently announced, Melissa and I are moving into a new apartment. We picked up the keys today and I snapped a few pictures after we moved a couple of boxes in.

Here's a view of the living room. The whole place has hardwood floors, white walls, and nicely maintained dark wood trim. The living room has a fireplace that, for now, is purely decorative. The landlord said he'll consider having the chimney serviced, but wouldn't commit to it in writing. That's fine, I think it's cool we'll have a mantle to display photos.

To the right of the fireplace, is the sun room. It's a nice little room that we'll use as a mini-arts studio.

Here's a look from the living room into the dining room. Notice the nice built-in hutch in the dining room. To the right of it is a door to the butler's panty and the kitchen. To the left of the hutch (not visible) is a doorway to the hallway with access to the bedrooms and bath.

Here's another look at the dining room:

Here's a view from the corner of the kitchen. We've got a nice new stove and a great picture window over the sink and counter. And yes, that is a dishwasher below. :)

Finally, here's our small bathroom. It's a little smaller than my current place, but I think it's in better condition.

Making the Big Move

Category: My World

I'm happy to announce that Melissa and I are moving in together in April. We found a great two-bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood in Arlington, MA. The new place is about 6.5 miles northeast from my current place.

More details to follow as we get closer to our move-in date.

First Photos of Killian

Category: My World

I was finally able to see Killian and Mary at the hospital on Friday night. They are both doing well, and Killian slept through most of our visit. Mary was camera shy, so these photos are of Killian and a couple of me and Melissa holding him.

 

Welcome Baby Killian!

Category: My World

My nephew, Killian Tanner, was born today at 2:34 p.m. EDT. He is 10.9 lbs, 20.5 inches long, with a crop of dark hair.

As of this afternoon, mother and baby were doing well.

Photos to follow when I visit on Thursday night.

Meeting Vincent

Category: My World

Today I went to visit my friends Amy & Brian. Earlier this month, they welcomed their fourth child, Vincent, into the world. Vincent—"Vinnie"—is now just over two weeks old. Here's a few photos I took during my visit.

In this photo his Mom is smiling, but Vincent was staring off at the ceiling fan which for who knows what reason is absolutely fascinating to him.

Vincent wasn't quite ready for his close-up when I snapped this one.

But, in this one he was doing his "Happy Baby Jesus" pose, notice the pinched fingers and smile.

Our Florida Getaway

Category: My World

This weekend Melissa and I went down to Florida on a weekend getaway, hoping to find some warmer weather. While it was only slightly warmer than Boston, averaging low 50s during the day and frost-warnings at night, it was sunny and there was no snow! We didn't get to work on our tans, but we did have a lot of fun.

On Saturday morning I set the culinary bar high for our first trip together and took Melissa to her first-ever breakfast at Bob Evans. Needless to say, we had a hearty, if not heart-healthy breakfast. After the antacid breath mints, we drove over to Busch Gardens in Tampa. As the photo below shows, this place was a lot of fun.

If you're not familiar with it, Busch Gardens is an odd hybrid of amusement park (with 10 roller coasters), wildlife refuge, and life-size beer commercial. We saw and fed the giraffe while on a Serengetti Tour, which was well worth the extra charge beyond the park admission price. Here's a few more photos from the trip:

Here I am in front of a Range Rover that I would love to take for a ride...if only this one had an engine in it.

Here's a shot of a turtle I took while we were walking through the Hippo pool observation area. I have a photo of the Hippos that I'll post later.

We stayed at the Trade Island Winds Resort in St. Pete's Beach. It was a pretty nice place, decent rooms, pools, cabana, and beach facilities. The restaurant was fine for dinner, but as overpriced as most hotel restaurants are. I'd say it is probably a three-star resort, not the four that all the travel web sites say it is.

Saturday night we went to dinner at a great Japanese Steak House in St. Pete Beach, called Blue Fugu. We went all out and sat at the grill and watched the chef cook our food right in front of us. It was very entertaining and the food was incredible! It was the best dinner we had on the trip.

Sunday we each went for massages at the hotel spa, then dined on the hotel's breakfast buffet. The food was okay and the wait staff half-conscious, though the place was packed so I guess I should be a little nicer. Nah.

On Sunday afternoon we went into St. Petersburg and visited the Salvatore Dalí Museum. I didn't know very much about him beyond his painting with the melting watches and his funky mustache, so this was a great experience for me. I have a newfound respect for his skill as a painter and the fact that someone with that twisted and bizarre of an imagination could stay focused enough to produce the volume and quality of work he did over his lifetime. It's simply incredible.

One special exhibit we saw that I feel deserves mention is Tilting at Windmills: Dalí Illustrates Cervantes' Don Quixote. This is a collection of lithographs Dalí produced for a special edition of Don Quixote, which was published in 1957. Dalí's technique and creativity in these works are amazing.

Late Sunday afternoon we went for a relaxing walk on the beach. Again, it was a little chilly, but very enjoyable nonetheless. I dipped my feet in the Gulf Coast waters briefly and while rushing back out nearly stepped on this little fellow:

Sunday night we went into St. Petersburg for dinner and a movie. We had a quick but delicious meal at Dan Marino's restaurant, Marino's, then went to see Hoodwinked at the local multiplex. The movie was pretty good, but would only recommend it as a rental.

On the way out of St. Pete Beach on Monday, we stopped for a leisurely breakfast at the Starlight Diner, a 1950s-era diner down the street from the hotel. It was excellent breakfast fare, a little better than Bob Evans and certainly much more charming in style and decor.

Merry Christmas to All

Category: My World

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and safe, fun, relaxing holiday weekend. Here's a photo I took today of me and Melissa in front of our tree.

Happy Christmahanuramasolstikwanzafestihumbug

Category: My World

I saw this great cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning, editorial cartoonist, Tony Auth. I think it really captures the essence of what our politically-hypercorrect society has produced.

Read more about Tony Auth on Slate.com.

Our Decorated Christmas Tree

Category: My World

Melissa and I finished decorating our Christmas tree this weekend. We combined our ornament collections and bought a few new ones together. It think it looks pretty amazing!   You can't really see it in this photo with the white window casing in the background, but the star on top of the tree is a wooden snowflake ornament that my Dad made back in 1998.

My First Live Christmas Tree!

Category: My World

I decided that since I'm celebrating Christmas with my girlfriend Melissa, I would buy a real Christmas tree.   We went out on Saturday and bought the tree at St. Bernard's Parish in Newton, MA. It was an adventure securing it to Pearl's roof and then getting it home. Luckily we didn't have to go on the highway. I was surprised at how easy it was getting the tree up to my third-floor apartment.   Here's what the tree looks like set up in my front room. Melissa provided the tree base. I hope that we'll have time to decorate it over the next week or two as our schedules seem to be getting more hectic as the holidays approach.

One of the positive side effects of this little venture is that the normally stale-smelling hallway in my building now has a pine-fresh scent!

Happy Halloween

Category: My World

Yesterday Melissa and I attended what's become an annual event in my social calendar: Pumpkin Carving at Nancy & Karl's house in Acton, MA. This year there were about 25 or so people, more than half of whom were kids. Here's a look at the group's collective carving efforts:

Here's my creation, below, and Melissa's, on the right. Sorry these are so fuzzy, I didn't have a tripod to hold my camera steady for the long exposure these shots required.

Here's a few close-ups of some of the other folks' handiwork:

   

Welcome Trinity!

Category: My World

Just wanted to offer congratulations to my friend Marjorie and her husband Ron who welcomed the arrival of their baby girl, Trinity, on Wednesday, October 12, 2005. Mom & "Trinnie" are doing fine.

Boston Blues Festival & Cambridge World Fair

Category: My World

Today Melissa and I went down to the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade and enjoyed a few hours of the 2005 Boston Blues Festival. There were a couple of acts, but the one that made the biggest impression on me was David "Honeyboy" Edwards, a 90-year old Delta Blues musician. He was just amazing! Here's a photo of him playing:

It was a little too chilly to sit for very long by the river, so we left after Edwards' performance. We took the train over to Central Square in Cambridge to check out the Central Square World's Fair. We made our way through the crowds, stopped and looked at a couple of booths, and even watched a few performers. In the end, we didn't see that much of interest, so we left.

Portsmouth Blues Festival

Category: My World

This weekend I went on a date to the 20th Anniversary Portsmouth Blues Festival at the Red Hook Brewery. The show featured a great cross-section of blues talent: Shemekia Copeland (right) T.J. Wheeler, Bala Tounkara, & The Funky River Band Rockin' Jake Bob Halperin The James Cohen Caravan Flamenco/Jazz Band Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas (warning: link plays music) Amos Lee

The festival was organized by the Blues Bank Collective, which is one of the oldest Blues education organizations in the world. T.J. Wheeler, the Executive Director, performed with a group of his young proteges, The Funky River Band. The kids were good musicians on their respective instruments (hand drums, guitar, and flute) but I didn't think much of their harmonies. Bala Tounkara, who played a really cool string instrument from his native Mali, boosted the groups performance. Wheeler held the whole group together with his masterful guitar playing.

I'm not much of a flamenco fan, but have to say that I was blown away by the James Cohen Caravan. I enjoyed Nate Williams and the Zydeco Cha Chas too, but have to admit that after the second song if it weren't for the between-song chatter by the singer, I wouldn't have been able to tell when one ended and the next started.

My date and I were very impressed by Amos Lee and were considering buying one of his CDs, but unlike all the other artists at the festival, he cut and ran after his performance.

Shemekia Copeland was absolutely amazing! The daughter of Johnny "Clyde" Copeland, one of the greatest bluesman to come out of Texas, she is an incredible talent in her own right. She sang for a solid hour, including a couple of songs from her new album: Wild Wild Woman (and your the Lucky Man), Who Stole My Radio?, All About You, It's 2 A.M., Has Anybody Seen My Man?, and Married To The Blues.

A Trip to the Higgins Faire

Category: My World

The product release I've been working on since mid-April has to ship on June 30th come hell or high water. Well the tide is high and the air above the water line is sweltering, so I'm pretty stressed. I've been working hard since my return from Italy at the beginning of May, having only taken two or three complete days off including weekends. It's part of the nature of being a technical writer in high tech--holding onto the tail of the dog (or in this case the cow) as it's pushed out the door as soon as the code is compiled and mostly tested.

In any case, I was happy to use my brother and niece as an excuse to take a few hours off on Saturday to go with them to the Higgins Faire at Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, MA.   Here I am trying on one of the many medieval helmets--I think this one is from a Norman soldier. Luckly you can't see the security cable they've had to run through the helmets so that people don't steal them. This is a recent addition, since Pete and I visited the museum five or six years ago and they didn't have anti-theft devices on anything on display at that time. "Excuse me sir, is that a Norman helmet in your pocket, or are you...?" Even with the cable it was pretty cool to try this one on.

My niece wore her royal garb and was dubbed "Lady Rowan" by the King and Queen of Castle Higgins when we entered. We then went in and found a workshop where we could make a shield with a heraldic seal. Rowan's seal has a label (the square rook pattern at the top to indicate she is first born, then a unicorn and a crown because that's what she wanted and that's what she got.

After watching the shield making, I took over as Lady Rowan's court chaperon and led her through the faire while her father patiently waited in a long line for the artisan who was making swords, crowns, and other amusements out of balloons. Our young maident requested a pink poodle and was quite pleased by the artisan's handiwork.

Among the many other sights at the indoor faire, was a very educational demonstration of medieval rapier and dagger techniques put on by the Higgins Armory Sword Guild. Despite the little sock balls on the ends of the rapiers, they were quite impressive.

The trip out of the castle parking lot was amusing as it seems that several parties' drivers inconsiderately boxed in other family carriages to the point that I thought most certainly the sheriff might be dispatched. Luckily there was a member of the brute squad handy and he took care of the situation. We were fortunate to escape without incident.

Fine Dining in Venice

Category: Adventures Abroad

Since 1929, Harry's Bar has been a popular watering hole and elegant eatery for writers, artists, celebrities, and aristocrats. It's most famous patron was Hemingway. Now while I don't consider myself a great fan of "Papa" and I'm not exactly known for my exotic palette, I'd say I was both interested and excited at the prospect of eating at one Venice's swankier restaurants that had a literary legacy. What I did not realize was just how much I would pay for the experience, fiscally and physically.   The average meal at Harry's consists of an appetizer, a first course, a main course, and a dessert. I chose the Minestrone Soup which was amazing, especially considering it cost 19 euro (which is about $24 US given that 1 euro was about $1.30 US during our trip). I skipped the first course and selected a main course, the Sole Calabresi, which was 57 euro ($74 US). Total, the meal cost me the 85 euro I had in my wallet, and I had to borrow a few dollars from the other members of our group. It was embarrassing, but they were very generous.

Here's a picture of our group of fine diners outside the entrance of Harry's following our meal:

(Left to right: Tom, Barbara, Beth, Dakota, Jill, and me)

Unfortunately, shortly after leaving the restaurant and this divine meal, I experienced severe digestive distress and ended up spending the better half of the night ill, much like this photo of Hemingway:

Cinco de Mayo at the Iguana Cantina

Category: My World

So tonight I had dinner celebrating Cinco de Mayo at the Iguana Cantina in Waltham. While it's not unusual that I ate at the Iguana, it was a little different that I had musical entertainment:

Despite the offers to embibe one of the many wonderful Mexican beers, I resisted.

Highlights from Italy

Category: Adventures Abroad

I just returned from a 9-day vacation in Italy. It was a tour with 30 people through Rome, Florence, and Venice. Here's a few photo highlights, I'll have more from each city over the next week or two.

Here I am at St. Peter's Square in Rome following our tour of the Vatican Museum and St. Peter's.

Here's the view of the floor of the Colosseum. It's a pretty incredible place. I had no idea that the Colosseum is the same length and width of St. Peter's Bascilica.

Here I am at Italy's biggest tourist trap: Pisa. This place was an absolute circus of street vendors, pickpockets, tourists, and high school kids blowing off school for the afternoon.

This is Santa Croce, one of Florence's many wonderful churches. The unique thing about the churches here is their white, green, and pink marble facades.

This is me on the banks of the Grand Canal in Venice. As if you couldn't tell, I was very tired by this point of the tour.

Gwyneth's 7th Birthday Brings in Spring

Category: My World

On Saturday I went with my friends LeAnn, Scott, and their kids to celebrate their daughter Gwyneth's 7th birthday. We went for dim sum at China Pearl, a nice restaurant in Boston's China town district. Afterward, we did a little shopping, picked up a few gifts for the birthday girl, and then went for dessert at Faneuil Hall.

Here's Ashlyn, Gwyneth, and me

Here's me and Liam

Ashlyn and Gwyneth showing off the pretty parisol that Ashlyn gave her sister		The sisters in their natural state

And finally, me and all three kids:

Promotion

Category: Work

As most readers of this blog know I've been working pretty hard since joining my current company in May 2004. I'm pleased to say that my efforts have been rewarded and today I was promoted to the position of Documentation Manager.

The promotion goes into effect on April 1, a better April Fool's Day gift I could not ask for. Hopefully the joke will not be on me when I see what increase in compensation I get for this promotion, other than the extra work and less time for marathon foosball matches. It will also help supplement my saving for a house/condo and my upcoming vacation.

New Mexico Sculpture Park, circa 2001

Category: Adventures Abroad

Here's a few more photos from my trip to New Mexico in 2001. These are from a side trip to a sculpture park we visited on our way to Santa Fe.

This one is exactly what it looks like: me with a giant armadillo...something you would have expected to see in Texas more than in the Land of Enchantment.

Here's Greg having a little fun with a cannon ball:

And finally, this is an octopus with a toad in the background.

The Black Hole, circa July 2001

Category: Adventures Abroad

Here's some photos from my 2001 vacation to New Mexico. My friend Greg took me for a tour of a local store called "The Black Hole." The place is run by a former Los Alamos National Laboratories employee-turned peace activist who now sells surplus items from the lab. The stuff inside the store was an odd cross between an Army surplus store and the prop department for Dr. Strangelove. [Note: Movie title corrected on 2/17/05, per Marjorie's comment]

Yes, the photo here shows me holding a decommissioned sea mine and behind me seems to be a pile of assorted missle casings.

If you're curious, you can read a July 2004 news story about some interesting happenings at the store: FBI agents raid Los Alamos store

Check back here in a few days for the photos I took at Bandelier National Monument.

New England Patriots Win the Super Bowl!!!

Category: My World

I woke up feeling sick this morning, but I slept through most of the afternoon so I could stay up and watch the Super Bowl.

I'm very happy to announce that the New England Patriots made it worth the effort as they have just won their third Super Bowl in the last four years. The final score was 24-21, a lot closer than predicted, but a great outcome nonetheless!

Yea!!!

Now I'm going to bed...

Blizzard 2005

Category: My World

I've survived the dreaded Blizzard of 2005 this weekend. The Boston area had about 29 inches of snow complemented by 50+ mph gusts of wind and near zero temperatures creating -15 degree windchills. Just lovely.

The wind created snow drifts like the one shown in this picture of Pearl in the parking lot behind my apartment building:

I dug her out but didn't go anywhere because while the streets appear to be plowed (thanks to having a City councilman living on my block), nothing is open, plus I think it's illegal to park on the street or any of the City parking lots until the state of emergency is lifted by the Governor.

Most of the local city schools are closed on Monday...don't know if my office will be open, probably. I'll be happy to get out of the house.

Me and Debbie

Category: My World

Here's a photo my Mom took of me and my friend Debbie just before we left for Jennie & David's wedding reception:

Visit to the South Park Conservatory

Category: My World

While visiting friends and family in Buffalo over New Year's Day weekend, I took a trip with my folks to visit the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens in South Park.

My Mom wanted to check out the seasonal pointsettia display and see what else was growing in the Conservatory. Here's my folks in front of the giant Christmas tree.

We were very fortunate to discover that our visit to see the pointsettias overlapped with the beginning of the orchid blooming period. Here's a bunch of photos I took of these amazing flowers:

New Year's Eve Wedding

Category: My World

On New Year's Eve I attended my friend Jennie's wedding. Check out these photos from the festivities.

The bride and groom, Jennie and David:

Here's Jennie and one of her friends:

Me and the lovely bride:

Here I am with the happy couple:

Thanks to my friend Debbie who was both my dancing partner and took the photos of me with Jennie and David.

Merry Christmas

Category: My World

Best wishes to everyone for a safe, Merry Christmas.

Self-Portraits, Holiday 2004, Part III

Category: Art

Self-Portraits, Holiday 2004, Part II

Category: Art

Here's a few others from the collection of self-portraits I made this past weekend:

The Most Coveted Gift at the Yankee Swap

Category: Work

The Engineering group I work with had a Yankee gift swap today to celebrate the holidays. For those not familiar with the concept, it's pretty simple: say there's 15 people in the group and everyone brings a wrapped gift of a set value, say no more than $10. Each person pulls a number from a bowl, then the person with #1 selects a gift and unwraps it. The person with #2 selects a gift, unwraps it, and then can swap with #1. Each person thereafter picks a gift and has the option of swapping with any of the other opened gifts. After #15 selects his or her present, the person with #1 has the option of swapping with anyone else's. Believe it or not, this was the most coveted gift at today's Yankee swap. It was swapped about six times between the 14 people who participated:

The "winner" of this gift decided to share it with the whole group by hanging it from the ceiling outside our Vice President's office. Apologies for the poor quality, I took the photo with my cell phone.

I received a Shot Glass Chess Set:

First Photo of Kristin

Category: My World

First photo of my friends' John and Sandy's daughter: Kristin. I know I'm biased but I have to say I think she's a cutie.

More later.

Welcome to the World, Kristin Louise!

Category: My World

My best friend John, and his wife Sandy along with their daughter Marie are happy to welcome the safe and happy arrival of Kristin Louise at 12:19 p.m. today. I'm awaiting photos from the proud father, but as of our last phone call he was busy keeping three year old Marie occupied. :)

Best wishes to the whole family!

p.s. I hope I spelled her name correctly, apologies if I didn't.

Happy Anniversary Mom & Dad

Category: My World

Please join me in wishing my parents a Happy Anniversary. Today marks 42 years! Here's hoping there's many more happy and healthy ones to come!

Here's a photo of them with their granddaughter, Rowan, earlier this year during a visit to Boston.

Double Enfranchised Me

Category: My World

While many people are fighting for the right to vote even once, I had an odd experience that shows you how easy it is for things to go askew in the U.S. electoral system:

I got to the polling place this morning and my name was on the register roles, twice. They misspelled my last name so it showed up in two places. It's five letters and a VERY common Anglo name, so it's beyond me how they managed to screw it up, but my City Clerk's office did. I pointed it out to the clerk at the polling place but he didn't seem to care because there was a queue they wanted to get cleared before the polling volunteers' oxygen tanks ran out or pacemaker batteries died. Of course they didn't ask for any photo ID, so I suppose I could go and vote again tonight. Probably won't though. Once was quite enough for me.

It's too bad I don't live in a "swing" state (which is media-jibberish for "concentration of indecisive idiots") where even one of my ballots would help my candidates a little more. I'm sure when or if they figure it out I'll be contacted by the news media as one of the few living "double enfranchised" members of the electorate. Well, better here than in Florida.

The other odd thing is that we use computer bubble forms to vote now, not the old lever system which I liked. Some idiot decided to give voters here broad-tipped, fat magic markers to fill in the bubbles, which is odd because from my public school days I seem to recall that if you marked outside the bubble on your form the whole thing gets rejected! Hmmm. They were nice pens, though I can't say I really cared for the colors of the Haliburton logo on the side.

Please don't ask me for whom I voted: that's between me, God, Homeland Security, and the team of displaced Saudi, Iraqi, and Afghani nationals who are waiting for their H1-B visas so they can come to the U.S. in January to do the third and fourth recounts. :P

RED SOX WIN WORLD SERIES!!!

Category: My World

I'm ECSTATIC to report that the Boston Red Sox have just defeated the St. Louis Cardinals to win the World Series!!!

The Curse of the Bambino is dead! Long live the Red Sox!!!

Now I'm going to bed and sleep in tomorrow!

p.s. Bill Buckner: all is forgiven. :)

Blog Comments Now Require "Approval"

Category: My World

Recently I've had a problem with anonymous users posting rude, offensive, and generally inappropriate comments to my blog. Therefore I am forced to implement the necessary process of reviewing comments before they get posted to the site.

This is an unfortunate but necessary step to avoid offending the people who I've invited to read this site, as well as the uninvited. :P It will also significantly reduce the likelihood that anyone will want to sue me because of the comments being posted. So here's my "Policy on Alan's Skew Comments":

Please keep your comments relevant to the content posted on this site. This is my site and therefore I reserve the right to refuse to post a comment. If I deem it to be inappropriate, I'll attempt to return it to you with a note telling you so. It'll be up to you to change it or not. If you don't like it, get your own blog.

Here's a list of the top five things that will cause me to not post a comment:

1. Use of expletives except in occasional mild expressions of emphasis - There's a lot of words in the English language, please expand your vocabulary.


2. Threatening language - I don't wish to be sued or have any harm come to me or anyone I know.


3. Deragotory, defamatory, or threatening language about me or issues concerning race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, or sexual orientation - I don't wish to have legal counsel for the Armenian-Pro-Nuke-Transgender-Conservative-Whale-Lovers-for-Jesus Committee of South Bend, Indiana, or any other group suing me.


4. Disclosure of anyone's personal information - This is the "World Wide" Web after all.


5. Advertisements - I already have more than enough offers for help to grow more hair, enlarge parts of my body, remove unwanted hair, improve my stamina, and buy my prescriptions in other countries, while cleaning my oven and showing me graphic images of young people doing unspeakable things with other species. Eeewww!

This is a partial list and is subject to change without notice.

I apologize in advance if I do not have time to get your comment posted immediately. I have a day job and that's what pays the bills, so that takes higher priority than my blog. Sorry.

Home Phone Service On Again

Category: My World

I'm happy to report that my home phone is back in working order. I confirmed with my landlord on Thursday that my new downstairs neighbor had RCN install a new cable line to her place. On Wednesday, when I lost phone service, the RCN technician drilled a new hole into the side of the house and had to run cable through the basement drilling several more holes. My landlord was not very happy with this very invasive process.

I followed my landlord's suggestion that I call RCN and demand that they fix the problem they apparently caused. The RCN customer service person very nicely replied that while they were sorry for my inconvenience, they could not repair the problem because they were not my phone provider, unless I was willing to switch to RCN that day. (Not a chance!) I told her I was staying with Verizon and that if they were able to fix the line and show RCN's tech had caused the problem, then I would be forwarding my bill to RCN. She politely told me I that I should call their 800 number again if Verizon was able to do that and billed me.

The Verizon tech showed up at 8:30 this morning and said he could tell by the gnarled nest of disconnected cables and loose phone lines hanging out of the cable/phone junction box on the side of the building, coupled with the pile of wire cuttings and pieces of electrical tape on the ground, that my building had been the site of a recent RCN installation.

He spent 30 minutes in frustration searching the basement and the side of the building trying to locate where my previously connected line had been cut and, as he said is RCN's standard practice, the end tucked into the siding or the rafters. After that exercise in futility he came back and spent the better part of another hour troubleshooting from my phone back to where the line entered the living space. In the process he confirmed what a previous Verizon tech told me: my apartment has at least three separate lines installed, though only one was active. Unlike his predecessor, this technician took pity on me and moved my line coming into the house from the gnarled mess in the primary junction box that the RCN tech had apparently made such a mess of and moved it to a second external phone junction box (connected to the telephone pole) that is above the roof over the front porch. He then rewired the apartment to connect all 10 of the 11 phone jacks to my existing line. (The 11th jack I cut off during my earlier fun running stereo speaker cables.)

The Verizon tech was very professional during his adventure troubleshooting the problem. He said that this type of "accidental" disconnection is nothing more than a little game that RCN and other third-party phone and cable supplier technicians play with each other. That said, he told me there would be no charge for his work.

I'm pretty happy with Verizon today.

No Home Phone Service

Category: My World

Mysteriously when I arrived home late last night my home phone had no dial tone. I did the standard troubleshooting of testing each jack with a corded phone, but no luck. I went down to the side of the house to look at the phone junction box but there wasn't any signs of tampering. On the way back up the rear stairs I noticed that there was some construction debris near the trash cans, a new back installed door on my downstairs neighbor's apartment, and the smell of fresh paint in the hallway. All likely from the woman on the 2nd floor getting a new roommate. Perhaps she had a new line installed. Who knows.

Anyhow, Verizon couldn't commit to their standard 4-hour time block for a service call today, probably because my service call was so late last night (9:30 p.m.). I decided to wait for the service tech on Friday morning as I have a major work project deliverable due today.

Therefore, if you need to reach me in the next 24 hours, call me on my cell.

My New Car: "Pearl"

Category: My World

After 9 years of driving a Saturn, I'm pleased to announce that I've bought a new vehicle: a 2004 Toyota RAV4. Her name is "Pearl" (named for the color of the trim that complements the Salsa Red color. Here's a photo from the Toyota web site:

This photo shows one of the things I really liked about the car: removable rear seats (cute blonde not included).

Here's the dashboard, complete with stereo controls on the steering wheel.

The rear seats (when installed) seat three. Now all I need is a booster seat to pick up those young, single moms when I go cruising the malls. :P

Walden Pond Picnic

Category: My World

Another photo from my disposable camera: my co-workers from Authoria's engineering team relaxing on a picnic at Walden Pond. It was a well deserved break after a solid six weeks of hard work to ship another software release on time. I'm not going to name them, they know who they are.

February Family Fun

Category: My World

In the prints of the disposable camera I mentioned in my last entry, I found a photo from a trip to Buffalo for my Dad's birthday. While I was there I had the chance to visit with my cousins: Mike and Tina, and Tina's daughter, Katrina.

(Left to right: Dad, Mike, Katrina, Tina, and me)

My Cozy Bedroom at Liz's

Category: My World

I recently found a disposable Kodak camera that had been bouncing around my car since January of this year. I shot the last of the remaining exposures at my niece's birthday part and sent it for processing. One of the interesting photos I found was this shot of my bedroom at my friend Liz's, where I stayed earlier this year.

I think the size of this space and the obvious lack of clutter in it provides a little insight into why I've been so reticent to unpack the large volume of boxes I have stored in my spare bedroom. The blue moon and stars curtain was my privy screen as my room that connected to the kitchen was without a door. The striped blanket over the head of the bed acted as a windbreak from the cold, winter winds that routinely blasted my side of the building. It was quite cozy and I'm immensely grateful to Liz for putting up, er, putting me up.

A Visit to Frederick Law Olmsted's Office

Category: My World

While my folks were in town a few weeks ago for my niece's birthday, we went to the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, MA. My folks are interested in Olmsted's work because as the father of modern urban landscape design, his first professional project was Delaware Park in our hometown: Buffalo, NY.

After Olmsted worked in Buffalo he went to New York and played a key role in designing Central Park. He moved to Boston in 1890 to seek refuge from the stress of dealing with the politics of public works in NYC. Once in Boston Olmsted started his design firm and, among other projects, designed the park system that surrounds Boston known as the Emerald Necklace. The office was open until 1980 when the owners moved to New Hampshire. They turned the building, all its contents, and the grounds over to the U.S. National Park Service for preservation.

Here's some artistic renderings of the photos I took on our trip: This is the entryway to the grounds.

Here's the building.

Here's the garden Olmsted designed. It has a distinct, natural and slightly overgrown look to it.

Here's the room where the blueprints were processed.

This room is one of the few with any climate control. It's where the Park Service does some of its preservation work of the Olmsted project archives they inherited.

This is one of the older areas of the archives and it's how most of the project files were stored.

I really liked this old Remington typewriter, found in one of the offices.

This is one of the private vistas Olmsted designed next to the office where his staff could go to feel as though they were miles away from the bustle of everyday life.

This rear view of the building shows how the Olmsteds expanded it several times over the years.

Happy Birthday Rowan!

Category: My World

This weekend was my niece Rowan's 3rd birthday. To celebrate my parents came into town and we had a nice little party at my brother's house. Here's a few photos from the party today:

At three Rowan is already a big Barbie doll fan. I'm not sure if she asked for it, but her Mom made her this really cool Barbie cake:

Here's the birthday girl with her parents:

Here's Rowan with her grandparents:

One Night in Hollywood

Category: My World

To top off our trip to Santa Barbara office, my boss (Elizabeth), co-workers (James and Deanna), and I went to Hollywood for the evening. James wanted to meet up with his brother who lives there, I wanted to have dinner with my friend Pam who lives there, and Elizabeth and Deanna went sightseeing on their own.

On the way into town we passed the Capital Records building...somehow I doubt this would look the same if it was a stack of compact discs.

I met Pam at her condo and we walked down to Hollywood Boulevard to have dinner and see a few sights. Our first stop was Grauman's Chinese Theater.

One of the attractions of the theater is the hand and footprints of many stars. Here's Clark Gable:

Here's Jane Russell's and Marilyn Monroe's hand/footprints next to each other--made following the success of their movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Notice Sophia Loren's square is above at the right.

Here's me and Pam. After going to the Chinese Theater we went to a Wolfgang Puck restaurant called Vert. We had an amazing dinner and then went for a walk in the Hollywood Hills above Pam's condo while waiting for Deanna, James, and Elizabeth to pick me up.

Traveling for Work

Category: Work

This week I'm in Santa Barbara, CA on business. This is my first trip to California so I brought my camera to snap a few photos.

Here's State Street in downtown Santa Barbara. The city is absolutely beautiful with a unique combination of southwestern Spanish-influenced architecture and the tropical delights of the Pacific ocean breezes blowing in from the south.

I went for a drive this afternoon with a co-worker to scout out houses--he's transferring to this office in the next few months. On the drive we saw a uniquely California thing: a line of 10 or so Lamborghinis and Ferraris racing up Highway 101:

Here's a photo of one of the lovely Santa Ynez mountains, the range the surrounds the city of Santa Barbara. This image hardly does it justice...not sure why the sky color is so aqua looking.

Portrait Drawing: "Becky" Week #2

Category: Art

Tonight was the final session of my portrait drawing class. We focused on finishing the drawing we started last week. Like last week's class, the toughest part of this session was going so slowly. In the first six classes we drew pretty quickly while the instructor walked around class saying things like, "...by this time you should be working on the nose" and then two minutes later he'd say, "...great, now you should be finishing the ear lobes" and everyone would let out a collective sigh of frustration because we were almost all still mucking about with the eyebrow or upper lip. I think this final image is pretty good, though like most drawings my internal critic is always saying "Yeah, it could use a few more hours of work."

At the end of class we lined up our drawings and did a mini-critique. The photo quality is mediocre because I took it with my cell phone. Overall I think it was a pretty good class and plan to take another one in the Fall.

Portrait Drawing: "Becky" Week 1

Category: Art

In this week's portrait drawing class we started working on our final project: a two session-long portrait. Here's my first week's work.

Portrait Drawing: That's One Big Head

Category: Art

In previous portrait drawing classes, we've drawn on 18"x24" drawing pads. In this week's class we drew the subject on a much larger scale, we did a quick study sketch, divided it into four quadrants, and then drew each quadrant on an 18"x24" sheet. Here's what the my quadrants looked like:

Top left quadrant.		Top right quadrant.
Bottom left quadrant.		Bottom right quadrant.

And the four quadrants, roughly aligned look like this:

My teacher said that the idea is to focus on each area's highlights and shading, not creating a perfectly aligned image.

Dragonflies Mating

Category: My World

Among the photos I took on Saturday's Big Bug Birthday adventure were a series of four of two dragonflies mating. Here's a collage of those images:

The Big Bug Birthday

Category: My World

On Saturday I went to my friends' daughter's birthday party outing at Garden in the Woods, a nature area run by the New England Wildflower Society in Framingham, MA. We were there to see the Big Bugs exhibit which comprised a series of twelve large bug sculptures displayed along the trail that runs through this park.

Here's the birthday girl, Ashlyn (second from the left), and her friends standing in front of the giant grasshopper.

Here's the Big Bug Butterfly.

While on the walk through the woods, I found several naturally occuring bugs to photograph.

A damselfly, or maybe it's a dragonfly, I can't remember how to tell the difference.

One of the volunteers found this skin which a damselfly shed and left on the side of the pond.

The Big Bug Assassin Bug.

The Big Bug Praying Mantis.

And finally, the Big Bug Ant.

Portrait Drawing: "Djana"

Category: Art

In week five we focused on using different tools for drawing: vine charcoal, erasers, compressed charcoal, and blending stumps. The vine charcoal was the primary drawing tool for lines and shapes, we used compressed charcoal for the darkest shadows such as those below the model's jaw, the eraser to create highlights such as those in the model's hair and on her forehead, and the blending stumps to blend the shades of the reflected light. I could have used another 20 minutes or so to work on the model's hand, it's a bit rough.

Saturday Swan Ride

Category: My World

This past Saturday afternoon I went down to the Boston Public Garden to join Pete and Rowan for a ride on the famous swan boats. Here's a few photos of our little adventure:

On the ride we saw a Momma duck and her baby ducklings:

After the swan boat ride, we went over to see the brass statues of the characters from Robert McCloskey's book, Make Way for Ducklings.

Here's the three of us having fun:

Portrait Drawing: "Richard #1"

Category: Art

In week four of portrait drawing class, we had a model with a very strong face. I was very tired and having a tough time getting into the details of his face after drawing the basic outline, so my teacher came to the rescue. He filled in the lips and got me started on the eyes. I think it's a decent work, but could have used another hour of work.

Portrait Drawing: "Louise"

Category: Art

I knew that I'd be working a lot in June so one of the things I did to try and maintain a balance between work and life was to sign up for a portrait drawing class at Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

This week was the third class and the first one where I made a drawing that I felt really looks like the person. In the first two classes we were all drawing the same model, but in Thursday night's class we set up our easels in a zig-zag pattern and drew our classmates. This is my rendering of Louise. Mercifully her hair kept flopping down over her eyes, so I didn't waste any time obsessing about drawing them. You'll have to take my word for it, she's got lovely eyes.

The image has an odd wave pattern in it because of the humidity's effect on the newsprint I used. Next class we're going to start using better quality paper. Newsprint is fine for sketching, but isn't thick enough to be reworked and is a pretty low archival quality.

This Dog's Rest

Category: My World

After 21 straight days of working, I'm happy to report that my project has shipped today. I'm now going to take a few days off to recoup and recharge.

I don't know what I'll do but that's fine with me. Happy holiday weekend to all.

Sofa!

Category: My World

My sofa, chair, and ottoman have arrived: at 7:30 this morning. Here's the first photos:

Living Room Dilemma

Category: My World

I got a call earlier this week from the furniture company to schedule delivery of my new sofa, chair, and ottoman. This made me start thinking again about an uneasiness I was feeling about the colors in my living room (red and white walls with a slate blue carpet) were just not going to work with the butter colored furniture. Something had to give and the obvious choices were either repaint the walls or do something about the carpet.

In a word, the carpet lost.

I pulled up the carpet, rolled it up and tossed it in the front hall (shown at left). I took a look at the hardwood floors and a layer of salt and sand, but frankly, it was far less gross than the carpet (the remnant left under the radiator shown below).

It took a bit of work to get the crud off the floor, but after moving the oriental carpet from the studio room into the living room to cover most of the nasty floor marks, the room was finally ready.

I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to having furniture.

Happy 40th to My Brother!

Category: My World

In honor of my brother Peter turning 40 today (photo from his party this morning), I'd like to offer this tribute of the lyrics to Weird Al Yankovic's "Happy Birthday." I do this for two reasons: first, I love this song, and second, because Pete introduced me to The Dr. Demento Show when we were kids and it was on one of the very first shows that I heard Weird Al. So here you go, brother:

Happy Birthday by Al Yankovic

Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you

Well, it's time to celebrate your birthday, it happens every year
We'll eat a lot of broccoli and drink a lot of beer
You should be good and happy that there's something you can eat
A million npeople every day are starving in the street

Your daddy's in the gutter with the wretched and the poor
Your mama's in the kitchen with a can of Cycle Four
There's garbage in the water
There's poison in the sky
I guess it won't be long before we're all gonna die

Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you

Well, what's the matter little friend, you think this party is the pits
Enjoy it while you can, we'll soon be blown to bits
The monkeys in the pentagon are gonna cook our goose
Their finger's on the button, all they need it an excuse

It doesn't take a military genius to see
We'll all be crispy critters after World War III
There's nowhere you can run to, nowhere you can hide
When they drop the big one, we all get fried

(Come on boys and girls, sing along, ok?)

Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
wow! (background screaming, sound effect)

Well there's a punk in the alley and he's looking for a fight
There's an Arab on the corner buying everything in sight
There's a mother in the ghetto with another mouth to feed
Seems that everywhere you look today there's misery and greed

I guess you know the Earth is gonna crash into the sun
But that's no reason why we shouldn't have a little fun
So if you think it's scary, if it's more than you can take
Just blow out the candles and have a piece of cake

Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
wow!

Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you

(Happy Birthday!)

And a pinch to grow an inch!

PC Desk Assembly Complete

Category: My World

I'm still feeling a bit foggy as far as the ear infection goes. I'm not going to risk making any long drives (over 25 minutes) anywhere because I've been getting wicked headaches from the road noise. But I did feel well enough to tackle the task of putting my new PC desk together. It was a bit of a struggle to do alone, but the assembly instructions were well illustrated and I got it put together in about an hour. Here's what the finished product looks like:

Painting Complete

Category: My World

Here's a few photos of the freshly painted living room. I'm still not entirely sure I'm happy with the color but I couldn't stand the thought of repainting it this soon. Maybe in another month or two. In the meantime, take a look:

Now I can't wait until the furniture shows up!

Pepto Primer and Sweet Spiceberry

Category: My World

So I went to bed at 10:45 last night thinking that I would sleep in until about 9:00 or 10:00. Alas, no, I was wide awake at 6:40 this morning and after my coughing fit, couldn't get back to sleep. My ear drum is still popped, but it's now making some crunching sounds when I swallow—which is progress, I think. Anyhow, after a shower and breakfast I decided it was too early to do laundry, so I started putting the masking tape up in preparation for painting the living/entertainment room. My digital camera was handy, so I snapped a couple photos in process.

Here's what it looked like after I taped it up.

Here's a shot of the Pepto-Bismol pink colored primer. Since I'm painting the room a deep red, the guy at Home Depot said I needed to prime the walls with a tinted primer so the red would only require two or three coats, instead of six or seven if I were painting directly on white.

Here's the final color after the first of what looks like will have to be three coats. It's called Sweet Spiceberry. I'll put a third coat on tomorrow to cover the last of the light spots.

And yes, I'll probably have to repaint it twelve coats of some neutral, earth tone color before I move out.

Too Sick to Drive

Category: My World

I was planning on going to Buffalo but given how foggy I've felt in the mornings and how much I'm still coughing in the evening, right up until bedtime, I'm scrapping my travel plans and staying in Boston. The thought of driving with my head feeling this foggy and a popped right ear drum that severely limits my hearing is too much to handle.

I picked up the exhaust vent for the washer/dryer unit and a couple of cans of paint at Home Depot tonight, and after sleeping in tomorrow, I'll catch up on laundry backlog and take a stab at painting my living/entertainment room.

Other than that, I'll be taking it very easy this weekend. If I have the ambition, I'll post some photos of the painting project.

Desk and Washer/Dryer Arrive

Category: My World

My new PC desk was finally delivered today. I was prepared to work from home all day, but the Staples delivery crew showed up at 10:45 this morning and carried the monsterous box with my new desk up the stairs like it was an air mattress. It was in the back bedroom awaiting assembly by 11:00 and I was able to go to work.

This evening my buddy Wade showed up with a stacked washer/dryer unit in the back of his SUV. This was a generous gift from my friend Amy, who had lent it to Wade and his wife when they moved into their new house a few years ago. Wade has since bought standard washer and dryer units, so he had offered this one to me.

It took us about an hour and with all the grunting and banging around of the unit's metal sides as we pushed and pulled it up the stairs, my new neighbors might have been thinking that the sounds eminating from the hallway were either the sounds of someone passing kidney stones during a thunderstorm, or two guys moving a washer/dryer unit up a narrow stairwell. Regardless of what they thought was the source of the sounds, they probably did what most reasonable people would do in this situation: lock the doors and double-check the ammunition supply.

With the unit in place the only remaining furniture I'm waiting for is the couch and chair set I ordered, but that won't arrive for another 5-8 weeks. So, for now, I don't have any more excuses for blowing out of work early or coming in mid-day. Honestly, I'll be glad to be able to put my mind to my new assignments and get something done instead of having to worry about deliveries. Tomorrow night I'll go to Home Depot and buy an exhaust vent hose for the dryer and Saturday I'll start in on the two week backlog of laundry.

Antibiotics, Russian Acrobats, and Desk Woes

Category: My World

At 9:15 this morning I got a call from Staples customer service rep saying that they could deliver my desk between 12 and 3, which is when I told them I'd be home waiting for the furniture pre-measure. Since my right ear drum had popped last night and throbbed with a 101 degree fever late last night, I made calling my doctor's office for an emergency appointment a priority. I got one for 11:30, kind of close to my pre-measure and the desk delivery, but it was either that or make a trip to the ER after the deliveries. I didn't think my ear drum could wait and I didn't want another night of throbbing ear pain and a fever.

The doctor said I have a full-blown ear infection and prescribed a course of antibiotics. She said I have the remnants of a sinus infection, but that's winding down. Thank god for small favors.

I got out of the hospital at 11:55 and rushed home to meet the pre-measure guy who had left a voice mail saying he was in my driveway. I made it there in 10 minutes and he finished his measurements in about five: No problem getting the couch and chair up the stairwell. His statement was a bit more colorful, something like, "...hell, I could fit a team of Russian acrobats on top of the couch up that stairwell, this'll be nothing!" Well, for my peace of mind, I've got his signature on the form in case he has any trouble and they can't get it up the stairs. Without the pre-measure I'd have to pay a 20% restocking fee to return the furniture if it didn't fit. With the pre-measure, they guarantee it'll fit. I'm happy with that.

While I was seeing the pre-measure guy out the door, my phone rang and it was the Staples customer service rep. She said that they wouldn't be able to deliver my desk today because it wasn't on the truck. Apparently it was never shipped from the warehouse on Cape Cod...might as well have been Katmandu. My only option for delivery would be tomorrow (Thursday) or after the holiday weekend. On top of that, they wouldn't commit to a few-hour time window, only "between 9 and 5." Bastards. Now I have to figure out if I can work from home tomorrow while I wait for these jokers to show up at their leisure.

My New Place: Pre-move In

Category: My World

Finally: a couple of photos I took with my digital camera as I toured my new apartment the day I took possession of the keys.

Here's the front room, which I'll be using for a painting/creative studio. I'll likely move the ragged oriental rug into the back bedroom:
Here's the dining room which I'll be using as a living/entertainment room. This is where the new couch and chair will go after I paint the room.

Here's the master bedroom. Yes, it's kind of peachy/flesh/pale salmon colored. Lot's of light but small closet.
Here's the weird part of this apartment: a butler's pantry with a sink. It's got two huge cupboards opposite the sink (not shown), but it is a bit annoying that the sink is that far away from the stove and fridge. Oh well, not the worst setup I guess.
Here's the new gas stove and the 1-year old fridge, notice the nice new cupboards. Oh, and to the right of the fridge is the door to the other bedroom. It's smaller than the master bedroom but the closet is the same size: fit for gnomes.
And finally, here's the opposite view of the opposite kitchen wall with one and a half windows. There's a washer/dryer hookup next to the smaller window.

I don't have photos of the bathroom and back hall, or the front of the building, but that's okay. If you really want to see what they look like you can come for a visit.

Furniture Foibles and an Ear Infection

Category: My World

Over the weekend I ordered a new computer cart from Staples, and a sofa/arm chair combo from a local furniture store. The computer cart, shown below, was, according to the sales clerk, scheduled for delivery today between 5 and 8 p.m.

The delivery truck never showed. I called at 6:45 and found out that the sales clerk was wrong—delivery is between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Regardless, they did not show up or leave a note saying that they did while I wasn't home. Frustrating, but oh well. The support rep I spoke to said they will call me tomorrow to reschedule the delivery time. Hopefully they will be able to provide a two- or three-hour window in which to expect them so I don't have to miss the entire day of work.

Feeling a bit put out by the computer cart delivery problems, I stopped by the furniture store tonight to verify that they were sending someone to measure my stairwell (to ensure it would fit up the stairs) when the sales clerk promised: on Wednesday morning between 7 and 10 a.m. It's a good thing I checked because once again a sales clerk was wrong—the delivery team's pre-order measuring person is scheduled for between 12 and 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Regardless of the sales clerk's error, this customer service rep told me that the purchase order has a note on it indicating that they should have called me today to confirm the time for tomorrow's appointment. Having customer service far superior to Staples, this merchant's customer service rep called the delivery manager and got him to update the delivery team's work schedule commit to calling me 30 minutes prior to his delivery team showing up so that I won't have to miss the entire three hour block of time waiting for them to show up.

So here's what the couch will look like:

And finally, my seasonal allergies, with the help of this wet, chilly Spring we're having in New England, has transformed into a combo ear/sinus infection. I'll spare you the graphic description of the colorful, chunky discharge that I've been experiencing, but suffice to say it's nasty and I'm going to see the doctor on Wednesday...between furniture measurings and desk deliveries...and work!

Back Online!

Category: My World

I'm happy to report that I'm moved into the new apartment and now have a home phone number, cable service, and DSL. Yeah! I'll post some photos of the new place in a few days.

My cell bill was way out of control last month because of the move and new job activities. Please call me on my new home number if you want to reach me.

More tomorrow.

Wireless Cable Sounding Better

Category: My World

I did manage to rewire the wireless cable-to-TV/sound system last night and it works fine now. I had the sound going through the VCR before going to the stereo and that caused a noticeable volume drop. I also solved the telephone interference problem by replacing the phone. Different frequencies for each device and they're all happy. Hopefully it isn't screwing up any of my neighbors' phones.

Wireless Cable is Mediocre

Category: My World

The cable guy came this morning and I made his life very easy. I decided to try a technology option to avoid running the cable around the perimeter of my bedroom and punching multiple holes in the horse-hair plaster walls. I picked up a 2.4 GHz video relay device from Radio Shack and hooked it up last night. The results were not great.

The video signal quality to the TV is fine, the remote control relay works flawlessly, but the sound quality is noticeably poorer than having a direct connection to the cable box. Tomorrow night I'll try a few different combinations of connections, but I'm not too optimistic.

The other, possibly more discouraging outcome is that my cordless phone cannot be plugged in at the same time as the video relay being turned on. When I turned on the relay devices a horrible static burping noise started errupting from my TV. I then realized that the cordless phone and the video relay work on the same frequency: 2.4 GHz. Fudgebuckets!

I moved the phone with the hope that if it was out of the direct path of the video relay transmitter and receiver, the interference would become negligible. Alas, no. I unplugged the phone, moved it two rooms away, and the burping noises resumed. Double fudgebuckets!

So I think this means I'll revert to my hard-wired phone until I find my old 900 MHz cordless phone. *SIGH*

Automatic Utility Futility

Category: My World

I stayed home from work on Friday morning waiting for the phone installation tech to show up only to find out that they were turning it on remotely. Well, that didn't work. I plugged in my phone and an old Caller ID box I had to discover no dial tone and a message on the box saying "Hang up phone and check all cords." Annoying, yes, but at least I still had my cell phone.

I called Verizon twice on Friday and again on Saturday morning. After a couple of go-rounds, they happily agreed to send a technician to my house on Monday afternoon, between 4 and 8 PM. Yes, a few more hours of work missed from the new job.

The technician showed up at 6:30 PM and quickly determined that my apartment is set up for not one phone line, but at least three, possibly as many as five. Who knows what the former occupants, a pair of lady co-eds had for telephone needs? Anyhow, this means that only two of the five phone jacks in my apartment work for my new phone line. The tech offered to rewire the jacks, but of course that would cost $75 an hour and he said, from the looks of the rat's nest of wires in the basement, it would require several hours of work.

I said, "Not on my dime, thanks."

I'm okay with where the jacks are: one in each bedroom. I was planning on putting the cordless phone's base in my bedroom and the fact that the other line is in the back bedroom is okay because that's where I'll be setting up the computer equipment. That gives me easy access for an extension while I'm on the PC and for the DSL connection to get onto the Internet.

The cable guy comes tomorrow morning, can't wait!

Running Cable in this Old House

Category: My World

My home telephone service will be turned on this Friday and, after several e-mails back-and-forth with the cable provider, I should have a service person showing up next Tuesday to connect me to the vast wasteland known as "cable TV in the summer." I think the most interesting challenge will be getting cable run from the bedrooms to the living and dining rooms which, for unknown reasons, have no cable outlets despite the service coming into the house on their side of the building.

Anyone have suggestions on to how to run coaxial cable from an outside wall through a room that has the horrific combination of having multiple doors on the perimeter and no carpets? I'm thinking one of those speed-bump style wire channels is in order...but then how to get it from the bedroom to the dining room without running the cable out the door and around the corner? Hmmph.

Back Pain Prognosis

Category: My World

Almost forgot, I went to see the doctor this afternoon. She says it looks like muscle spasms, not anything long-term like slipped discs or worse. Just to be safe she sent me to the hospital for X-rays, but she won't have the results until tomorrow, so if anything shows up on them, she said she'll call me. She prescribed a strong muscle relaxant and said to postpone the unpacking until I'm feeling better. Considering that with this pain the most comfortable position for me is sitting, I'm not planning on doing anything ridiculously physical in the next few days. Hot bath, heating pad, and going to bed early all sound good to me...also sounds like I'm getting old. Damn, I didn't think that would happen so soon!

Still Offline at Home

Category: My World

I ordered my new home phone service yesterday from Verizon, but because I'm going to training class next Monday through Thursday, I won't be able to take a half-day off of work to be home for the phone installers until next Friday, May 14th. Bummer. Subsequently, my DSL connection won't go live until the following week. It may be Memorial Day before I get back on the Internet from home!!! Oh well. :P

In the meantime, I'll be checking e-mail intermittently from work, but please, don't expect speedy responses. Call me on my cell phone if you would like to reach me in a timely manner.

The Miraculous Move

Category: My World

Through a series of miraculous works by a great group of friends, I am now officially moved into my new apartment. Last Thursday my friend Amy and her wonderful children, Nick, Natalie, and their begrudging sister, Rachel, helped me empty my stored stuff from their basement into a rental truck. Nick really did an outstanding job and I can't sing his praises loud enough. For a 15-year old to do that much work without so much as a whisper of complaint was wonderful.

Friday morning I drove the truck down to Waltham and was met by my brother, Pete (with 2.5-year old Rowan in tow), and my friends: Wade, Nancy, Amy (and kids), and eventually, Liz. The old saying, "Many hands make light work" held true in this case. Where Thursday's truck loading took us about 6.5 hours, Friday's unload, up three flights of stairs, was completed in less than 3.5 hours. Peter and Wade were the strongest backs in the group, complemented by Nick's slightly diminished zeal to finish up so he could go home and play Star Gate for a few precious, uninterrupted hours.

Nearly everything went into the back bedroom, so now it's a matter of getting things unpacked and sorted. Fortunately, I have sufficient space in the apartment so I don't have to rush to get it done. This is lucky for me because in the process of the move, I wrenched my back pretty badly. I'm hoping to get in to see my doctor this week sometime. In the interim, I am heavily doped on muscle relaxants and taking it easy. My bedroom is set up for the moment, the kitchen is in good shape, and the bathroom is functionally clean. The rest of the place will have to wait until I recover.

Offline While Moving

Category: My World

I'm going offline for a few days while I move. You can reach me on my cell if you need me. I'll check e-mail at Pete's or Amy's over the weekend.

New Apartment!

Category: My World

With the new job starting on Monday I'm going to need a place to live, a bit closer than Quincy. That said, I started looking last night and this morning I've found and just signed a rental agreement for a nice, spacious apartment in Waltham. It's a few miles from where I lived previously, but on a quieter street than the major thoroughfare that was South Street. It's a tenancy-at-will which I'm happy about because I'm restarting my savings to buy my own home. I expect to be at this apartment for only the next 12-18 months.

I'll post some digital photos in the next few days, after I get my stuff moved in over the next few days. I'll send an e-mail with the new mailing address after I filed the change-of-address with the USPS this weekend.

New Job!

Category: My World

I'm happy to announce that I've accepted an offer for a full-time senior technical writer position with Authoria in Waltham. They have a great team of people, I have a dynamic boss who I look forward to working with, and a really interesting product using cutting edge technology. I'm very excited to get back into the workforce! I start on Monday, May 3rd!

In case you wondered, the contract with the large financial services company I had mentioned earlier in the month was not a good fit for me. The opportunity at Authoria is far more in line with what I'm looking for, both personally and professionally.

Babel Fish vs. Dear Abby

Category: My World

After using AltaVista's Babel Fish site to translate that e-mail from the Chilean government, I began wondering how well the software would do on a round-trip translation: English-to-Spanish and back to English. To make this a quick test I randomly picked a Dear Abby letter I found on Yahoo:

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DEAR ABBY: My fiancee, "Rhonda," and I went to a nightclub. The bouncer said she could go in, but I could not. I wasn't surprised because the doors are always open to gorgeous women. What did surprise me was that Rhonda went in and left me standing there.

The next day I asked her if we could go places where we could both have a good time. She said: "Look. I wanted to go in, OK? My friends were there, and I wanted to have a good time."

Well, so did I, Abby! She could have gone to the club another time with her girlfriends. We were supposed to be together that night. I think it was insulting and callous for her to treat me like that. I'm so hurt I'm ready to break the engagement.

Do you think I am being overly sensitive? Rhonda does. -- HURT AND ASHAMED IN N.Y.C.

---

Here's the initial English-to-Spanish translation:

---

ABBY QUERIDO: Mi fiancee, "Rhonda," y fui a un nightclub. El bouncer dijo que ella podr?a entrar, pero no podr?a. I wasn't sorprendi? porque las puertas est?n siempre abiertas a las mujeres magn?ficas. Qu? me sorprendi? era ese Rhonda fue adentro y a la izquierda yo que estaba parado all?.

El d?a siguiente le pregunt? si podr?amos ir los lugares en donde podr?amos ambos tener un buen rato. Ella dijo: "Look. ?Dese? entrar, MUY BIEN? Mis amigos estaban all?, y dese? tener un buen time."

?Bien, tan I, Abby! Ella habr?a podido ir al club otra hora con sus novias. Nos supusieron ser juntos esa noche. Pienso que era que insultaba y callous para que ella me trate como eso. I'm as? que I'm lastimado listos romper el contrato.

?Usted me piensa est? habiendo terminado sensible? Rhonda . -- LASTIMADO Y AVERGONZADO EN N.Y.C.

---

First pass analysis: Mediocre. The gist of the message is there but there are a couple of things even with my limited knowledge of Spanish I can tell:

• contractions—"I'm" and "wasn't", weren't translated at all. This makes me wonder if they will be passed directly back to English or taken out all together.


• idiomatic expressions—"Look" in "Look. I wanted to go in, OK?" wasn't translated most likely because this was not literally meant to be an imperative. Also "girlfriends" was translated as "novias" which means "serious girlfriend" or "fiancee," not "close female friends."

Here's the Spanish-to-English return translation:

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DEAR ABBY: My fiancee, "Rhonda," and I went to nightclub. Bouncer said that it could enter, but could not. I wasn't surprised because the doors are always open to the magnificent women. What surprised me was that Rhonda inside went and to the left I who I was stopped there.

The following day I asked to him if we could go the places in where we could both have a good short while. She said: "Look. I wished to enter, VERY WELL? My friends were there, and I wished to have good time."

Well, so I, Abby! It could have gone to the club another hour with her fianc?es. They supposed to be together that night to us. I think that it was that it insulted and callous so that she treats to me like that. I'm so hurt I'm ready to break the contract.

You think having you have been finished to me sensible? Rhonda. -- HURT And SHAMED IN N.Y.C.

---

Final-pass analysis: Pathetic. Sounds a lot like some of my elementary EFL students in Barcelona. This return trip was rougher because it exhibits typical problems encountered when students perform a literal translation without considering the context:

• missing articles—"a" missing from the phrase "I went to nightclub" Strangely enough these weren't missing in the first translation.


• word choice—"engagement" became "contract", "girlfriends" became "fianc?es", and the best one: "good time" became "good short while"


• wrong pronouns—"she" became "It" (though based on Rhonda's behavior, this may not be wrong)


• sentence word order—"I think it was insulting and callous for her to treat me like that." became "I think that it was that it insulted and callous so that she treats to me like that." No comment on the last sentence, it just don't make any sense.

---

To be fair to the Chilean officials, I will have to try a round-trip translation of an excerpt from a U.S. government publication or Web site to see how more formal language survives the round-trip experience. In the meantime I can only hope that HURT AND ASHAMED IN N.Y.C. smartens up and dumps that selfish b*tch. If he marries her she'll spend the rest of their time together walking on him. While Abby's response was in a gentler tone, her advice was along the same lines.

Is Governmentese a Universal Language?

Category: My World

In my experience few letters from U.S. government agencies to the public are well written. I've often wondered if citizens of other countries have the same problem receiving official communiques from their governments. This morning an answer came from an unexpected source.

I received an e-mail message from Domingo Namuncura Serrano, the Management Advisor to the President of Chile. Although my ability to read Spanish is far better than my ability to speak it, I was not able to completely understand his message. I thought I had the gist of it, but wanted to be certain, so I turned to my favorite free, online tranlsation web site, AltaVista - Babel Fish Translation for help.

Now before I tell you what the message said, I bet you're wondering why I got an e-mail from the Chilean Government? Good question!

As I think I have previously mentioned, I frequently visit the web site Save BioGems because it is dedicated to saving endangered wild places. On the site you can read about these areas and find easy ways to help them. One hot spot I recently read about is the Olivillo Coastal Forest in Chile. It seems there's a plan to build a coastal road and begin logging through a section of it that will threaten many wildlife and plant species, including the evergreen araucaria trees which can live 1,000 years or more, and alerce trees, which are believed to be even more ancient, with some individual trees surviving 3,000 years or more. After reading about the threats to this area, I used the Biogems web site to send some e-mail messages to the companies involved and to the Chilean government expressing my concern. This was the reason for the e-mail message from Se?or Serrano.

So anyhow, here's how Babel Fish translated Se?or Serrano's message:

---

Republic of Chile President

Consider:

Along with to salute to him kindly, I have the special order of the Gentleman President to confirm receipt of its message and to thank for its interest in communicating with the Presidency.

With respect to its message, we must inform that originally the foundation of the South Coastal Way was framed within the concept to equip to the country with an alternative longitudinal communication channel Route 5, for which runners or strips for the location drawn up tentative in those zones defined themselves where way does not exist. The existing ways would take advantage of as well, soon to continue the complementaci?n of the route in zones that previously were determined like high-priority. However, nowadays the objectives of the route taking care of the connectivity necessities and the incorporation of the environmental and territorial aspects have been redefined, which has allowed to modify its standard, its layout and to incorporate existing ways with no need to alter to its layout and its profile.

In relation to previously mentioned, on the effective environmental norms in the country for the case of the short one of vegetation, we showed that all the works have been made after the presentation of the Plans of Handling for Civil Work Execution demanded by CONAF. In this sense, for the estates located in the sections Corral-Chaihui'n-Huiecolla and Bay Choroy Bellwether-River, the Plans indicated, before the execution of works have appeared, leaving themselves pending the sectors where not yet it is counted on authorization. Also, it must be mentioned that the layout of the project South Coastal Way in the X Region, crosses by 2 protected areas, which correspond to the "Area of Tourist Protection Chaihu?n-Hueicolla" and the "Area of Protection Borders Contaco River". In both cases the declaration of protection area specifically establishes the possibility of carrying out public infrastructure works in these zones, reason why the project does not affect the objective of its declaration and in addition in these cases the respective, being approved and effective Plans of Handling appeared opportunely by CONAF.

Finally, we know very clearly like Chileans and government, the natural wealth that our country has. It is why we have delivered great attacks in making compatible political clear and modern with the sustainable and economic development that must have each one of these immense territories of almost virgin nature, only in the world. But also thinking about each one of the actors involved directly in the subject (environmentalist, government, community, Chilean and foreign mass media, industralists).

Conclusion

According to the indicated thing, which can be said that the Government of Chile and his Public Work Ministry have given exact fulfillment to the great majority of the acquired commitments and that is in process to fulfill the totality of them, for has destined additional efforts, as much in financial terms, as human.

Cordially,
Domingo Namuncura Serrano
Management Advisor to the President of Chile

---

So this letter answers, at least in part, my earlier question: Yes, other governments communicate with the public using very formal, nearly incomprehensible language. Now, to be fair, there's another question to consider before condemning the Chilean officials: Did the translation software provide an accurate translation? Or was it responsible for making this letter sound like so much U.S. governtmentese. I have seen enough output from software products like the one that drives Babel Fish to know that it's far from perfect. Most people may not know this but it was earlier versions of this same type of software that was responsible for converting those Japanese VCR manuals we all hated in the 1980s into what professional translators jokingly refer to as "Engrish." So I'm not surprised to see how this translation has turned out, but it does make me wonder: is the incoherence of this letter due to the quality of the translation, or do Chilean government officials really write in this convoluted fashion? I don't have an answer yet, but I've forwarded this letter and the translation to a few friends over in Spain to see what they have to say about it. I'll let you know what they say if they have time to respond.

For anyone who is interested (and can read Chilean Spanish), here's the original text from Se?or Serrano's e-mail:

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Rep?blica de Chile Presidencia Estimado (a): Junto con saludarle atentamente, tengo el especial encargo del Se?or Presidente de acusar recibo de su mensaje y agradecer su inter?s en comunicarse con la Presidencia. Respecto a su mensaje, debemos informar que originalmente el fundamento del Camino Costero Sur se enmarcaba dentro del concepto de dotar al pa?s de una v?a de comunicaci?n longitudinal alternativa a la Ruta 5, para lo cual se definieron corredores o franjas para la ubicaci?n trazados tentativos en aquellas zonas donde no existe camino. A su vez se aprovechar?an los caminos existentes, para luego continuar la complementaci?n de la ruta en zonas que fueron previamente determinadas como prioritarias. No obstante, hoy en d?a se han redefinido los objetivos de la ruta atendiendo a las necesidades de conectividad y la incorporaci?n de los aspectos ambientales y territoriales, lo cual ha permitido modificar su est?ndar, su trazado e incorporar caminos existentes sin necesidad de alterar su trazado y su perfil. Con relaci?n a lo anteriormente mencionado, sobre las normas ambientales vigentes en el pa?s para el caso de la corta de vegetaci?n, manifestamos que todas las obras se han realizado con posterioridad a la presentaci?n de los Planes de Manejo para Ejecuci?n de Obras Civiles exigidos por CONAF. En este sentido, para los predios ubicados en los tramos Corral-Chaihu?n-Huiecolla y Bah?a Mansa-R?o Choroy, se han presentado los Planes indicados, antes de la ejecuci?n de las obras, dej?ndose pendientes los sectores donde a?n no se cuenta con autorizaci?n. Asimismo, debe mencionarse que el trazado del proyecto Camino Costero Sur en la X Regi?n, atraviesa por 2 ?reas protegidas, las cuales corresponden al ??rea de Protecci?n Tur?stica Chaihu?n-Hueicolla? y el ??rea de Protecci?n Orillas R?o Contaco?. En ambos casos la declaraci?n de ?rea de protecci?n establece expresamente la posibilidad de efectuar obras de infraestructura p?blica en dichas zonas, por lo que el proyecto no afecta el objetivo de su declaraci?n y adem?s en estos casos se presentaron oportunamente los Planes de Manejo respectivos, estando aprobados y vigentes por CONAF. Finalmente, tenemos muy claro como chilenos y como gobierno, las riquezas naturales que posee nuestro pa?s. Es por eso que hemos hecho grandes esfuerzos en compatibilizar pol?ticas claras y modernas con el desarrollo sustentable y econ?mico que deben tener cada uno de estos inmensos territorios de naturaleza casi virgen, ?nicos en el mundo. Pero pensando tambi?n en cada uno de los actores involucrados directamente en el tema (ambientalistas, gobierno, comunidad, medios de comunicaci?n, empresarios chilenos y extranjeros) Conclusi?n De acuerdo a lo indicado, se puede decir que el Gobierno de Chile y su Ministerio de Obras P?blicas han dado cumplimiento cabal a la gran mayor?a de los compromisos adquiridos y que se encuentra en proceso de cumplir la totalidad de ellos, para lo cual ha destinado esfuerzos adicionales, tanto en t?rminos financieros, como humanos. Le saluda cordialmente Domingo Namuncura Serrano Asesor de Gesti?n del Gabinete Presidencial

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Happy Easter

Category: My World

Happy Easter! In honor of the holiday I've "resurrected" an image from my artist's archives. I made this using Fractal Painter in 1995 for an Easter card I sent to family and a few friends:

Natalie: The Breakfast Faces

Category: Art

Trying to keep from getting too bummed out by the four days of rainy weather and the pace of the job hunt, I turned this afternoon to making a collage from some photos I took at breakfast while out with my friend Amy and her kids a few months ago. This is her daughter, Natalie, who was seven and a half at the time:

Click on the image for a larger version.

One Door Closes, Another Opens

Category: Work

Last Friday, while doing laps in the job market's icy waters waiting for the glacial-like financial services company to tell me what's going on with the contract I applied for, I received an e-mail from my friend who works there about a job lead with a different division. He forwarded my resume to the hiring manager and sure enough, on Monday I got a call, scheduled an interview, and went in late this morning.

Getting ready for my interview, I checked my e-mail and found an e-mail from the hiring manager for the first contract in my in-box:

"We've had an indefinite delay in our hiring. As you can imagine, budgets are tight these days. If you have another opportunity on the horizon my advice to you is to pursue it. I don't know when I'll be able to reopen my search for someone."

He offered to recommend me for any other positions that I cared to apply to within the company, which I thought was incredibly kind of him. I'll send him an e-mail on Wednesday thanking him for the update and his recommendation offer.

Now, about today's interview...

The position is in a much more densely packed corporate cubicle kennel in downtown Boston. Aside from the initial shock of seeing two people per cube in the offices I passed, I think the interview went well. Honestly though, I did put my foot in my mouth a few times but believe that I managed to recover without chewing my foot for too long. It seems that I've been out of the corporate environment so long that it's become tough to remember how to translate what normal people call "truth" into what sociolinguists might classify as "non-threatening, acronym- and corporatese-laced gibberish."

For example, in answering the question, "Why did you leave your last company?" I initially said, "I left because it was a hostile work environment." Of course I immediately realized this was probably one of the top five never-hire-if-they-say-this phrases that managers are told to listen for in interviews (see below for others on this list). This realization, combined with the obvious look of concern on both of the interviewers faces, prompted me to immediately rephrase it with a more positive spin. I think I said something along the lines of "...I left my last employer for reasons of personal integrity. My manager used vulgar language, verbal abuse, threats of termination, and public ridicule to motivate staff. I escalated the issues to senior management without success. I couldn't be productive in that environment so I resigned in protest...After reflecting on what I've learned from that experience I am now looking for the right opportunity...one where I am a contract technical writer (not manager) on a team of smart people working together with interesting technology to solve intellectually challenging problems." Something like that. The interviewers sighed in tandem after that and the rest of the interview was pretty standard fare.

I could tell the hiring manager was concerned that I hadn't worked in almost nine months and didn't know squat about financial services, but I think I won her over with my descriptions of how I've previously tackled new technology through "active learning" (a buzzword from their job description that caused her to smile) and respecting subject matter experts' limited time by doing as much research on a topic on my own before pestering them with questions. I also played up the importance of being a team player and communicating with other team members by clearly setting expectations in writing and meeting commitments as promised. This seemed particularly important to them because they said the programming part of this project was being "offshored" to a team in India.

Now before anyone busts my hump about my considering a contract with a company that is using this practice (which many believe is taking jobs away work from U.S. high tech workers like the steel industry did in the 1970s and the auto industry did in the 1980s), I have to say that I want to find work and that jobs are too few and far between in this economy to be picky. Besides, my refusing this job—should they be smart enough to offer it to me—will not bring these programming jobs back to the U.S. Instead, I imagine that another of the hundreds of out-of-work tech writers in this area will gladly take the contract and pay his or her rent or mortgage and other monthly bills as I plan to do. Further, I've seen a few ads on the job boards for tech writing and doc manager positions in India and that scares me. I want to be working again before I see the tech writing jobs follow the same fate as manufacturing, customer support, and programming jobs.

Anyhow, I showed them my portfolio and then went on my merry way. In total the interview lasted less than an hour. They said they were interviewing other candidates this week and I should expect to hear back by next week. Other than sticking my foot in my mouth, the only other weird thing about this interview was that they asked me to send electronic copies of my writing samples. I had paper copies of some pieces but it turned out they were not interested in those pieces. I wouldn't normally distribute electronic copies because several works in my portfolio, while now obsolete, still may hold some confidentiality requirements as they were never released with a commercial product. In this case I was fortunate on two counts: first, the pieces they were interested in seeing were from either discontinued products or obsolete releases of software, and second, I was able to find PDFs that I could e-mail. I sent them off last night before going to bed.

Please keep your fingers crossed for me!

Nominees for a Never-Hire-If-They-Say-This Phrase List for Hiring Managers

1. The judge said I can start anytime as long as I wear my ankle bracelet.
2. My disability claim benefits just ran out, so I'm ready to work again...do you pay for overtime?
3. If it weren't for the SEC I'd still be at that job.
4. Yeah, that last f*in' place was a hostile work environment.
5. I really hate it when people come by my cube and say, "Hey, how's it going?"
6. Polygraph? No, I only have the one wife.

Pittsburgh Photos from February

Category: My World

Here's a series of photos I took back in February on a brief weekend trip to Pittsburgh, PA to visit my friends, John and Sandy, and their 2-year old daughter, Marie. I hung out with Sandy and Marie while John was at work on Saturday. We decided to get outside and play in the snow.

Sandy shows Marie how to make a snow angel in the backyard.

Marie gives it a try but doesn't seem so sure about this.

Marie enjoys being pulled on the sled.

It looks like this cherub is ready to head inside.

Here's John with Marie just after breakfast on Sunday morning.

Gwyneth Turns Six

Category: My World

Yesterday I went to a birthday party for my Goddaughter, Gwyneth. It was a lot of fun: the kids made some origami animals, there was a Barbie-ice cream cake, and presents. Here's a few photos of the festivities:

The birthday girl!	The birthday cake.

Gwyneth opening a present as her older sister, Ashlyn, and two friends, Emma and Erica watching.

Gwyneth reads a birthday card from her friend Giulia.

Gwyneth's little brother, Liam, with me. He's my Godson.

Christopher playing with a fire truck while Liam watches with interest.

Christopher checks out the sights with a periscope.

Liam and his Grandfather are enjoying some ice cream cake.

Ashyln has fallen asleep in her Grandma's arms.

The Second Interview

Category: Work

I had my second interview at the financial services company in Marlborough, MA tonight and I think it went pretty well. I met with the hiring manager again and we covered almost the exact material we discussed previously. I also met with an editor who works at that office and she seemed pretty nice. She's been a contractor at this company since 1999 and has worked in this group since last April.

I didn't have as good a feeling about it as after my first interview but that's probably due to the realization that if I get this job that once again, I'll have a job.

*Groan*

Even so, I still want it. I should hear from them by the end of next week.

Second Interview Next Week

Category: Work

Today I received an e-mail from the hiring manager at the financial services company I had met with last week. He invited me in for a second-round interview to meet his boss and a member of his team. The interview is on Tuesday, March 16th.

This sounds promising, wish me luck.

Interview Last Friday

Category: Work

I had an interview for a six-month contract on Friday, March 5th, with a large financial services company. Their headquarters are in Boston, but this position is at a facility in Marlborough, about 35 miles west of Boston. I think the interview went well. The three phase project sounds pretty interesting: first, leading a team to decide the what and where of using identical data field labels across a range of product web sites which all serve slightly different groups of customers. Next, mine the sites for terminology, compile a glossary, and then help the content teams update their sites; and finally, set and implement standards for language in instructional and procedural text on all of the sites.

Okay, I'll admit it, this probably only sounds "interesting" to me.

Regardless, it sounds like more than six month's worth of work, so if I'm hired and make steady progress, it could likely turn into a much longer term of solid work. On top of that, it involves working with all levels of teams, including senior managers and VPs, in all of their institutional service groups. This means that if I do well on it I'll not only know a lot about their businesses and the industry lingo, but I'll also have a motherlode of contacts on whom to call for future contract work and references.

The hiring manager said they would make a decision within two weeks. Here's hoping I get called in for a second interview.

Closure on NSF Writing Job

Category: My World

Received an e-mail from the National Science Foundation (NSF) today regarding the writer position I had applied for back in December. It was a standard GFY form letter.

Job Search Status

Category: My World

Here's my status:

Still nothing from the University of Wyoming or any of the three dozen ESL/TEFL teaching jobs I applied to overseas. That said I've changed my focus to pursuing full-time and contract tech writing gigs again. I've got several leads and have reactivated my network of professional contacts, so I hope it won't be too long before I'm gainfully employed.

As for teaching ESL, well I expect that once I get into a job, find a place to call my own, and then I'll begin volunteering to teach ESL at any one of the local adult education centers. If I don't get too comfortable with the money that comes from writing I'll go abroad after I have a year's experience or, more likely, I'll find a good central/south American volunteer teaching program and put a month in there every summer while using the writing jobs fund my adventures.

New Wireless Phone

Category: My World

Tonight I bought a new wireless phone. It's a flip phone with quite a few new bells and whistles, including a color LCD display and some primitive digital camera features. Yes, I signed a multi-year contract with one of the evil telecom empires. I believe that the terms mention something about providing wireless service and this fancy phone for a minor organ and a percentage of my future income, including any patent and book royalties.

With the new phone also comes a new number as I'm still arguing with my old wireless phone's provider about a number of issues. I can no longer make or receive call from the old phone and have not found out how to retrieve my voicemail messages.

Strangled by Wireless Contracts

Category: My World

God I love technology! I love the fact that I have a phone that I can use almost anywhere in the U.S. In the same breath, I hate this technology because it has given American business a new channel to maximize profits at the cost of screwing consumers for wanting the new technology. Specifically, I resent the fact that I am held hostage by what seems to be an interminable service contract with my wireless phone provider. I'm pretty pissed off right now and may not be thinking very clearly, but I can't think of another business (other than a few monopolies) where a service provider can require customers to extend a service contract when the equipment used to receive the service breaks. Can you?

I say "hostage" because when my wireless phone took its final gasp this week I called my provider and discovered that because my phone was out of its warranty period and because I hadn't subscribed to their extortion-priced replacement program, I not only have to buy my replacement phone from them, but doing so is classified as an "equipment upgrade," and therefore requires me to extend my contract by one year. Shame on me for not reading the fine print of my contract, but honestly, I am left wondering why mysteriously my local and long-distance providers did not place the same requirements on me when my the cordless phone I used for 10 years in my apartment died? Why should it be any different for the wireless providers? In most cases these are the same high-tech companies who provide the wire-based telephone, Internet, and cable service. What is the difference?!?!

What would your reaction be if you lived in a country where, for example, when you accidentally knock the lamp off your bedroom nightstand and break it, you discover that not only do you have to buy the replacement lamp from the electric utility, but you have to sign a service contract obligating you to continue using them for another year? And what happens if your light bulb burns out? Another day, week, or month for each bulb?

Here's another example, let's say that when my parents TV died a few years ago, the cable company had said, "It's an equipment upgrade so you have to commit to another year's service with us in order to use the new TV." If that happened my parents would have been on the phone with their state legislators, the New York State Attorney General, the Better Business Bureau, Consumer's Union, and their Congressional reps to rip the cable provider a new one. And just imagine how the broadcast and public television stations would want to get in on the act as well?

So do we have to submit to this extortion by these companies in order to use wireless phones? The short answer is yes, for now. The only alternative besides not using wireless phones altogether, is to buy one of their "pay-as-you-go" wireless phones. With one of these no contract "deals," you buy the phone and pay nearly twice the price per minute for a call as on their long-term extortion service agreements. Let's not overlook the fact that the phone you buy on a pay-as-you-go plans only works on a single network and you won't be able to switch to a different provider if you find one that's offers lower rates, unless of course you want to buy a new phone.

I haven't figured out what I'm going to do yet. I'm most likely going to buy the phone from my current provider—all the wireless providers appear to have similar terms in their contracts—because I need a phone to conduct my current job search. But don't think that I'm going to let this issue go. My ire is up and I'm going to send off a few choice words to my state legislative and congressional delegations to ask for an investigation into these questionable tactics. I think that somewhere along the way the FCC and several other branches of our government have failed us miserably. While I'm at it, I'm going to ask whatever happened to the legislation that stops the person receiving a call on their wireless phone from having to pay for a call while the person making the call pays too! Something is wrong with this picture.

Wireless Woes

Category: My World

I recently took a road trip to visit friends and family in Pittsburgh and Buffalo. During this trip, much to the dismay of just about everyone who doesn't have one, I filled a few hours of the long car drive by using my wireless phone to catch up on some long overdue phone calls. Don't fret, I regularly use a hands-free headset so I can keep both hands where they belong: one on the radio controls and the other on my beer can. ;)

Anyhow, the inter-state drive from southeastern New Hampshire to southwestern Pennsylvania presented many challenges to my wireless phone's reception. On one such occasion, I was using the phone with it plugged into the car charger. In moving the phone to the farthest reaches of arm's reach in the car's interior to improve reception, I strained the charger cord which in turn yanked the phone from my hand causing it to shoot across the width of the interior, and slam into the bottom of the passenger's door. Go ahead and laugh, I know I had it coming. Thankfully, at that precise moment, I was on one of the many God-foresaken stretches of the Pennsylvania turnpike with no one in front or behind me for miles. I came out of the incident unscathed, though as I would later discover, my phone was not so lucky.

I pulled over, recovered the phone, called my friend back after a bathroom break, and completed my trip without much further ado. In hindsight I did notice that I had to endure a increase in phone operation vagaries, which I attributed to the previously-occurring self-ejecting battery problem. I applied my well-rehearsed solution by replacing the series of rubberbands I had been using to hold the battery in place, and went on my merry way.

Now a day or two after I returning to New England I brought the phone into the house to recharge it. I plugged it into the AC charger and left it overnight. After three brief minutes of use the next morning it beeped a low battery warning and promptly shut itself off. I tightened and resecured the web of rubberbands over the battery, then plugged it into the car charger. An hour later, after turning it back on and making a single two-minute call, I received similar warning and again, it shut itself off. "Now what the hell is wrong?" I thought.

That evening I took a closer look at the phone and its two chargers. I found a piece of the phone's power socket had broken off and remained firmly implanted in the car charger's plug. So now the only way to charge this infernal device is to hold the car charger's plug, with the implanted socket stem, in place, of course that is while driving. Needless to say, I'm going to bite the bullet and see what it will cost me to replace the phone. Please keep your fingers crossed for me.

Photos: Gwyneth, Ashlyn, and Liam

Category: My World

Last night I went over to have dinner with my friends LeAnn & Scott and their children. Here's a few photos I took while visiting:

Clockwise from the top: Gwyneth, Ashlyn, and Liam

Here's a few more amusing photos:

Rowan at 29 Months

Category: My World

Here's a few photos I took on Friday Jan 30th of my niece, Rowan. She's very active compared to just a few months ago. The first few in this group were taken while she was still in her high chair immediately following dinner.

Here she is running from the kitchen into the living room.	...and then jumping onto her Daddy's lap:

I have a Quicktime video of her in action, but that would take up too much bandwidth to post here for download. I'll be burning a CD with it for her grandparents.

This Cold Weather Sucks

Category: My World

I think this January 28th cartoon by Cam Cardow of The Ottawa Citizen captures my feeling about the current cold weather trend that's been gripping New England:

I found Cam's work in the BRRRRRRRRR! It's COLD Outside! collection on Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonist Index.

Applied for another job in Costa Rica

Category: Work

The market in Costa Rica seems to be warming up. Today I found a new job posting and applied immediately. The job is with C.P.I. English School in San Joaqu?n de Flores, a suburb of Heredia.

The little bit of research I was able to do on various web sites revealed that this school primarily recruits volunteers for English teaching positions, but I'm hoping that they are looking to hire someone to provide professional guidance to the deep-pocketed travelling do-gooders who spend their vacations teaching English. :)

Support the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act

Category: Taking Action

There's a bill before the House and Senate called the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act (Senate bill S.1684 and House bill H.R.1886.IH) which will require insurance companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing a mastectomy. It's about eliminating the "drive-through mastectomy" where women are forced to go home hours after surgery against the wishes of their doctor, still groggy from anesthesia and some times with drainage tubes still attached.

Lifetime Television has put this bill on their web page with a petition drive to show your support. Last year over half the House signed on.

PLEASE! Sign the petition by clicking on the web site below and help women living with breast cancer get the care they need and deserve! You only need to give your name and zip code—no address, no phone numbers, no money. You just need to scroll down the page to sign.

If you wish to take an additional action, please contact your U.S. Senators and tell them you want them to support this bill. This is particularly important if you live in a state whose Senator is on the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (see the list of members) where the bill is now under review. Likewise, please contact your House Reps to move the bill out of the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations (see the list of members) and to the House floor for a vote.

Great Quote Inspires a Job Application

Category: Work

Today I was exploring more job opportunities, branching out away from the three or four popular ESL job web sites and I discovered what looks like a great school called Intercultura in Heredia, Costa Rica. On the first page describing their ESL program was a quote that really struck a chord with me:

"Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs. I again realized that we were not different people speaking separate languages; we were one people, with different tongues."
    - Nelson Mandela

This was followed by an explanation:
The words of Nelson Mandela reflect the ideals of the English Department at Intercultura. The English department was developed in order to give back to the community, and to aid in closing the communication gap between cultures on a local and international scale.

Intercultura sounds like the kind of place where I want to work, so I sent an e-mail with my C.V. and photo--as requested--to the hiring director tonight. Wish me luck!

Farewell to Capt. Kangaroo

Category: Commentary

Today, with the passing of Captain Kangaroo, yet another of my childhood icons has left this world. I hope he finds peace and is blessed with knowing how much of a positive role model he created for kids like me. Both as Captain Kangaroo and Clarabell the Clown on the Howdy Doody Show, Bob Keeshan set an example and standard of quality that modern children's television has lost sight of. I hope that someone within the children's television industry will take pause on this occasion and reflect on the lessons that pioneers of kids' television programming such as Keeshan and Fred Rogers, who passed away last year, offered us. I know I learned a lot from watching them and I am certain that today's generation of kids could too.

With this in mind, I'd like to make a bold proprosal to my friends at CBS: Show the public how much you think of American children by running a marathon of Captain Kangaroo episodes this weekend. You don't have to compete with the Super Bowl hype, so take a moment to remind Americans that it is possible to entertain and educate children without the vulgarities and raw stupidity that is so abundant in American television. Just a thought.

Finally I'd like to say to this to the Captain: I will miss you and I'd appreciate it if you'd say 'hi' to Mr. Rogers for me when you see him. Thanks.

My Psychedelic Photoshop Phase

Category: Art

Early this morning I was working on my PC and trying to clean up some old photo directories. One of the things I found was an old image of me sitting on the railing of a cabin at Camp Scouthaven during a winter camping trip with Troop 19. I think I'm at about age 15, so that would be 1983. Here's the original:

Now the reason I'm showing you this photo is that in the same directory, I think the result of frustration from not being able to salvage the original or successfully resurrect it in Photoshop, I found an alternate version. I would dub this an early dabbling into my psychedelic Photoshop phase, circa February, 2003, just prior to my going out on disability: Note on the original: As I recall, my friend and former Scoutmaster, Alex, took the original photo as a favor. He was using my 35mm SLR which didn't have a flash, so he did the best he could. He tried to get me to move so the sunlight would be on me rather than coming from behind me, but I was 15 and thought I knew better.

A Secret Note from Gwyneth

Category: My World

When it comes to visiting people with kids there always seems to be a window of opportunity when everyone is healthy that is somehow narrower than what the average astronaut has for re-entering the earth's atmosphere to land a space shuttle.

Last Tuesday night the window of opportunity for a healthy visit was briefly open as I was finally feeling better and my friend LeAnn reported that for at least the next day or two, it looked like her family of five were going to be sniffle-, cold-, and fever-free. Not wanting to waste a chance, I decided to quickly venture to Framingham for an evening of their fine company.

During the course of dinner, while I was attempting to carry on a conversation with LeAnn, the two girls, Ashlyn, age 7, and Gwyneth, age 5, took turns ever-so-politely interrupting us to whisper secrets in my ear. First it was Gwyneth with "I love you" and then, after I refused to tell Ashlyn what was said, she snuck over to my other side and told me a secret as well: "I love you very much." This went on for several minutes until Gwyneth decided to stop and write something. Even though she asked me to spell my name, I was not allowed to read what she was writing. When finished, she folded her paper and gave it to me, again whispering in my ear: "It's a secret note."

I know it's supposed to be a secret, but it's so sweet and touched me that I sincerely hope that she'll understand why I wanted to share it with my friends:

Three Things Which Are Real

Category: My World

While trolling the Internet for job leads today, I came across this great quote on the U.S. Peace Corps' web site:

"There are three things which are real, God, Human Folly and Laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third."

- John F. Kennedy

Sinus Soreness

Category: My World

Yesterday I was able to get an appointment with my doctor. She confirmed that I indeed have a sinus infection as I thought. She's prescribed two generics for me: Guaifenex PSE and Amoxycilin. Guaifenex is the generic for the brand name Guaifenesin, which you may have heard of. According to my pharmacist there was a brand-name version of Guaifenex that contained phenylpropanolamine which had the unfortunate side effect of causing an increased risk of hemorrhagic stroke in women and less so in men. Needless to say, I am not on that version because the FDA has banned it. The version I am taking is merely an expectorant with some pseudophedrine to stop the postnasal drip. The other drug is an antibiotic that we hope will kill the sinus infection.

So while I'm recovering, please keep the tissues handy and your fingers crossed for me, preferably in that order.

Happy *ACHOO* Year

Category: My World

I've been sick more or less since I returned from Buffalo on December 28th. I had a sniffle when I was driving back and it has gotten progressively worse. I made plans to go out with Liz to hit a pair of New Year's Eve get-togethers her friends were having but I ended up staying at home because I wasn't feeling good--stomach ache on top of the sniffles. By mid-New Year's Day my stomach had calmed and my body turned its attention to the full-fledged head cold that settled in my head, like a New Year's hangover fog that won't lift.

New Year's Day I stayed in and watched a marathon of Sex in the City with her and her friend, Kyla. I did what I do when I'm sick and can't sleep: fuddle on the computer for hours at a time. This time I spent the day working on a new web site design for my friend Sandy. Since then, when not sleeping I've been working on my job search, uploading some photos from my holidays in Buffalo, and finally setting up and converting my friend Rob's blog, The Daly Planet to Movable Type, the blogging software I use. Most of this work has taken place in the isolated comfort of Amy & Brian's basement, where it's reasonably warm, children are only heard, and my cell phone never rings.

I've nothing to report on the job search...no word from NSF or the 18+ language schools I've applied to over the last two months. I've applied for a lecturer position at the University of Wyoming that starts next fall, teaching professional and technical writing. Other than that, I'm going to a Carnegie Mellon alumni networking night in Needham, MA on Tuesday night...hopefully I won't sneeze on anyone.

I'm going to the doctor as soon as she can see me because after taking the usual OTC meds for the last five days and sleeping 10-12 hours at a spell I still feel tired and am coughing up volumes of unmentionable substances. Hopefully I'll get some antibiotics from her, that is assuming she doesn't decide that from a managed care perspective it's cheaper to euthanize me.

In the meantime I am going back to Liz's to sleep in the comfort of my very own wonderfully soft mattress. This is good because my bursitis and lower back have been bothering me--probably from the restless sleep I usually experience when sleeping in and on unfamiliar beds and couches, not to mention all the 5000+ miles I've put on my car since coming back from Europe.

2003 Holiday Photos

Category: My World

Here's a small collection of photos from my trip to Buffalo over the Christmas holidays.

Here's a cute close-up of my friend Debbie's daughter, Allison (age 23 months):

I had a nice dinner with my aunt and uncle at their house. Left to right are: my Uncle Gene, my Mom, my Dad, me, and my Aunt Florence:

Here's a family photo of my friends, Scott, Tammy, and their daughter, Evie:

Working on The Daly Planet

Category: My World

I've just spent the last six hours working on getting my friend Rob's blog, "The Daly Planet" converted from a blogging tool called, imaginatively enough "Blogger," to the one I use for this blog, "Movable Type."

God I am tired.

This would probably be easier if I didn't have a hell of a head cold. I'll do more work tomorrow, after picking up my dry cleaning, dropping Helen's keys off at her house after her return from London, and the reconstructive surgery I need from spending too many near-continuous hours on a PC.

Just kidding...I hope.

Happy New Year

Category: My World

I'd like to wish everyone a happy new year! Best wishes for a prosperous and healthy 2004!

Thanks to Liz

Category: My World

My friend Liz has been kind enough to host me at her apartment in Dover, NH for the last few weeks, so this week I finished a little thank you present by way of making a pair of Christmas presents for her to give her new boyfriend, Andy. He's a huge Boston Bruins fan, so I made a pair of faux Bruins memoribilia items (click on them for a closer look):

Happy Holidays from Alan

Category: My World

Here's my official 2003 holiday card. It's a photo taken by my friend James while he, Megs, and I were visiting Parc Guell in Barcelona in early November. I think it's a great photo because it had to be one of my happiest days in all of 2003. Here's hoping that the coming year holds more of these types for all of us.

Since I don't have the resources to print and mail this card, I've given you the option of printing it for yourself. If you would like to print it, simply click once on the image and a separate browser window will appear with a higher-resolution version. Right-click on the image and select "Save Picture As..." to copy it to your PC's hard drive. Note: This higher-res image is about 575K in size, so it might take a few minutes to download, depending on the type of Internet connection you have.

Happy Holidays to all!

Children: Sweet Little Germ Bags

Category: My World

I'm writing and back-dating this entry a few days, now that I've figured out what day it is. I went to see a performance of "The Nutcracker" last Sunday with my friend LeAnn and her family. It was a great performance and though I didn't give it any thought at the time, I shared a bottle of water with a couple of the kids in our party. Late the next day I was struck ill with a bad bout of the stomach flu. It was horrible--I'll spare you the details, you don't want to know.

I was out of commission for several days and apparently in a fog for the last few as a result without realizing it. It was only last night when I spoke to LeAnn on the phone that I realized sharing the bottle of water with the girls was probably what transmitted the flu. Her family had been ill the week prior to the performance and was feeling better, so they weren't affected, but her sister, brother-in-law, and their kids were struck with similar symptoms to mine. I'm feeling much better now.

Moral: Don't drink from the same bottle as little kids who have been sick recently, no matter how sweetly they smile at you. They are what I have long believed: "sweet little germ bags."

2003 Holiday Card Idea #1

Category: My World

Almost every year for the past 10 or so I have made my own holiday card. This year, despite some financial limitations, will hopefully be no exception. Here's the first of several holiday card ideas I'm working on. This is from the Nativity Facade on the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain:

Job Applications: NSF and NASA

Category: My World

Facing the aforementioned fiscal realities of going abroad in January 2004, I have applied for Writer-Editor positions at the National Science Foundation and NASA, both in the Washington, DC area. I liked the sound of these jobs because they involve writing things other than user and programmer documentation, which is what I've been doing for the last few years. I'm optimistic that the work environments will be better than what I've experienced in my last two jobs.

Who knows if I'll get called for either of these positions, but I believe the process of applying was a good step for my own well-being, getting me into a broader scope of the job market than simply in the ESL arena. The job postings close on the 10th and 19th, respectively, so I expect to receive at least a confirmation by the end of the month.

Fiscal Realities: Abroad in Fall 2004?

Category: My World

Upon my return last month I was hoping to find a teaching job overseas that started with the new language school term in January, however I have quickly come to realize that making only $500 a month while teaching in Eastern Europe or South America is not enough to live on while I still have a $275 monthly student loan payment to make--damn that Master's degree!

While it's generally cheaper to live abroad than in the U.S. (except possibly in England), it's not that cheap overseas. After paying for health insurance and taxes, I seriously doubt that I'll have enought money to pay for the phone calls to my parents, the bus/train tickets out of the small Polish or Mexican towns on weekends, let alone anything for supporting my new foreign girlfriend.

So as of today, my plan is to find some contract work as a web designer or writer, and get some part-time work in the greater Boston area teaching ESL classes at either community colleges or adult education centers to build up some experience. After a few months of that I will make a decision as whether or not I still like teaching ESL enough to handle the culture shock of living abroad. If I do, then some time between in April and June of next year I will start applying for jobs that start in September.

Me and Rowan

Category: My World

Just thought I'd share a photo of me and my lovely niece, Rowan. This was taken on November 31st while we were celebrating Thanksgiving at her parents' house in Quincy. She is now 27 months old.

Rules for Driving In and Around Buffalo, NY

Category: Humor

My friend John sent this to me this weekend. After reading it I couldn't help but think of all the times while traveling abroad over the last few weeks that people asked about my hometown and what made it unique from other American cities. Somehow, until reading this, I never considered driving as one of those factors. Check out this list, think of how it compares to your hometown, and ask yourself, "If I were visiting from a foreign country and someone gave me this list, would I want to drive here?" Here's the list, read it and tell me what you think:

At a four way stop sign, wave to offer the right-of-way to other cars. If you are waved at, wave back so they can take the right-of-way instead. When they go, you go at the same time.

Left-hand turns at traffic signals are to be made as soon as the signal turns from yellow to red. Up to three cars may turn on a "Buffalo left."

In Amherst, the most expensive vehicle always has the right-of-way. In Buffalo, the vehicle with the most rust and/or body damage has the right-of-way. In the Southtowns, the biggest truck has the right-of-way.

Electronic traffic-warning signs are not there to provide useful information. They are there only to make Buffalo look high-tech and to distract you from seeing the Amherst police cars parked in the median of the Youngman Expressway.

Italian-American drivers must always be in front of you, no matter how fast you are going, or how slow they are going. Watching two Italian-American drivers compete for the point position along Hertel Avenue adds to the excitement of driving in Buffalo.

Real Buffalonians have both a "summer car" and a "winter car." All drivers and passengers are required to bow their heads and make the Sign of the Cross whenever they drive by a Catholic church. The Virgin Mary will make sure that you don't get into an accident while you take your eyes off the road. If you're not Catholic, well, when in Rome, ...

In Cheektowaga, look out for little old Polish ladies that can barely see above the steering wheels of their Plymouth Reliant and Dodge Aries sedans. They absolutely must get to the daily mass or the bingo hall, and the only thing slower than their driving speed is their reflex time.

If you're a volunteer fireman, it's perfectly acceptable to flash your light bar to go through red lights. After all, the keg of Genesee Cream Ale down at the hall won't be there forever.

"Snow emergencies" mean that you can drive only 10 MPH above the speed limit on the Kensington Expressway.

Do not proceed through an intersection, even if you have the green light, until all cars on the cross street have slid on the ice and through the intersection.

During periods of heavy snow, wait at least 10 or 15 seconds after your signal turns green before proceeding.

Speed limits are arbitrary figures, given only as suggestions and apparently not enforceable in the Buffalo area during rush hour, with the exception of the Village of Kenmore, where the penalty for speeding is death.

Your car must be equipped with at least two of the following: A bumper sticker reading "Abortion is Murder," "Pray the Rosary," or "97 Rock;" anything related to the Bills; rosary beads hanging from the mirror; an Infant of Jesus doll in the back window; those "deer whistles" that never work when they're supposed to; a crown air freshener; an after-market vinyl roof; a sub woofer that can be felt in Rochester; or rust.

South Buffalo on St. Patrick's Day: Don't even think of driving there then.

Main Street on Friday or Saturday night, especially during UB finals: Don't even think of driving there then, either.

It's a Buffalo tradition to honk your horn at cars that don't move the instant the light changes. If you're an Italian-American, don't honk, but rather hang your head out the window of your Monte Carlo and threaten the slowpoke by screaming "Yo!" at the top of your lungs.

Construction signs tell you about road closures immediately after you pass the last exit before the traffic begins to back up.

Buy a map, and memorize the relationship between expressway names and their route numbers. Traffic reporters always use names, not route numbers. Highway signs show route numbers, not names.

Real Buffalonians don't need a four wheel drive vehicle to drive in the snow.

Ditching your car in the median of the Thruway during a blinding lake-effect snowstorm builds character.

A right-lane construction closure is just a game to see how many people can cut in line by passing you on the right as you sit in the left lane waiting for the jerks to squeeze their way back in before hitting the orange construction barrels.

Save gasoline by accelerating to 10 MPH above the speed limit, then decelerating to 10 MPH below.

Never take a green light at face value. Always look right and left before proceeding.

Heavy snow, ice, fog, and rain are no reason to change any of the previously listed rules. These weather conditions are just God's way of ensuring a natural-selection process for body shops, junk yards and new vehicle sales.

Remember, Buffalo isn't called the "Twenty Minute City" for nothing. Take advantage of that expressway system that was "built for a city of two million people," and test the hypothesis whenever possible.

Always slow down and rubberneck when you see an accident or even someone just changing a tire.

Just because you're in the left lane and have no room to speed up or move over doesn't mean that an Italian-American driver flashing his high beams behind you doesn't think he can go faster in your spot.

The official litter zone is an area bounded by Main Street, Amherst Street, Bailey Avenue & Broadway. Use this zone to empty your ashtray, get rid of that Mighty Taco bag, or discard old tires that have been collecting in your garage.

Learn to swerve abruptly. Buffalo is the home of high-speed slalom driving thanks to NYSDOT, which puts potholes in key locations to test drivers' reflexes and keep them on their toes.

The faster you drive through a red light, the less of a chance you have of getting hit.

Anticipate your turn miles before the turn itself. Turn on your directional signals at least a mile before you actually turn, just to be extra cautious.

*NOTE* If you're a little old Polish lady from Cheektowaga, leave your directionals on for at least ten minutes after you turn, just to let other drivers know where you came from.

When driving in Canada, all rules are off. Pass on the right, the left, the shoulder, the median, wherever. Treat metric speed limit signs as if they're in English units - everyone else does. If you can't make it to Toronto in an hour and 15 minutes, either get your car or your head examined.

A Happy Thanksgiving!

Category: My World

Having nearly adjusted to the time change and acclimated to the temperature change, getting a bit frustrated by the lack of response from the schools I sent my C.V. to, I completed my first week in the U.S. by visiting several friends, including Amy, Liz, my former deNovis doc team, LeAnn & Scott, Nancy & Karl. It was hectic, but fun. On Saturday night I got a good night's sleep and then headed off to Buffalo for Thanksgiving with my parents on Sunday.

On the way to Buffalo I stopped outside of Rochester and had a nice, relaxing dinner with my former UB classmate, Rini, and her husband Eric. Rini and I had taken a social dance class together in junior year I think and have almost annually been like two ships passing in the night while we headed in opposite directions for the holidays--I to Buffalo, she to Cape Cod where her sister lives. It was great to catch up with her and Eric as I hadn't seen them since their wedding in 1999, I think.

Buffalo was fun, as always. Just like New England, the weather was completely unpredictable. On Monday morning my Dad and I went for a walk, about 11:00. It was 61 degrees and sunny when we left. We walked around Delaware Park Lake for an hour during which time the temperature dropped into the low 50s, the wind picked up, and a light rain began to fall. By the time I went to meet my friend Tammy and her daughter, Evie, and Tammy's Mom at the Olive Garden in Cheektowaga for lunch at 1:00 p.m., it was a torrential downpour and a very strong wind. I stopped home briefly then went out to dinner with Debbie and her daughter, Allison. At the end of our dinner, around 8 p.m., it was snowing. When I left at 9:45, I had to scrape two inches of snow from my car. I only then realized that I did not have a snowbrush.

The rest of the week was pretty low-key. I spent Tuesday volunteering at the Buffalo Museum of Science in the Exhibitions Preparation Shop with my Dad. Before going to bed that night, I sent a letter of inquiry to a language school that had posted a job in eastern Hungary which starts in January. I spent Wednesday with Mom and Dad around the house, helping Mom make cookies and pastries, and then managing to get in a quick dinner with my friend Jennie at Le Metro, a chic little restaurant on the Elmwood Strip--excellent food!

Thursday, the big holiday, was very relaxing, though I had a headache and was feeling a bit cranky in the morning. By the afternoon, when our company arrived, I was feeling better. Per Mom's request, I followed a recipe she had cut out and made a green bean casserole. My Uncle Paul brought the deep fried turkey with him, my Aunt Jackie, and their neighbor, Lou--a UB student whom they invited to join us. My cousin Tina and her daughter, Katrina, also joined us. It was good to see them because I hadn't seen either of them in about five years. Mom made the mashed potatoes, the gravy, the stuffing, cranberry sauce (from real cranberries!), and steamed turnips. We had sides of black olives (my favs) and sweet gherkin pickles (my other fav). For dessert we had a choice of Mom's homemade pies: sour cherry and minced meat, both served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a cup of hot tea. It was quite the spread! The consensus among the guests was that the meal and desserts were absolutely delicious!

I drove back today, with a stop in Palmyra, NY to have lunch with my buddy, Rob. He was up from Hackensack, NJ to spend Thanksgiving with his family. I arrived in Boston around 6:30, stopped at my brother's to pick up some packages, then arrived back at Amy's around 8:15 tonight.

I just checked my e-mail and there's still no word from any of the schools I've applied to. Inconsiderate sods. :(

First Photos from London

Category: Adventures Abroad

Now that I'm back in the U.S. and have caught up on some of my lost sleep, I've spent some time preparing a few of my photos from London! Take a look:

Here's Big Ben and Parliament:

This is one of the Queen's mounted body guards:

This is a view of the London Eye (the ferris wheel) and the Saatchi Gallery from the Westminster bridge:

The Charles Saatchi Gallery has the exhibits from a spectrum of modern artists including the likes of Jake and Dinos Chapman, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, Jenny Saville, Rachel Whiteread. I did not visit the gallery because I was running out of time that afternoon, but while in Eastbourne for the weekend I did see a TV documentary on contemporary British art and the attitudes toward the museums and works. The pieces in the Saatchi Gallery that I would have liked to have seen were the cross-sectioned cow and shark both embedded in lucite, the unmade bed, and the column of vermin--a pile of wax castings of dead rats. Perhaps on my next visit to London.

Here's a funky view of the London Eye:

Here's a view of Big Ben and Parliament at twilight

As I was wondering along the Embankment area, I found myself standing across the street from Bush House which is the BBC World Headquarters:

I have no idea why they lit the entrance with these purple lights, but the effect is pretty cool.

More photos to come later!

How to Contact Me

Category: My World

I never did get my Spanish mobile (cell phone) to work. If you want to reach me, then call me on my old U.S. cell phone number if you have it. If you don't, drop me an e-mail and I'll send it to you or call.

Still nothing from those darn language schools I applied to last week.

Last Day in London

Category: Adventures Abroad

On my last day in London I went to Buckingham Palace but changed my mind when the rain started coming down and I saw all of the protesters yelling about Bush arriving on Tuesday. Instead I turned around and headed up the road to Westminster Abbey to kill a few hours in a warmer, drier, and certainly quieter environment.

After a tour, I went to lunch at a pub, had a proper meal of fish & chips with a pint of ale, then made a quick tour of the Natural History Museum and the Baden-Powell House. I went back to my hotel, collected my luggage and, after a run-in at the Gloucester Road Underground Station with a pretty Polish girl, a confused ticket collector who got it in his head that I was carrying a bomb, and an Underground security guard who straightened out the mess, I banged up my hand on the train car door and headed off to Heathrow for my flight home.

I arrived safely back in the U.S. at 8 p.m. local time on Monday night, having made it through customs without any difficulty--they don't look at you twice when you tell them you're an English Teacher.

A Weekend in Eastbourne

Category: Adventures Abroad

On Thursday, after two nights at The Regent Palace, a real flea bag hotel--one bathroom per 20 rooms, gross mattresses that must have been bought at a fire sale from a former French brothel, and a housecleaning staff whose idea of making up a room is rotating the sheets 90 degrees to hide the scuff marks from my shoes--I was glad to have the chance to visit my friend George in Eastbourne.

Following a nice dinner, I rang my friend Rachel to firm up details for my trip the next morning to see her in Birmingham. Unfortunately she had to cancel and I found myself with no plans for the weekend. My heroine, George immediately offered to put me up at her and her mum's flat. It was really sweet of her and I cannot say how lucky I felt to find myself the recipient of such generous hospitality.

I stayed at George's flat Thursday night (in the comfort of a real bed--lucky for me her brother was away at University), and I returned to London on Friday morning to retrieve my luggage from the flea bag hotel, then head back to Eastbourne for the weekend. George had to work a few shifts at the local pub over the weekend, so I spent two evenings on my own watching a few selections from her mum's video collection and viewing the delights of British television on Friday and Saturday nights, such as they are.

On Saturday afternoon George took me on a walking tour of Eastbourne. It's a nice seaside town with a beautiful beach, several large hotels including the famous Grand Hotel (which we quickly took a peek inside), and a pier with nightclub, an arcade, and a few food venues, all making it reminiscent of the boardwalks in Jersey. The pier also has a Camera Obscura, but unfortunately for us it was closed for the winter.

I returned to London this afternoon via a combination of train, meandering bus, and another train connection that went around some track engineering work that the rail system was performing over the weekend. I checked into another hotel, slightly classier with a bath ensuite, went to dinner at a local pub for a serving of fish & chips, and then took the Underground to see the Tower Bridge. Tomorrow is my last day in London, so I am going to try to see Buckingham Palace, the Natural History Museum, and maybe Westminster Abbey before having to head to the airport for my trip home.

London--Day 3: British Museum & Eastbourne

Category: Adventures Abroad

On Day 3 in London (my second full day), I spent most of the daylight hours in the British Museum. in which I could spend a month alone exploring. It?s really quite amazing. Here you can see more Egyptian, Roman, Greek, and Near and Far Eastern artifacts than most people can imagine.

I saw quite a few pieces of their permanent collection, including the Rosetta Stone. I was lucky enough to have come upon it as a tour guide was giving her speech about its significance. I found that the best way to find out interesting things about exhibits in museums is to follow group tours and float in and out of at random. This strategy worked quite well at the National Gallery and pretty well here too. Perhaps the most interesting exhibit was in fact the oddest: The Forgotten Medicine Man: Henry Wellcome. This exhibit had Wellcome's Victorian era collection of medical gadgets, trinkets, and oddities including collections of bone saws, birth extraction tools, Peruvian shrunken heads, Japanese anti-masturbation devices, glass eyes, chemist bottles, and an array of artificial limbs.

In case you're wondering, I've continued to take photos and hope to post them some time next week when I get back to the U.S.

No replies from any of the language schools to which I've applied for jobs. :(

This afternoon I am taking a train south to East Bourne (on the ocean) to visit my friend George. I'll stay overnight at her flat and then return to London on Friday morning, pick up my bags from the hotel storage center, then going northwest to Birmingham and Bristol to visit my friends Rachel and Sarah.

Job Applications for Poland

Category: My World

Last night I spent some time in the Internet cafe in the basement of the Burger King in Picadilly Circus and did some job searching. I had time enough to do some adequate research on a few companies and the cities where they are based. The short of it is that I have submitted an application to a company in Poland who currently has positions open in Krakow and Warsaw. I'll keep you posted as to what happens. I still haven't heard back from the Universidad del Mar in Oxaca, Mexico to whom I submitted an application last week.

1st Day in London & My Plans

Category: My World

Today I went to the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. I also walked over to see Big Ben and Parliament, then on to, but didn't go up on the London Eye--the monster ferris wheel that overlooks the city across the Thames. This is a very pretty city, a bit cold, but it is November and I ain't in Spain anymore.

As for the next few weeks, well, I will be arriving in Boston the 17th and don't know yet what my travel plans will be. I would like to spend Thanksgiving with my family, but I know that my brother and his family are going down to a hotel on the Cape with Mary's mother. I will likely go to Buffalo for the holiday week and stay there for a few days or more.

As for job prospects, the next term starting in January 2004 is my best hope. In late November through the end of December a lot of language schools around the world discover that their teachers have decided (for whatever reason) not to return when classes start in the second week of January. That's where my window of opportunity exists for finding a job somewhere in the world as an English teacher.

Speaking of jobs...it's time to do some more research while I have time left on this Internet cafe account.

El tel?fono espa?ol no funciona en el Reino Unido

Category: Adventures Abroad

Early this morning I discovered that I have run out of credit on my mobile (cell phone). A conversation with the friendly, neighborhood Vodafone sales rep revealed that any calls I receive while traveling outside of Spain result in my being charged the international roaming rate of 60 cents (Euro) per minute. This is the same cost as if I were making the call myself. I was very disappointed to hear this and the nauseating d?j? vu about this info didn't help either as I vaguely seem to recall that while purchasing the phone the sales woman told me of this little money-sucking caveat.

So the bottom line is that I cannot receive calls until I put more credit on it. I tried to recharge it online but the darn web site told me that "for security reasons" I need to recharge it by telephone with Vodafone first before they will allow me to do it online. I hoping that I will be able to fix the problem by making a call to Vodafone Espana tonight using the calling card I just bought.
I tried this afternoon but I couldn't get through to a live person.

Bye Bye Barcelona!

Category: Adventures Abroad

So today I am leaving Barcelona. I have spent just over five weeks here, enjoyed most of it, but now it is time to relax a bit more and find a cheaper place to live while I look for work. The place to relax is England and the cheaper place to live, in my humble opinion, is the U.S. Therefore I am returning to the Boston area on November 17th.

My first stop will be a few days in London, visiting with my new friend George and possibly one or two other folks I met at International House in Barcelona. From there I hope to travel to visit my friends Rachel and Sarah, who live in Birmingham and Bristol, respectively.

I am hoping that my Spanish mobile phone will allow me to stay in contact with friends and family while traveling. You never know however, I have had enough trouble adapting my few electrical and electronic devices (shaver, rechargeable batteries, and iPAQ) using the different power systems in Spain, I can only imagine the technological hurdles I will have to overcome to use a Spanish mobile in England.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

A Photoless Blog

Category: Adventures Abroad

Just a quick note about the recent lack of photos on my blog. I've run into a few technical snags, mostly a lack of availability of a PC on which to edit the photos I have taken down to a size that will load quickly on the web. My good friend James was kind enough to let me use his laptop PC last week, but after I got the photos to school I found that I had managed to copy the photos onto a now corrupted floppy disk. Not to worry, I still have the originals on CD, but they are over 1 megabyte in size each and therefore will take far too long for me to upload or for you to download.

Job Searching and Sightseeing

Category: Adventures Abroad

Now that class is over, several people have asked what I am doing now. Most of my days consist of the grind of getting up, a shower, dressed, quick breakfast, getting out the door, and then going to either the school or the local internet cafe to work on the job search.

The time I spend looking for jobs is split between finding listings and then doing research on how good or bad not only the school is, but the teaching methodology they use, the general safety and cleanliness of the city--parts of Poland are very polluted due to the industrial nature of their economy, and the political climate of the region/country. There's also the issue of finding out about the local language and how likely I am to find other English speakers, how many hours time difference between there and the U.S., what's the attitude toward Americans, what's the religious make-up of the area, how likely am I to find a wife...you know, small issues. This job search is easily an order of magnitude more complex than say looking for another tech writing job.

*SIGH*

That's why I have not been spending all day doing the job search, it is simply physically and emotionally exhausting. Add that to the sense of isolation I am feeling by not being in class every day with my new friends as I had been, plus I don't speak the language (everyone speaks Catalan here, and only Spanish if you are confident to engage them, which I am not) and that makes it all a bit tough to get going in the morning. I am trying to get out and see at least one tourist attraction each day. Monday it was a trip to Montju?c (a military fort that was closed to tours but from the top we saw a spectacular view of the gross industrial port and the gorgeous city--photos later). Tuesday it was a second trip to Parc G?ell and yesterday I walked down La Rambla, the main touristy drag, but was feeling a bit stiff after all the walking from the previous two days.

Today I am feeling physically better, so I will work on the job search a bit longer this morning and then go to the Picasso Museum because it's something I couldn't do anywhere else.

So that's my current state...I have a return ticket for the 17th that I am giving serious consideration to moving up to the end of next week because I will be out of a place to stay--the next course starts on the 16th and the new students will be coming in on the 13th. I may visit some of my new friends in England and delay my departure, but that's a bit in the air right now.

I Feel So Welcome Here

Category: Adventures Abroad

What do you know about Barcelona and the strange attraction it holds for anarchists, militants, and general political miscreants? Well, I haven't read much, but I do have a sense that with Franco long gone, the upheaval of the past will remain there and this is now a warm and welcoming city to both the citizens of Spain and foreigners alike. I offer this photo as evidence of their hospitality. My friend James took it today while he, Megs, and I were out for a bit of sightseeing near Parc Guell.

Did you notice that there are two police motorcycles in the photo as well? Curious.

Proof I'm in Spain, Photos of Park Guell

Category: Adventures Abroad

Alright you bunch of smarty pant conspiracy nuts, if you think that I'm hiding in New Hampshire (which wouldn't be a bad thing), then how do you explain the following photos of me at Park Guell in Barcelona? No, I really don't want to hear your theories, just be quiet and take a look at some of the pretty pictures I took this weekend while visiting the park designed by Antoni Gaudi...it's a beautiful place. Some of them are a bit dark or the color is off, sorry I don't have access to Photoshop to clean them up. ;)

Here's a view of the front entrance to Park Guell. The famous tile dragon is near the top and its covered in tourists trying to have their photos taken. I didn't have the patience to wait around, or an uzi to clear the area.

Here's me sitting on one of the ceramic tiles. Behind me is the steeple of Gaudi's house.

Here's a view of the back side of the tile seats on the roof. Check out the funky drain spouts.

Here's a view of the tile seats filled with tourists and locals. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many locals in the park.

This is a mosaic placed on the ceiling of the area with all the columns shown in the photo above.

This is an example of the amazing ironwork that abounds in both this park and throughout the city of Barcelona. I think my Uncle Gene (who's an amateur blacksmith) would love this place.

This photo answers the question: "Just how many tourists can you fit on top of a holy monument?" This is, I think, called the Tower of the Three Crosses.

More later!

My Grade

Category: Adventures Abroad

I got a "PASS" grade on my course. I'm not thrilled, a "PASS B" would have been better, but realistically I didn't do enough of my paperwork for lesson planning to warrant one, so I'm okay with it. I'm hoping that my professional experience will boost my job prospects.

Got My Security Deposit!

Category: My World

Good news--I just heard from my brother that the prick of a property manager from my previous apartment has finally sent a check returning my security deposit, including interest!

...and there was much rejoicing in the kingdom. :)

Beginner Fun in my 4th Week

Category: Adventures Abroad

After my adventure with the Spanish medical system this past weekend--helping a friend who got ill (and is now better)--I'm happy to report that I've safely begun my fourth and final week of the course. I've survived the transition from the Intermediate students to the Beginners class, and have successfully taught two 1-hour lessons. Yesterday I was working on question forms and got into a bit of a tough spot clarifying the difference between "how much" and "how many"...can you explain that one?

The difference is that "how much" is used with uncountable nouns and "how many" with countable nouns. I tried explaining the difference using the example the students gave: a bag of rice vs. a grain of rice. After a few minutes of deer-in-the-headlights looks, I had to have my tutor, Roger, to bail me out. He drew two wine glasses on the white board and counted "one, two" then drew wine filling the glass and said "what's that?--one wine? two wine? Uh uh" and the students seemed to understand. It turns out that Spanish (and all the Romance languages) have similar structures and the students were just reflecting on the confusion of their own languages as well as in English.

*SIGH*

The rest of the lesson went well and I got generally positive feedback from my peers, my tutor, and the course assessor who monitored the teaching practice yesterday as well. I've got one more lesson to go and that's on Thursday. Today, (being Tuesday) I've got to assemble the bits of my third and fourth papers and get them submitted by the end of today and tomorrow morning, respectively.

Back to work now. :) I'll post the tale of the medical system later this week when I've got the papers out of the way.

Sample of My Students' Work, p. 1

Category: Adventures Abroad

So Monday of this week was my last teaching practice session with the intermediate students. For my final lesson with them, I had them write some movie plots with vocabulary of ocean travel in the narrative tenses (simple past, past perfect, past progressive, and past perfect progressive). Here's a sample of one of the stories two of the students wrote...exactly as I received it.

Character Descriptions - Write names and background stories for each of the four photos (two men, two women):

1. Margareth is on the cruiseliner spending her time looking for a fantastic holiday. 2. Sharon is on the raft having rafting on Niagara Falls. 3. Mr. Trueba is a famous movie director. He is with his young actor, Jordi. 4. Jordi is a young actor. He is on the freighter with Mr. Trueba for the movie.

Start the Story - In five sentence tell what the characters are doing on the boat:

Mr. Trueba is on a freighter directing a new film about the novel, Old Man and the Sea. He is making a remake of this novel trying to have a mix with the Hemingway's novel and Star Wars. In this case the old man use an intergalactic ship. And he is fishing an alien.

[Alan's comment: The two students abandoned this storyline at this point because they ran out of time. When they heard the instructions to create dialog between characters, they started fresh, kind of.]

Dialog - Write at least five sentences using mixed tenses to have two or more characters meet:

Sharon: Hi, my name is Sharon. I'm 32 years old, I'd like to meet someone to have an exciting trip with. Jordi: So, you have to know that I'm very brave and I'm used to raft. What about you? Sharon: So, when can we go out on a date to gonna trip together?

Conflict - Write at least three sentences to describe a conflict. For example, a sudden storm, an explosion, someone fell in love. One rule: no one can die until the very end of the story.

They are going to Niagara Falls when a storm surprised them, their flight needed to land on Bermuda Island. But the plane desapeared in Bermuda Triangle.

[Alan's comment: I didn't correct them on the geographical curiosity of Bermuda's proximity to Niagara Falls, or ask about how the characters went mysteriously from being on a freighter to a plane. The important thing is that they kept on writing.]

Climax - Write at least five sentences to describe the climax of the story--what happened:

So after ten years, while Trueba was finishing his new film in Bermuda Triangle, he discovered the plane that disappeared 10 years ago.

Resolution - Write at least three sentences to describe how the story ends:

The plane was in the middle of the sea and when the staff moved one, they found just one surviver, her name was Sharon.

Finally Photos: The Sagrada Famil

Category: Adventures Abroad

I have finally found a computer with both a working floppy drive and an Internet connection!!! What this means is that you can finally see the photos from my only sightseeing trip in Barcelona so far...to the Sagrada Familia. This is proof positive for anyone who thinks I'm really just hiding in the hills of New Hampshire to get away from my ex-girlfriend, Maria. ;)

Here's an artist's rendering of what the final building will look like, or at least one end of it:

The Sagrada Familia is a cathedral designed by Francesc del Villar in the 1880s to honor the "Sacred Family"--this is a primarily Catholic country, remember. Anyhow, there were various disagreements over the design and Villar was fired and replaced by his then assistant, Antoni Gaudi. Gaudi was an artistic and architectural genius, as well as an incredibly religious man. He devoted the remainder of his life to the completion of the design and the initial construction phases of the complex. He designed both the Passion and Nativity Facades. Unfortunately for the project, Gaudi died in 1926 when he was run over by a streetcar. Over 121 years after the start of its construction and probably much to the disappointment of Gaudi himself, the building is still not finished. Current projections for completion range from the mid-2020s through the 2040s. Finally, a construction project that will take longer than the Big Dig in Boston! The biggest differences though are that this project doesn't have 500,000 people driving through it everyday on their way to work and it isn't costing taxpayers a cent--only private donations and tourism revenue are being used to fund it. Amazing!

Check out the web site for a detailed explanation of what all the things in these photos are and their symbolism: http://www.sagradafamilia.org

One of the few installed stained glass windows.

 

		This, and the following photo, are of the columns and roof of the left side of the central nave.
		What looks like one of the first lights to be installed inside the roof on the left side of the central nave.

 

This is a view of the Glory Facade.

 

I went up into one of the spires at the front of the structure. Looking out of the different windows I saw many beautiful sights. Thes are the two bell towers.

 

Here's one of the many beautiful views of Barcelona you get when going to the top of this spire.

 

I lost track of which of the spires these two were, doesn't matter, they're pretty impressive whatever they are.

 

These are the steps coming down from the top of the spires. Notice the cool little gutters for carrying the water down the staircase. I don't think I'd like to be walking these steps during a heavy rain.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a close-up of the figures in the Passion Facade. Pretty intense, huh?

 

F*ing Property Manager

Category: My World

A bit of bad news tonight...the property manager for my old apartment says he's going to deduct $325 from my last month's rent deposit to pay for the removal of my rotting, old, gargantuan couch from my former apartment and all the trash that I left next to the house. Have I told you how much I really hate realtors.

I wanted to argue, but frankly I knew it would cost me for leaving the couch in the flat and there's no way I could have taken it out myself in the few minutes I had between the time I moved the last box out and getting to the airport on October 1st.

So I have to just grit my teeth for the moment and wait to see when the wanker sends me the balance of my deposit. He says he'll send the money in the next week. I ain't holding my breath.

Additionally, I'm curious to see how much he pays me for the 9 years of interest he owes me on my $600 deposit I gave in 1992 when I first rented the apartment. Massachusetts law says he has to pay interest of up to 5% while he held my deposit in an escrow account. Let's see, 9 years at 5%, that's not an insignificant amount of money. Plus, if he welches on it, I can sue him for triple damages. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Sleep is Good...Job Prospects

Category: Adventures Abroad

Sorry about the depressed tone of that entry on Friday night. As you could tell I was very sleep starved. Today, after 11 hours of solid sleep, plus a hot shower, I am feeling much better. My flatmate, James, and I found a laundromat with dryers (which are VERY uncommon in Spain due to energy costs). I also realized that with the end of yesterday's classes that I have 10 class days remaining and then *SPLASH* into the job market.

I am still thinking pretty strongly against immediately going to the Far or Middle East because I want to spend some time investigating options in the western part of the world. Also, now that I've taken a closer look at how tough the immigration issues are for non-European Union nationals to find legal work in the EU, I have decided to broaden my possible job markets/destinations to include Central and South America. I saw a job posted last night on a job board for positions in Panama City. The term of the work was a bit short at 4 months, but it might be just what I want to get my feet really wet while having what is a wholely irrational sense of security by being in the western hemisphere in a country that uses the U.S. dollar as its currency. I don't know if I qualify because I may not know Spanish well enough or have enough experience, but it's a possibility to consider. Who knows...I'll start looking later this coming week because my program is having a pseudo-job fair this week where instead of talking to hiring schools, we talk to teachers and tutors working at my school who have worked in various countries around the world. My tutor, J?em said these folks can give us a firsthand point of view on what the countries, schools, students, and hiring situations are like before we start sending our CVs (aka resum?) abroad.

One of my tutors, Roger, said that he's worked in Egypt, Hungary, England (he's English), and several other countries. He appears to be able to speak many languages--having given us a detailed language lesson in Arabic on our first day, and subsequent shorter demonstrations in Hungarian, Catalan, Spanish, and French. He's been teaching English abroad for 23 years, while my other tutor, J?em, who is quite the character, has been doing this for almost as many years, though he said that at one point in his life he was a department store fashion model (can't you tell by the photo), and God only knows what else. Regardless, they both have amazing connections and have offered to put a good word in for anyone who finishes the course, which I'm certain I will do, possibly even with a Pass B grade (out of the possible choices of: Pass A, Pass B, Pass, and Fail).

So I am feeling much better today than yesterday about what I am doing and the prospects of finishing without burning out or getting wiped out by the head cold that's been lingering like the overcast skies this week.

More soon! Time to do some homework...

Who is teaching you to teach English?

Category: Adventures Abroad

Just a quick word about the two tutors for my class. J?em is the lead tutor on the course and Roger is the "assistant" tutor. It's silly that Cambridge University insist on these labels because both men have 20+ years of EFL teaching and school admin experience. They are both very nice, incredibly smart men who are good teachers with great senses of humor.

If you're interested, here's photos of them:

Roger Hunt		J?em Heath ?Ryan

I am fortunate because my flatmate, James (not shown here), has a different set of tutors who seem to have created a much more intensive environment the way they teach the course. Both of my tutors have said that while this is an intensive course, but it doesn't need to be ridiculously stressful if we learn to manage things and get them done on time.

J?em has been my tutor for my first two weeks of teaching practice with the intermediate students. Next week my teaching group (six of us) makes the switch to Roger's class where we'll be teaching advanced beginners under his direction. It should be very interesting to make the shift from intermediate grammar and a broad vocabulary to an almost remedial vocabulary and very limited sentence construction abilities. Of course J?em and Roger have their own, unique approaches to teaching, so it will be good experience to learn from someone else's style. In many ways this will be a mild example of how the "real world" works, where EFL teachers end up picking up hours teaching at several different schools and therefore for different directors of studies who each think their approach is the best. Not too different from managing VPs in corporate America.

My Second Week...Reminds me of Pittsburgh

Category: Adventures Abroad

I've now finished my second week. My first lesson this week went better than the other two, but the one I taught on Wednesday was pretty weak because the subject--greetings and small talk on a job interview--was neither interesting or particularly challenging to the students. Luckily for me, I managed to spark their interest in the last 15 minutes with a discussion of what "genuine" means and whether they thought the characters in the tape we listened to were being genuine. I think that's the only reason they didn't lynch me or fall asleep.

I'm pretty tired now because I was up until 2 a.m. this morning working on a two-page summary of the 12 "normal" verb tenses. It turned out pretty well and received a very positive reception from my peers.

I had my mid-session tutorial today, not really how I wanted to end my day, let alone my second chaotic week. The tutorial went well, J?em, my tutor, did a one-on-one session with me and discussed my strengths and weaknesses. He didn't say anything that surprised me, I just wished it had happened earlier in the week or day, so I could have had enough energy to give it serious reflection before signing off on his comments. Basically, he said I'm very relaxed when I'm prepared and a bit stiff or reserved when I'm not. I get so worried about having a student catch me with a question that I can't answer that I often will steer them away from it if I can predict where they are going, even if they need the answer and don't know how to ask it. I thought it was very perceptive on his part to notice this pattern. I'm not sure I'll be able to improve it enough in the next two weeks to raise my grade any. I'll be happy to get through it at this point, exhaustion is just that...*sigh*

I had a brief, rapidly resolved experience with food poisoning yesterday at a local salad bar. My classmate and I went out for a rare, relaxing lunch without having to look over lesson plans or other gibberish, and wouldn't you know it, we both end up being sick about an hour or so later. It was not fun, though fortunately we both are doing better today.

It's been raining here most of the week, reminds me of Pittsburgh, only not as clean and fewer hills. The weather has been a tad depressing because we can't sit on the terrace at lunch time and have our caf?s and bocadillos (cured ham with cheese grilled on a long baguette--yummy!). I would also like to continue working on my Spanish tan--just bronzing my face and neck from sitting with my head facing the sun hoping it will clear the nasty clouds of smoke from all my peers and tutors. I'm definitely in the minority in that respect...hopefully my lungs will survive the experience.

This weekend's forecast is for crappy weather...high wind warning in effect from a storm blowing across the region through Sunday. I've got a paper due on Monday, I'm teaching a lesson on writing a TV script using the simple past, past perfect, past progressive and past perfect progressive tenses Monday afternoon--my last intermediate level class before I move on to beginners on Tuesday, and finally I have another paper due at the end of the month which is all about what I've learned and observed since starting the program. It sounds much easier than it will be. It's going to be a long, work-filled weekend. :(

I have the photos from Sagrada Famil?a but haven't been able to upload them because I can't find a PC that has both a floppy drive and Internet access. Will try at school tomorrow...they lost their internet connection service because the phone company disconnected it when the neighboring building didn't pay their bill. Old buildings, old lines, same old b.s. no matter what the country.

I tried to call my parents, my brother and one friend for an overdue birthday greeting today but my phone calling card ran out as I was waiting for Pete's phone to ring. I went to buy another card, but the tobacco shops, where you can buy phone cards and stamps, were all closed at 8 p.m. and I didn't get to the square to call until 10 p.m. The phone card I bought in the department store only works from a private line, it won't work from a pay phone because it's issued by a different company. That's competition at its finest, isn't it? Grrrr. Luckily I was able to catch Peter online for a bit, so we had an online chat and straightened out a few financial things that were causing me concern. I still haven't heard from my former landlord's property manager about my security deposit...the bastard. I'll call him tomorrow or Monday. Double Grrrr.

Time to go home and get some sleep--it's getting close to 11:00 and I'm ready to collapse. Tomorrow I might blow off the 9 a.m. study group and go to an art museum or see the world's last white gorilla, who has been very ill, at the Barcelona Zoo. I'm not really one for zoos, but the chance to see that kind of rare animal is, well, rare. I'll let you know what happens.

My First Teaching Experience

Category: Adventures Abroad

I taught two classes in my first week. In the first class my tutor said I was good but a bit serious. The students responded well to the topic--favorite books. I was pleasantly surprised by the students' choice of books: cheesy romance novels, to "Angela's Ashes," to much more serious books about the political struggles in Chile and finally, one about an American doctor's travels among the Australian aboriginies--sorry, the titles of the last two escape me. In case you wondered, my favorite book is "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Teaching was fun once I got into the rhythm of being in front of strangers and leading the group. I only had to teach for 20 minutes which at some points flew and other points dragged, just like most things.

The students are adults, ranging in age from ~20 to mid-60s. All are fluent in Spanish, though not all native to Spain. We've got two from Italy, one from Peru, and another from Venezuela. The attendance fluctuates from 6-12 depending on the day, so we have to be prepared for an intimate group or a small mob. Their collective English skills are pretty good as this is an upper-intermediate class that we're teaching. At the end of next week I make the transition to teaching beginners. YIKES!

The second class that I taught was on the grammar of expressions of possibility and probability (*YAWN*). I did well although I forgot my answer sheet to the exercise and mixed up the terms. I was working from a weird little exercise in our book and should have been better prepared. The students guessed at how to correct my error and I caught myself misspelling "probability" with two As instead of two Is. Grrrr.

The students really got into doing the exercises and laughed at my explanation of why "bound" is a term for probability--"It's bound to happen--bound, as in tied, meaning no choice because you are constrained or restricted." I mimicked my hands being tied together and pulled along. *YIKES!* My tutor said it went well but I need to smile more...grammar is not something many people smile about. ;)

Have to run now. I've got another lesson plan to work on. This time I'm not teaching grammar, but rather doing production exercises where the students practice creating sentences using the simple past, past perfect, and past perfect progressive tenses. I've also got a 1000-word essay due on Wednesday that I've done research and a quick outline on, but now need to write a draft.

Oh joy!

Luggage, First Impressions, and the Mall

Category: Adventures Abroad

Thanks to guilt inflicted by my host, Jordi, on the clerk from Air France, both pieces of my luggage showed up at the flat at 11:30 a.m. yesterday, just 30 minutes before I had to leave for my course orientation session.

My flatmate James and I went to the orientation session and met our other classmates for the course. There's 36 people taking the course and we were split up into three groups of 12 and then we'll be subdivided again into teaching practice teams of six. The people in my group--five Americans and seven Brits--all seem very nice and I'm looking forward to working with them.

James and I ended up in different groups which I think is probably a good thing because otherwise we'd spend all of our time together and that could quickly get tiresome, competitive, or both. None of which I care to add to the stress I've been told to expect from working hard to complete this month-long, intensive course.

I've made a pretty good adjustment to the time change, I just have to stay away from the sangria after 11:00 so that I'm awake enough to make it home and not too wired to sleep as happened last night when I got home at 1:00 a.m. and couldn't get to sleep until 2:30. I was able to sleep in this morning until 11:30. James and I went food shopping and then made a second trip back to the mall for a new pair of shoes for me--at a Timberland store--because the pair I brought cut into my toes on Friday and gave me a nasty blister. I'm wearing the new shoes now and feeling much better. If the crowd at the mall where we shopped is any indication of the national situation, the Spanish economy must not be feeling any doldrums like the U.S. The place was absolutely packed, even though it was 1 p.m. on a sunny Saturday afternoon. It was even more crowded when we went back for the shoes around 4:30 p.m.

Tomorrow a group of the teacher trainees are going to the Sagrada Familia (Gaudi's Cathedral) for a tour and then some lunch. It should be a nice bit of socializing and fun before we get down to the brass tacks of the coursework.

Next entry I promise to describe the story about my run-in with an old lady, a security guard, and the shopping cart.

Long Day...Safe in Barcelona

Category: My World

Wednesday morning I awoke at 8:00 a.m. at my friends' Nancy and Karl's house . They put me up for the night so I wouldn't have to spend my last night in the U.S. on the floor of my apartment and so that I could make it to my final dental appointment on time. After the dental appointment--my teeth are in good shape--I finished, or should say reached a time-driven compromise regarding the fate of the remaining contents of my apartment. My divinely wonderful friend Amy made yet another trip from New Hampshire to Waltham and helped me shovel the last of my belongings into either the suitcase or the stack of bags, buckets, and boxes that either went to her house, my brother's place, or with me in a suitcase. She was even generous enough to efficiently pack my suitcase while I ran away for an hour to have a massage to loosen the knots from my back so I could have a reasonably comfortable 6 hour plane ride.

I overloaded Amy's car one last time at 1:30, bid her farewell, and sent her on her way. I finally finished closing my apartment in Waltham at 2:45 p.m. Yes, that's just four hours before my flight left Boston. I called my building's property manager as I was driving to Peter's to tell him that I was leaving a stack of empty boxes and my couch. He was not happy, but said that he would get someone to remove it and then send me my security deposit minus the cost of the removal. I hope to see that money soon.

I made it to my brother's house at 3:15, leaving me 15 minutes to run to the bathroom, change t-shirts but not shower (which I would later regret), and then throw my luggage into his Jeep so he and Rowan could drive me to the airport.

I got on the American Airlines flight at 5:40 and took off for Barcelona at 6:10 p.m. EST. The flight was six hours long, plus add in the six hour gain in time difference between Boston and Paris, where I had a layover, and I arrived in Paris at about 6:55 a.m. with no more than about 60 minutes of sleep on the entire flight. I was VERY tired. My flight to Barcelona was scheduled to leave at 10:15 a.m., a brief three hour layover that turned into 5.5 hours when Air France told me that they had overbooked the flight and I didn't have a seat. I volunteered to take the next flight and Air France promptly gave me 110? for my trouble. It's a good thing because the next thing I know, I arrived in Barcelona's airport at 2:15 p.m. wihtout my luggage. Air France, in their infinite
wisdom, decided that my luggage should also be bumped so that it won't arrive on my door step until sometime Friday morning. Grrrr. They have exceeded the value of 110? in my estimation because I had to meet my host at his flat while smelling awful, looking like I had been mugged. My greater concern now is that I'll have to meet my new classmates at orientation tomorrow in the same smelly clothes that I've been wearing since Wednesday morning. Eeeeewwwww. What a way to make a first impression...I want them to know I'm a clean cut (and clean smelling) American.

On the positive side, the flat is VERY nice, I am rooming with another CELTA teacher trainee--James, from NYC. He's pretty cool as is our host, Jordi. So folks, the adventure has begun...more later. It's 11:22 p.m. and I'm heading back from the internet cafe to catch some well deserved sleep. It's now been 36 hours since I've slept, so I'm going to crash.

What about your car?

Category: Adventures Abroad

My car is a 1997 Saturn SL2 with 115,000 miles on it and I'm ready to part with it to help fund my adventure abroad. An earlier sale to a friend of a friend fell through, so I've entrusted its sale to my friend, Stephanie and her husband, Jim.

Jim loves cars and collects and sells classic cars on a frequent basis. He's doing some advertising in a few local auto tradesheets and, it doesn't move there immediately, he'll pursue online ads to move it. I cannot express how grateful I am to have them take on this responsibility for me. I trust that they will take great care of it until it's either sold or I return to the U.S, whichever comes first.

1988 Photo Project: Multiple Images

Category: Art

Here's another set of photos found in my attic this past week. These are also from my 1988 college photography class. This project used multiple images--being one set of photos I took of my friend Kelly overlayed on a set of photos I took of myself. This series is a dream sequence...though I don't remember now who was dreaming of whom. I'm pretty sure it was me haunted by her.

I think, based on this second image, that I was frustrated by Kelly ignoring my advances and I wanted to get inside her head to figure out how I could change her mind. To ease your concerns, I don't think I ever held a power tool to Kelly's head, this was purely an artistic creation. :)

1988 Photo Project: Cindy Sherman Tribute

Category: Art

Here's two photos I found while digging through my attic this week. These photos are from my college photography class in 1988. This project's subject had to be people. As I recall I had read about and seen several photos by Cindy Sherman, a famous photographer who dresses herself in different costumes to create dramatic images and thought-provoking scenes. I wasn't prepared to do anything quite so serious, so I used it as an opportunity to experiment with some different costumes to show some aspects of my personality.

The first image is me in a Boy Scout uniform. I was in Scouts for over 11 years, so this is an authentic uniform.

The second image is me with 3-D glasses on reacting to a scene. I've always been a movie fan and just a few weeks prior to this I went to a sci-fi film festival and had an opportunity to see Friday the 13th, Part 3 in 3-D. It was a horrible movie, but I enjoyed the chance to see a 3-D movie in a real movie theater.

Found Photo: Letchworth State Park, 1990

Category: My World

I found this photo while cleaning out a box in my attic the other morning.

When I saw it I thought I recognized some similarities between this photo of me from 1990 and the cover of Jack Johnson's 2000 CD, Brushfire Fairy Tales. The photo of me was taken by my friend Debra while we were visiting Letchworth State Park. Mr. Johnson's photographer has nothing to worry about, I don't think Debra will want to sue him for using her photo composition.

Reflections on Being on Disability

Category: My World

I recently found a stack of Dilbert cartoons while preparing to move. This one came out of the box of crap that came out of my former office the day I left. I went out on disability earlier this year and only wish that my experience was as amusing, painless, and brief as Wally's:

Family Photo, circa 1969

Category: My World

Here's another great photo I found while packing the apartment. This one is of my family in April, 1969 around my first birthday. Going from left to right: my brother Peter (age 5), me, my Mom, and my Dad with the cool glasses.

The sad thing about this is that I have about the same hairline now that I had at age 1...though I probably had more on the back of my head then than I do now.

Photos from when I was more photogenic

Category: My World

Here's three photos I found today while cleaning out my attic. Here's me at six months old:

Here's me at 18 months old:

Here's me at 22 months old:

I wish I had a larger version of that bulldozer to help clean out my apartment.

Photo from a Day at My Last Crossroad, p. II

Category: My World

In the process of packing for the move, I found this photo of me from my college graduation party in May 1990. I was feeling very silly.

Moving-inspired Haiku

Category: My World

I've spent the last several days purging and packing the contents of my apartment. I'm exhausted. Today's fourth straight day of packing and moving boxes into storage has inspired me to write a haiku:

Moving really sucks.
Moving really really sucks.
Did I say it sucks?

Photo of me and my brother, circa 1972

Category: My World

Here's a photo I found today while packing my apartment. This was a portrait taken by my Dad of my brother Peter and I in 1972. Pete's the one wearing the Cub Scout uniform, I'm wearing the clip-on tie with the smiley face button.

Photo from a Day at a Crossroad

Category: My World

The photo below, showing me and my Grandma B on her 80th birthday, was taken on July 25, 1990. It was about a month before I left Buffalo to start graduate school in Pittsburgh. I was, as I am now, at a major crossroads on my life's journey.

She passed away on August 13, 2001, at the age of 91. Though I miss her, I take strength in knowing that she is always with me in spirit.

¡Voy a España!

Category: My World

I recently applied to a school in Barcelona, Spain to take a course so I can learn how to teach English as a foreign language. At 5:00 a.m. today (which is 11:00 a.m. in Barcelona) I had a phone interview with an instructor from International House Barcelona.

The interview consisted of discussing foreign language teaching methodology, stumbling my way through a few questions on verb tenses, a brief, off-beat discussion of the passive voice, and finally the instructor read me their boilerplate disclaimer about the course's intensity. Basically he told me how I should not enroll if I'm there to do anything other than take the course like visit relatives, hang out on the beach, or work. Given that the course runs from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and then requires homework and lesson plan preparation for the next day, I doubt I'll have time to do anything other than find the local Starbucks to arrange a daily caffeine IV.

At the end of the interview the instructor informed me that I've been accepted to their program. I'll be taking the four-week course from October 6-31 in Barcelona. When I'm finished I'll have earned what's called a CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults). Following that I'll begin looking for work over there.

So folks, it looks like I'll be leaving the U.S. on or about October 1st. Now it's time to begin packing up my apartment. May God have mercy on my soul.

My Fountain Pens

Category: My World

"My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane."
—Graham Greene

I couldn't agree more. When I write with a fountain pen, I am opening a vein. Here's a photo of four of my favorite fountain pens.

Rowan Turns Two!

Category: My World

Today is my niece Rowan's second birthday. I went out tonight with the birthday girl, my brother, and sister-in-law to celebrate over dinner. Here's a few photos from dinner and the gift-unwrapping festivities that followed:

My Monday with Marie

Category: My World

Today was my second adventure in babysitting my friends' John & Sandy's daughter, Marie. I think it was a lot easier today, for several reasons. First, I only watched her in the morning. We both got up late, I was up at 7:45 and Marie didn't wake until almost 8:30 as John was scurrying to get out of the house.

Second, I think we were both more comfortable with each other. After four days of spending time with her and watching how she interacts with her parents, I felt much more at ease with figuring out what was and was not okay for her to do. I also felt more comfortable letting her wander the apartment without having to watch her every second. Now, I didn't sleep while she was playing, but I was able to relax a bit more and give her room to roam. And, finally, I had a better sense of what she was capable of doing and for how long. I knew that I could turn on a video and trust that she'd pretty much sit through the whole thing without running off. I also learned how to better read her non-verbal signals for things like needing a diaper change and being hungry. It's amazing how much I've learned in such a short period of time. Anyhow, here's more photos I took today during the course of our time together.

She started the day by reading a book at the foot of my bed.

Then she decided it was time for a game of chair jumping:

Immediately followed by a game of hide behind the hat:

Next, a round of talk to the non-existent person on the couch:

Marie's Uncle Joe and his girlfriend, Brandee, took Marie out for the afternoon so I could have time to go for another visit with my friend Pete at his condo on the North Side of Pittsburgh.

After cruising the mall all afternoon, it was time to walk around, waiting for Mommy & Daddy to get home from work.

To kill more time, she decided to crawl over her puzzle pieces.

And, at the end of the day, Marie was reunited with her Daddy.

Dinner by Chef Johnnie

Category: My World

Sunday night I had dinner at Sandy and John's house, however unlike the simple, yet delicious meals that Sandy has prepared for us since my arrival, this night Chef Johnnie was in charge and we were all in for a culinary treat!

My friend John has always had a passion for gourmet cooking, and tonight was no exception. When I returned from my visit with my friend Pete on Sunday afternoon, I was amused to find that John, Sandy, and Marie were all taking it easy, apparently recovering from the evening of fun they had at their neighborhood block party while I was staying overnight in the city. John and Sandy were enthralled with the wonders of the Food Network, on the TV. It's never been of interest to me, so I decided to read. When the program they were watching was over, John put his grocery list together and recruited me for a shopping trip to find the ingredients for his weekly Sunday dining masterpiece.

Three hours later, we were sitting down to this wonderful looking (and smelling) meal:

What you see here, starting from the left, is a homemade southern lemonade, made with organic lemons and garnished with a sprig of fresh mint. On the plate, going in clockwise direction starting from the top, is a fried whole-wheat tortilla, corn on the cob, grilled scallops on a avacado-corn salsa over a fried tortilla, roast pork tenderloin covered in a chipolte-apple glaze, and finally, grilled jerk shrimp.

Mmmmmmm! It was definitely worth the wait.

John's cooking talents are one of the many reasons that he's my best friend and that his lovely wife, Sandy, married him. If you ever have the opportunity to eat a meal prepared by Chef Johnnie, I highly recommend it!

My Friend Pete Turns 70!

Category: My World

On Saturday, August 9, 2003, my grad-school mentor and long-time friend, Pete Geissler, turned 70. I was honored to be invited to the birthday soire thrown for him by his friends and neighbors. The photo on the left, shows him in his natural state: warm smile, gentle laugh, sarcastic thought (as shown on his t-shirt), and a drink in his hand. If you can't see it, the t-shirt reads: Old writers never die, they just lapse into a comma.

Pete's friends now how to throw one hell of a party. I met and had conversations with about 30 of the 40 people who came. There was great food, good company, and a wide selection of fine spirits available for consumption.

Here's a few more photos from the happy happening:

Pete was born around 6:00 a.m. on August 9, 1933. Twelve hours later, the U.S. government repealed prohibition. Some of the party attendees say it was because upon Pete's birth, they saw an emerging market and couldn't pass on the opportunity. That story is why he's got a champagne bottle vintage 1933 on his cake...you can guess the reasons for the women and song references on the cake on your own. :)

Here's Pete cutting his birthday cake. His neighbor, who helped organize the party is holding the pan and table steady for him.

Here's Pete with his girlfriend, Elaine, and one of his grandsons who is obviously eyeing the cake.

Pete has a hardy laugh while his close friend, Gary offers a birthday roast.

In my opinion, one of the things that made the evening very special was the performance by Dorothy & Company, a swing, jazz, polka trio. In addition to their phenomenal renditions of Stardust, S'Wonderful, and a five-song polka medley, they allowed one of the guests, Pete's friend, Bob, sing his version of Mack the Knife. It was quite a good performance.

As you can see by the photos, a fun time was had by all. I truly enjoyed myself, especially having the opportunity to meet many of the people about whom I've heard stories about over the 12 years that I've known Pete. It was really nice to meet his son, Carl, and daughter, Linde and her fiance, Neil.

Pete was kind enough to let me stay overnight in his guest room, so I was able to partake in some of the alcoholic libations being served. I did my part in the team effort of finishing off four different bottle of single malt scotch, three red wines including an excellent Merlot, and I believe when I asked for a Coke someone handed me a Heineken. Surprisingly, even having consumed more than my normal annual alcohol quota in one night, the next day I did not have anything resembling a hangover or even a headache. I suspect it had to do with eating enough good food over the course of the evening as well as the obvious absence of really cheap booze.

Marie Amazes Uncle Alan

Category: My World

I'm visiting friends in Pittsburgh, PA this weekend. Among my activities was the chance to babysit my best friend John's daughter, Marie yesterday. She's an absolute joy.

Here's two pictures of her I took today with her Irish Party Ears on:

I haven't seen Marie since her baptism in the Spring of 2002, so it's been quite a long time. At 20.5 months old, she is a wonder of child development in action. She is walking, running, and climbing over anything that gets in her way. She's able to climb into her own highchair and carseat without much difficulty--fortunately she can't work the buckles yet, but I'm sure that's not too far off. Seeing her climb into the highchair is both good for her parents and nerve-wrecking to anyone who watches her do it for the first time.

Marie's speech, compared to other children I know in this age group, is pretty well developed. She can form the simplest of noun-verb sentences ("I pee-pee," "Mommy work," "Daddy sleepy"), is well on her way to being toilet-trained, can identify many colors (yellow, red, black, green, blue), and has an ever-growing vocabulary. If you take the time to identify an object for her, she repeats it, and does pretty well at retaining it for future use. She's gotten pretty good at saying my name, which of course endears her to me. :)

My amazement aside, I have to say that while I watched her on Friday, she was a very well-tempered, well-behaved baby. We had a busy day: we watched a Baby Bach video, we did some coloring on scrap paper with crayons and markers, I watched her as she seemed to enjoy putting heart-shaped stickers on the clear plastic sleeves that held photos of her grandparents, she did an animal puzzle, and we drew pictures on the sidewalk in front of the house.

Her Uncle Joe and his girlfriend, Brandee came over and after we gave Marie her lunch, we took her along so the adults could eat, then we drove Joe to the airport so he could catch a flight for work (he's a flight attendant for USAirways). Marie slept through most of the car ride after we had finished lunch, so when Brandee dropped us back at the house, Marie was raring to go! I let her run around for a half hour, we watered the flowers around the outside of the house, and then she started to crash again, so I read her a book and she slept for another 45 minutes. When she woke up I let her play on her own with her blocks and collection of teddy bears and Disney action figures. Marie's mom, Sandy, arrived home at about 5:30, and mommy and daughter were very happy to see one another.

Please don't misunderstand the rosy picture I've painted here, I was fortunate to have a very good day with Marie. She didn't get too upset that Mommy and Daddy left her with me, she didn't fall or bump anything hard enough to provoke a cry, and even her diaper changing went well, but let's be clear: she is still a toddler and has emotional moments. At 6:00 a.m. this morning she had a minor meltdown when her wet diaper wasn't immediately changed. Dear GOD, let me tell you, the blood-curdling screams this child emitted made me wonder what sounds she would produce if she were REALLY upset. It's a good thing John and Sandy don't live near a cemetary, because there'd be quite a few skeletons knocking on their door asking them to keep the noise down.

Anyhow, I'm on babysitting duty again on Monday, so I'm going to bed early on Sunday night so I'm full-charged and ready to keep Marie entertained and amused.

My Hometown as a Light Bulb Joke

Category: My World

As you may know, I grew up and went to undergrad in Buffalo, NY. For those of you who don't know much about Buffalo, I thought I would share a little insight with you on the personalities and attitudes associated with different areas in and near Buffalo through the following series of light bulb jokes:

Q: How many West Siders does it take to screw
in a light bulb?

A: I dunno, but my brother's girlfriend's father's boss' secretary's sister's next door neighbor's priest's cousin's union shop steward's uncle's Knights of Columbus Sergeant-at-Arms' nephew's best friend did it real cheap for me once.

NOTE: I grew up on the West Side!

Q: How many UB students does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: 25,000 - twenty to write the grant proposal requesting funds to study the effect of earthquakes on light bulbs, one to screw in the bulb, and 24,979 to whine about how Buffalo light bulbs suck compared to the ones on Long Island.

Q: How many Delaware District residents does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: One, but it will take a year to find an antique Edison light bulb that that is Pan American Expositionally accurate.

Q: How many Riverside residents does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: None. Satan prefers black candles.

Q: How many South Buffalonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Two - one to hold the bulb, the other to give the first guy pints of Guinness to start him spinning. GUINNESS?? Shite 'n' begorra --nobody in South Buffalo drinks Guinness. They drink Bud Lite.

Q: How many Williamsville/Amherst residents does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: None. They'd rather screw Buffalo.

Q: How many East Amherst residents does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: One, and it will be the biggest and brightest light bulb in the entire subdivision!

Q: How many Orchard Park residents does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Light bulbs? They're so Amherst.

Q: How many Kenmore residents does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Two - one to do it and a cop to make sure he isn't doing it too fast.

Q: How many Tonawanda residents does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Just one, but it has to look like every other light bulb on the block.

Q: How many Lancaster residents does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: None - they're afraid there's been too much light bulb development already.

Q: How many Hamburg residents does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Two - one to pull the bulb out of the snowbank, and one to screw it in.

Q: How many Southtowners does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: 51. One one to screw in the light bulb, and fifty members of Spirit of Youth to sing a happy song about it at the Erie County Fair.

Q: How many Buffalo city planners does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Six - four to write an extensive study recommending a three-way 100/200/250 watt light bulb, one to write a series of articles in the Buffalo News praising the study, and one to put in a 10 watt bulb instead.

Q: How many Buffalo municipal employees does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Seven - two to administer the Civil Service examination for the Light Bulb Administrator position, the Commissioner of Public Works, who ends up hiring his brother for the position anyway, one to plow the mayor's driveway, a Summer Youth student to actually screw it in, and a union steward to protest that it's the electrician's job to screw in light bulbs.

Q: How many Buffalo senior citizens does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: One, after paying a telemarketer $2000 for the new bulb.

Q: How many of Buffalo's Protestants does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Both.

Q: How many Rochester residents does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Sixty-one - one to screw in the bulb, and sixty to comment about how much brighter the bulb is than light bulbs in Buffalo.

Q: How many Torontonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Just one, but they leave the old bulb in the parking lot of the Galleria Mall.

Q: How many Nardin Academy students does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Just one - - she holds up the bulb, and the world revolves around her.

Q: How many Canisius College students does it to screw in a light bulb?

A: Nine - one to order the bulb from J. Crew, one to buy a case of Molson's, one to hold the bulb up, one to drive the Saab in real tight circles and five to stand around and say "duuuuuude."

Fun at Alex & Dan's Wedding

Category: My World

Yesterday I went to my friend Alexandra's wedding. Alex and I have been friends since we worked together in 1996. She's married a great guy, Dan, and I was honored to be invited to their wedding yesterday.

Here's a photo of the happy couple:

The wedding and reception were held at the Atlantic Beach Club in Middletown, RI. I was a bit leary about the location because when I arrived there was a live band playing to a really rowdy crowd on the Club's patio about 100 feet from the tent where the ceremony was going to be held. Fortunately, when the ceremony started, the band stopped and the entire patio crowd stopped dancing and turned to become a severely underdressed viewing gallery to a beautiful ceremony!

After the ceremony, the wedding guests retired to a banquet room on the second floor of the club. It was a nice, large room that provided a quiet, attractive setting for the reception and a stark contrast from the raucous party on the deck below. Overall it was a very pleasant reception and I had the opportunity to meet Alex's Mom and Dad as well as many of Alex's former co-workers whom she's met since she and I worked together.

Here's a few of the photos I took:

Here's a great photo of Alex and her lovely Mom:

Here's a photo of Alex and her Dad sharing their dance:

And finally, here's a photo of me and Alex:

Weirdest bumper sticker

Category: My World

Back in December 2002 I saw the weirdest bumper sticker in my life. I remembered it today because I saw the same car in the parking lot at Dunkin' Donuts. Obviously I didn't park next to it:

"I'm getting tired of slitting the throats of all the people who think I'm a deranged psychopath"

Lunch with Nancy + Christopher

Category: My World

Earlier this week I lunch with my friend Nancy and her son, Christopher. Nancy and I went to graduate school together at Carnegie Mellon University. Click the link below to see a larger version of this photo and a couple of others from our afternoon together.

As you can see, Christopher, like many kids his age, extracts incredible joy from making contorted faces when having his photo taken. I think this compulsion is an insight into his sense of humor. Below are a two photos with slightly nicer expressions.

Harry Potter B'day Fun

Category: My World

This past Saturday I attended my friend's daughter's birthday party. It was a Harry Potter theme, though the weather was a bit warm so that most of the kids shed their Hogwarts robes and wizard hats as soon they finished with the sorting ceremony.

The highlight of the party was a magic show by a local magician, shown here with one of the guests:

This is a photo of me with the birthday girl, Ashlyn, who came as Harry Potter (notice the lightning scar on her forehead and the Gryffindor badge):

Ashlyn's wearing a balloon hat made by a magician who performed at the party. This next photo shows the anxious kids waiting to get balloon animals:

Here's a photo of Ashlyn's mom, LeAnn and her brother, Liam. LeAnn is holding a balloon animal--a dog I think--which has a baby in its belly and is labelled "Mom":

Distracciónes

Category: My World

My job has been a living hell recently, so I decided it might help my mental health if I create a distraction for myself. I'm taking a Beginning Spanish class. The course is Tuesday nights at The Cambridge Center for Adult Education this summer. Here's the course description:

Learn to speak Spanish in an engaging and supportive environment. Students will have opportunities to develop basic skills in grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling and conversation.