Maximum wisdom

I just spent Sunday night watching The Princess Bride with my 5-year-old nephew, Max. As always, he dropped a few pearls of wisdom:

"It's easier to get your rings to slide off your finger when they're all spitty." -As he pulled his CTR ring off his spitty finger.

"He kicked me in the crotch. That doesn't hurt for girls because girls don't have crotches."

Not really much you can say to follow up on those.

Road trip part I

As I mentioned, I graduated. Graduation was alright, if not a little silly. But it was a graduation ceremony, which are pretty much always silly, so what do you do? Anyway, here's a picture of me along with a few friends in our graduation dresses:


Anyway, that's all done and behind me now, and I'm in the process of moving back to P-Town. So Willus and I are now in the middle of a cross-country road trip. Most of my two or three readers already know about the trip, but in case I haven't told you, here's what we're doing:

We're taking 2 weeks to stop at as many baseball games on the way home as we can see. Along the way, we're going to stop and take in some other sites as well. Here are the parks we've either seen, or are going to see:

Fenway Park (Boston)
Yankee Stadium (NYC)
Progressive Stadium (Cleveland)
Wrigley Field (Chicago)
Busch III (St. Louis)
Arrowhead Stadium (Kansas City)

Other teams' home schedules didn't cooperate, or we would have stopped there too.

We've already stopped in and visited Mike and Cyrus, two buddies of mine in dental school in Boston. We went to a Red Sox game, and also went out on Martha's Vineyard to do some salt water fly fishing. This was some of the most fun fly fishing I've ever done. The weather didn't completely cooperate with us, so the fishing wasn't fantastic, but it was good, and we did catch some stripers and blues.









Anyway, back to baseball. One of our key missions to this road trip is to decide which stadium offers the best overall baseball experience. Perhaps the most important measure is which stadium has the best hot dog. So far we've only been to games at Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, and the consensus view is that the Fenway Frank is the runaway winner thus far.



I also had an Italian Sausage at Fenway, and it was pretty tough to beat. Come to think of it, Fenway's food BURIES Yankee Stadium's food. I was definitely impressed with Fenway, and definitely unimpressed with Yankee. The hot dogs I had in Yankee Stadium were terrible. Cheaper than the Fenway Frank, but they were gross. Overall, Yankee Stadium is a dump. Sorry Yankees fans. Fenway Park is heads and shoulders above Yankee Stadium in terms of the quality of the experience. Better luck with your new stadium, because the old one sucks. But they did give me a free hat, which was cool.


The game at Fenway was pretty cool too b/c we got to see Jon Lester pitch the first no-hitter in the majors this season. This was Willus's first major league game too, which was pretty cool. So the Sox won 7-0 over the Royals. The Yankees also beat the Oriels 8-0. So thus far, the home team has won in a shut out. We'll see tonight if the Indians can keep the streak alive.

Now that I think about it, I'm going to develop an objective scale to rank the stadiums we visit. I'll post this soon, and keep you updated as the trip progresses, and as my access to WiFi allows.

Later today we're going to Progressive Stadium to catch an Indians game. I've heard really good things about Progressive Field, so I'm excited about that. Then on Memorial Day, we'll be catching a game at Wrigley Field, which I'm really excited for. Between now and then, we're going to stop in and visit Kirtland, the NFL Hall of Fame, the College Football Hall of Fame, and possibly the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

So that's the road trip to this point. I'll be posting more pictures when I can. (Most of the good shots have been on my brother's camera, and he didn't bring the cord you need to upload pictures to a computer, so I'll have to wait until I get home to upload those photos).

Final count

So any of you have been suffering through the last 3 years worth of blog entries know that one of my lame goals in law school was to make it through the entire 3 years without buying a single highlighter.

This was surprisingly easy to do. By the end of my second year, I had a large enough stock pile built up to last me through my third year. But rather than stop there, I decided I would pursue the goal to an absurd end, and build as big of a stock pile as I could.

Final stock pile count: 151.



To put the picture into perspective:



You know the saddest part of this whole thing? That I actually find that the excess of the situation only makes it all the more amusing. Over the last two semesters, I have used them at a rate of about one every 3 weeks. By my estimate, at that rate, this stock pile would last me until approximately February 4, 2017, all else being equal.

Here's the funny part: they don't always respond too well to altitude changes, as sad experience with them in airplanes has taught me, and I just loaded them into a box to be shipped across the continental divide. Realizing their air pressure sensitivity, before I packed them, I double bagged them. So here's hoping that 2 Hannaford shopping bags are enough to stop 151 markers worth of bright yellow ink.

How would I explain that to the insurance adjuster when I filed a claim? That might be a tough sell.

5/9/08, 12:00 EDT.

As of a couple of hours ago, I am OFFICIALLY FINISHED WITH LAW SCHOOL!

That means that my relationship with this woman has permanently changed:


Don't get me wrong. I'm sure we'll still find unhealthy ways to continue this bizarre love-hate collusion we've got going on. But things have changed between us. Oh my, things have changed.

Anyway, I gotta say that it feels AWESOME to be done.

Graduation: I highly recommend it.

The Final Countdown

This song has a very special place in my heart right now. It's been playing endlessly through my head for the last few days:

*EDIT* OK, stupid Youtube won't let me embed the player for some reason. So you're going to have to open this link to see it. How lame is that? I wanted you to be able to ROCK right here on my blog, instead of having to go to Youtube to do your rocking. Jerks. Anyway, this is the link. Yes, I meant to have the link be this long.

What an awesomely terrible song. I hope you watched the whole thing. I really do. But here are a couple of questions that I couldn't answer myself after watching the video:

*Why are they heading for Venus? Isn't that a fairly inhospitable planet?
*Why does he provide his own echo after he says Venus?
*How do you get your hair to do that? I always wanted mine to be all feathered and awesome like that when I was in 1st grade.
*If they really have as much hairspray in their hair as I suspect, how do they have pyrotechnics on the stage without causing them all to combust spontaneously?

Anywho, my final countdown isn't quite as cool as Europe's. Mine is the countdown to being done with school. I have one class today and one tomorrow, and that's it. I have 3 finals after that, and then I am done with school. FOREVER.

So, yeah. Not as cool as Europe's, but still pretty cool. I'll be Dallas, J.D. one week from Friday.

Success

Just as I was about to go to bed, I noticed that my right hand smelled like a combination of hot wings, chicken tenders, lane wax, and a 14 pound house ball that apparently used to belong to someone named Alice.

That, my friends, is the mark of a good day.

That is all.

The newest, awesomest page on the interweb

My sister just emailed me this link. It's her youngest son's blog. He's one of the funniest kids, and is about 10 times as creative as I ever dreamed of being, and comes up with awesome stuff. I don't know how frequently he'll post stuff (hopefully more frequently than his mother does), but this page will be well worth keeping an eye on.

Max's blog.

It will now be a permanent fixture in my links on this page. -->

Good work, Max. You're easily the most creative kid I've ever even heard of.

National Corndog Day '08

*Edit* Now this includes a picture.

I just wanted to toss a post up here really quick to brag about my performance at this year's National Corndog Day.

My consumption tally for National Corndog Day 2008:
Corn Dogs: 9*
Tots: 60
Root Beers: 6

I didn't even really come into this having made myself super hungry either.

Two days later, I am still feeling the after shocks. Totally worth it.

*I only got 9 because we ran out of dogs at our party. If we would have had more, I would have reached double digits without question. I'm revamping my strategy, and next year I fully intend on making a solid run at the triple double (10 dogs, 100 tots and 10 root beers).

The Lord of the Wings - The Fellowship of the Wing

In keeping with our theme of trying to do new and exciting things during our last year of law school, we recently had what will hopefully become an Albany Law School tradition, The Lord of the Wings wing eating tourney. Fortunately a local bar and grill worked with us and gave us a really good price on 500 wings. I don't even want to think about how long before our contest they were cooked.

Like I did with roller derby, I spent some time reading up on competitive eating. There is a lot more psychology to this than you would think, at first blush.



The Lord of the Wings was an endurance event. We started with a field of 12 competitors, each required to come up with a nick name. -I chose "The Avenging Angel." I even made a shirt just for the occasion.




The field of competitors

Round 1 was 10 minutes and we were given a platter with 20 wings. After that round, the lowest 2 competitors would be eliminated. Then to round 2, which was 7 minutes, after which the lowest 4 competitors would be eliminated. Round 3 was 7 minutes, lowest 3 eliminated. Round 4 is the round where champions are made. 20 minutes, all you can eat wing-off, or wing into submission. All wings had to be completely consumed (gristle and all) to be counted. So there are your ground rules.

I knew I wouldn't be able to hang in for that long. There were some pretty legit heavy weights in this contest. In the world of competitive eating, I would have to be a sprinter, and not an endurance competitor. The Lord of the Wings did not play to my game. So I came to the contest with two goals: 1. I didn't want to be on the bottom of the pile. 2. I wanted to make it into the second round.



I started out of the gates strong. I've always had really stretchy skin, which I think helped me pack more wing into my mouth at once. I'm pretty sure that I had about 4-5 wings worth in my mouth at any given point in time, sometimes more. 3 days later, as I write this, I still have canker sores in my mouth from it. I was stride for stride with the leaders for the first few minutes. But Viju, the guy with his elbows in my ribs (he does the same thing when he plays basketball, so I'm told) ultimately pulled ahead. He wound up finishing his 20 wings in about 7.5 minutes, which is impressive for an amateur.



The craziest thing about this whole thing for me is that I felt just fine all the way up to the last 2 minutes of round 1. I started hitting the wall right about then. But I managed to hang in there, and get 18 wings before the clock ran out. Yes, that's 18 wings in 10 minutes.

As a side note, I eat healthy, and have for years. Once in a while I'll cheat and eat something that isn't that healthy, but that's pretty rare. I can't remember the last time I cheated at this magnitude. Those of you in the west can't find good buffalo wings, (I know. I've looked, and there aren't any out there) so you might not know what these guys are like. Bottom line: 18 wings puts an unholy amount of grease in your system.



So it should come as no shock to anyone that shortly after round 1 ended, my stomach decided to voice its opinion on what I was doing. In The Lord of the Wings, this is known as "a reversal of fortune," and results in immediate disqualification, even if it is a real crowd pleaser.


Hold it together, man!

I was able to hold it together and not puke, but it was the closest I've ever come to puking without actually puking. This is probably very fortunate, because I think had I lost it, we easily could have had something akin to this on our hands:

Warning: this video has a few cusses. So kill the volume if you don't want to hear it. Or don't watch b/c it's actually kind of disgusting, even though it's really funny.


My 18 in 10 minutes was enough to get me into the second round. It was actually one of the better scores for the round. Unfortunately, I couldn't continue. I knew that the first time I had another wing hit my lips, it was going to be a reversal of fortune of epic proportions. I have thrown up about 3 times in the last 20 years, so I'm not exactly eager to risk doing it again. So I came up lame, and couldn't go on. So that was the end of the road for me. It was a whole lot of fun anyway.

Additionally, the experience gave me a new-found appreciation for competitive eaters. My favorite has to be Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas. Seriously, open that link, and scroll down to look at some of the records she has. It's insane that a 98 pound woman can put away that much food.

Here are some other pics from the evening. This one is easily my favorite.




There are a couple of more pictures of me floating around out there that I haven't gotten ahold of yet. When I do, I'll post those too b/c I'm sure there's a gem or two out there.

Best 12 bucks I ever spent

So when I got an email from a friend last week, asking if I wanted to go to the local women's roller derby teams skate on Saturday, the only thing for me to say was "A million times YES!!" I used to watch that on early morning cable channels when I was a kid, and it never failed to entertain. Going was a no-brainer

But first, I spent about an hour and a half reading up on the rules on Wikipedia to make sure I would understand what I would be watching.

The next thing we did was to make signs. I went with the traditional using the letters from ESPN to spell something (despite the fact that no ESPN people were within 500 miles of this). Unfortunately, there was nobody on the team with an N in her fake name, so I opted for "Nasty."

Of course I made sure to put the name of the hottest girl, Savage Scout, on my poster.


This was another one of my poster name girls, Merry Pain. With her skates on, she was easily a foot taller than me. It was a flash back to 7th grade, except funnier. She was nice enough to hunch down, so as not to make me look like a midget in this picture, and she even gave me a kiss on the cheek at one point, but my buddy with the camera didn't catch the action. Yeah. I got game. The other girl in the picture is my friend John, who, having consumed 1.5 beers at this point, was very, very drunk, which I'm sure you would never guess from this picture...


I think this lady may have been my bus driver when I was in Jr. high, come to think of it. Why she chose to be Willie Nelson's doppelgänger, I'll never know.


We were right on the edge of the track. The ref told us that if anyone wrecked in front of us, we could shove her back onto the track. Instead of pushing girls on roller skates, I tried to push my friend John into the crash zone as they came by, which was easy b/c he was pretty drunk. I never caused any collisions though, which is probably fortunate. I would have felt pretty bad if one of the derby girls damaged her skates on John's head or something.






Yes, that is a John 3:16 sign, and no, he is not a born again Christian. We were going for sports cliches, and that's what he came up with.


Anywho, it was a highly amusing night. Between watching the girls skate (and they skated their hearts out, and played an intense game that came down to the last second) and watching several of my very drunk friends at such a high-class event, that night was well worth the $12 it cost. Women's roller derby gets two thumbs up from me!

Quiz time!

OK, time to guess what you're looking at:



Here's a hint. You are looking at what happens when you combine winter camping, the onset of the flu, dehydration, and not eating enough with someone who has naturally low blood pressure and lives in an apartment with hard wood floors.

Give up? You're looking at sutures! In my face, specifically.



So the long and short of it is that I went winter camping right as I was getting what I think was some sort of flu. Bad way to start things off. I slept 18 hours Saturday night, and the better part of the day on Sunday. This meant that I didn't eat or drink much in that time. This eventually lead me to black out while I was in the bathroom late Sunday night. While blacked out, I decided to head back to my room, only I didn't realize that not getting enough oxygen to your brain hurts your ability to walk, and greatly helps your ability to fall down. So I hit the deck pretty hard, splitting open my eyebrow.



Never one to let something as trivial as low brain oxygen stop me from acting, I apparently got back up and headed back to the bathroom. At this point I was still largely blacked out, and also a bit punch drunk from the shot to the melon I had just taken, so my memory is a little hazy. I collapsed into the bathtub, which is where I came to.

Being that it was about 12:15 in the AM when I did this, the emergency room was the only place I could go to get stitched. Here's something I learned. ER people ask stupid questions. I walked into triage, expecting people to recognize instantly that, as a person with a ghostly-pale face, a decent sized laceration over my eye and blood smeared all over my face, I could easily be someone who had recently sustained a pretty hard shot to the head, and as such, would probably require medical attention.

Instead, the triage nurse looked at me and said:

"What can we help you with?"

What can we help you with? Are you serious? Is that what they teach you in emergency nursing school? I should have told her I wanted to order a pizza, or that I was there to see someone about an ingrown toenail, or that I just wanted to know if she thought that my pants made me look fat. What can we help you with, she says. Pfffft!

Apparently unsatisfied with only asking one stupid question, a few minutes later, she asks:

"Are you experiencing any head pain?"

What am I supposed to say to that? I don't want to be too much of a smart a-s-s to the people who are about to sew my face together, but how can they expect a serious answer to that question? So I said:

"Mostly it hurts where the hole is that doesn't belong there. -You know, the part that is bleeding? Right there hurts. Everywhere else is fine."

The other thing I learned is that things don't go speedily in the ER, which came as something of a surprise to me. You might think that on a tame night at the ER they could sew me up and send me on my way in about an hour or two. It was a tame night, so they should want to get me treated and out of their hair in case things got crazy on them, right? That's what I thought. I was there for over 5 hours.

I haven't received the bill. I'm bracing for that b/c I suspect I might be just a little outraged at what they charge for the whole ordeal. But I'll reserve my rage until I know it's warranted. I'll probably blog on that once I get it.

Anyway, all in all, I guess it's not too bad. A friend of mine had a similar black out a few months back, and he broke all of his front teeth when he fell face first into his bathroom floor, so I suppose my episode could have ended far worse. Plus it should be just big enough of a scar to be cool looking, but not so big that it will scare small children. Plus this is the first time I have ever had stitches as a result of an accident. So making it almost to 31 before having an accident that required stitches is a pretty good run of things, I think, so I can't complain.

So, yeah. That was my weekend. Hard one to top.

Clutch

I mentioned this before in another post. Turns out it was more like 38-40 seconds of fame.

Anyway, the video basically speaks for itself.



Hands down the coolest athletic moment of my life, and definitely on my list of top 5 coolest things that have ever happened to me.

Like a knight in shining armor

OK, so last night was a pretty much awesome night, which means that you, the readers (yes, both of you), get two posts in as many days.

Just when I thought that the main event of the night would be to watch the man who I believe could quite possibly be the worst president in the history of our country give his lame duck State of the Union address, I saw that the Versus network had come to my rescue.

Three words: The Karate Kid.



If you haven't watched this movie recently (and I'm betting that precious few of you have), you really ought to do yourself a favor and go rent this movie, and SOON. Here are some of my favorite lines:

-Fear does not exist in this dojo, does it?
-NO SENSEI!!
-Pain does not exist in this dojo, does it?
-NO SENSEI!!
-Defeat does not exist in this dojo, does it?
-NO SENSEI!!
-What do we study here?
-THE WAY OF THE FIST, SIR!
-And what is that way?
-STRIKE FIRST, STRIKE HARD, NO MERCY, SIR!!

Or how about when Mr. Miyagi encourages Daniel-san to go to the Halloween dance instead of hanging around with him all night:
-To make honey, young bee need young flower, not old prune.

Or how Daniel-san must first learn balance, then learn punch.



And who could forget the Pièce de résistance:



Seriously, this is arguably the greatest montage in a sports movie EVER.

Let's also not forget that this movie starred a young Elizabeth Shue:



Yowsah!! I've never wished so bad that I was a skinny kid from Newark with a Poncherello-wannabe haircut! And I am younger than her, which means that when this came out, I was still younger than her, which also means that it's not creepy that I still thinks she looks hot in this movie, which she made when she was probably 17.

I enjoyed it so much that I've talked to a buddy of mine, and we are going to make it a point to watch the rest of the series of movies, including the IVth installment, which starred another up and coming hottie:



Hillary Swank, your career has never soared as high as you did under the tutelage of Mr. Miyagi. It's a shame that your career hit its apex so early.

'Bout as worthless as teats on a boar hog

You'll forgive the title of this entry. But I heard a real redneck (woman) say it in high school, and I thought it was hilarious, so it's stuck with me. It's also how I'm feeling these days. Here's why:



This is my current schedule. You'll notice that it is not exactly rigorous. It's left me lots of time to do things such as read lots of random Wikipedia articles, and watch about every Mythbusters episode ever made. Twice.

On top of all that, I'm sick right now, and I think there's a legitimate threat that my face could explode at any moment. I just hope that if it happens, it happens in the privacy of my home b/c that would be embarrassing.

And the workout regimen listed has been heavily modified from what is listed, but I have some good reasons for that.

1. I don't want to get up early to workout because a) getting up early sucks; and b) leaving it for later in the day leaves me something to do in the evenings once I'm done with my homework, which usually happens very early in the evening.

2. I'm now officially serious about the triathlon thing. Progress update: I ran 6 miles the other day, stacking 10 minute miles. Not too bad for someone who just started running 2.5 weeks ago. I have no trouble swimming a mile, and and am getting pretty good about pushing myself harder, and not letting myself wuss out. I did the mile in about 35 minutes the other day, though that's not an actual time as I didn't really keep track. I need to start doing that. I haven't swam until exhaustion for a while now, but the last time I came close to it, I swam 1.5 miles. But for all that, I'm probably not going to be able to try to do an actual triathlon until summer '09. I still don't have a bike and I don't want to buy one just to transport it across the country.

Anyway, the fact that I haven't gotten around to changing my workout regimen just underscores the title of this entry. Lazy piece of garbage, this guy.

Um... That's about it. But a few of my friends have told me that I should always include pictures in my posts. So here are a few pictures that in no way relate to this post.

I thought this was hilarious. So I'm a nerd. So what?


It was really, really bright.



What is with these guys? If you believe something that strongly, then get your own carcass out there to support your cause. Paying people to go out and protest your cause is lame. Especially when your cause is that someone else under-bid you so you didn't get the job.



Um. That is all.

Vacation > School.

Just thought I'd post a video and a couple pics from the break.

Christmas was awesome. We got the coolest present for my dad in the history of dad Christmas presents.





Here's a video. Willus and I spent the last couple of days at The Canyons skiing in the middle of a system of several storms that came through, dumping somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-50 inches before it was done. Loads of fun. It never ceases to amaze me how big that place is. Our last run of the day we were still able to find lots of untouched powder.



Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. Tomorrow I hop a plane back to NY to start me last semester of law school. Last semester of school EVER. I'm looking forward to it more than a little.

That is all (for now).

Update on how lame I am.

I guess I'm jumping the gun a bit. I haven't finished my 5th semester just yet. My last final is tomorrow morning. I should be studying trust and estate law right now, but I'm pretty sure I'm as ready for this test tomorrow morning as I'm going to get, so now I'm just screwing around.

But by the time most of you read this, I'll be done with the semester, which puts me 5/6 of the way through, leaving one tiny little semester standing between regular Dallas and Dallas, J.D. That thought makes me feel giggly inside, I'm not going to lie.

In other news, I'm well on my way toward my lame-o goal of breaking the century mark on how many free highlighters I can pilfer. This semester was a good one for me. I had one day where I nabbed 13. I'm going to see if I can get 20 in a day next semester. I think the current count is about 65.



Sadly, that's about all I have to update you on. Oh wait, that's not true. I've decided that next summer I'm going to start training for a triathlon. I probably won't be able to do the actual triathlon until summer '09 b/c summer '08 will be occupied by studying for the bar. But I may be able to do one before that, who knows. If not an official one, then a private triathlon.

I've got the swimming leg down so that I could do that without dying. I have yet to start working on the running or biking part. Partially because I don't have a bike. Or running shoes. And I haven't biked in years. Or run in years. So I guess you could say I have my work cut out for me. But I've decided I won't let such trivial things get in the way.

Anywho, I'll be on a plane to Utah on Saturday. I'll be seeing a lot of you soon.

That is all.

30 seconds of fame

So any of you who went to the BYU v. Hartford basketball game last night were part of one of the most harrowing athletic moments of my life. I got picked to be the guy to go out on the court at half time, drive the length of the court, shoot a lay up, come to the other end, shoot another lay up, then drive to the other side of the court to shoot a 3 pointer. I had 30 seconds to do it in.

Short version: I suck at basketball. I was worried I would dribble the ball off my foot, and spend 30 seconds chasing the ball all over the court, or throw up an airball, and have the crowd boo me, or something. I missed my first lay up (I wasn't joking when I said I suck at basketball), and made the next two. My first 3 point shot hit the side of the rim, but I got the rebound just as the announcer called out 10 seconds left. Knowing that I only had time for one more shot, I took my time, got in position, squared up and took the shot right as time expired. I nailed the shot. 13,000 or so people cheering loud for something I just did. In a word, it was

AWESOME.

I'm working on getting video of the occasion from BYU. I don't know if they'll release it or not, but if I get it, I'll put it up here. I don't have moments like that very often, so I have to maximize my enjoyment of them while I can.

A singular experience.

I just had an unbelievable experience, and I felt compelled to shout it from the rooftops. Unfortunately, the closest thing I have to a rooftop these days is my blog, so this will have to do.

I just got off of a phone call with a customer service agent with a really big company where I ACTUALLY RECEIVED QUALITY CUSTOMER SERVICE. I know, I know. You're probably skeptical, as I would be, but it REALLY happened. Read on, my friend. Read on.

I had to call an airline to get the details of my holiday flight home (because I'm a genius and deleted the confirmation email with these details). Here's how it went down:

My first surprise was that it took about 8 seconds to get through to an operator. I didn't even have to dial 1 for English, and then 3 for customer flight information, and then 5 for departure and arrival information, and then 2 for departure airports on the east side of the Mississippi, and then 5 for departures after 12:00 pm, and then 3 if I am a male passenger, and then 1 if I am not overweight, only to find myself in a 10 minute long queue waiting for an operator to pick up the phone and ask me how she can help me. Wait, after entering all that information, you still don't know why I'm calling? Gee, it's almost like pushing all those buttons is a colossally assinine waste of time, or something...

-As a side note, anyone who hates this process as much as I do might be interested in this web site. It's a compilation of the magical codes to circumvent these maddening systems and get to a human as quickly as possible. It's a brilliant idea, and I wish I had thought of it. But I digress...

So not only did I get to talk to an actual human being in a few short seconds, she spoke ENGLISH. I'm not one of those speak-English-or-go-home-type bigots. I can't stand it when people get like that. I want to make that clear. That said, it's frequently very frustrating talking to customer service operators b/c it does me little good to try to explain my customer service needs to an outsourced phone operator with a limited grasp on the English language, particularly since I don't speak Hindi.

Not only did she speak English, she was actually PLEASANT to talk to. No condescension from a pompous jerk on the other side of the line that can't believe how stupid I am to have the customer services needs I have (never mind the fact that it's my stupidity that gives her a job in the first place). She was genuinely nice.

Not content to stop there, she asked me what I needed, and my name, departure date and approximate departure time, and about 10 seconds later, SHE TOLD ME WHAT I NEEDED TO KNOW, and no superfluous junk info, and re-sent the confirmation email to me just for good measure. She didn't even try to up-sell me on something, or hit me with a stupid pitch for some service designed for the same tools that order crap from The Sharper Image, or Skymall. I had to pinch myself to see if I was really awake.

I hung up the phone, still a little in shock over what had just happened. I looked at the timer on my phone and noticed that the total time elapsed for the phone call was 3:21. 3 minutes and 21 seconds? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I dialed the number, got my call answered by an actual person, and got my question answered by a pleasant human being that spoke cognizable English in 3 minutes and 21 seconds? That's unbelievable! You grow to expect a half an hour or more for this type of thing these days. I think speaker phone was designed for exactly this reason, come to think of it. Seriously, I probably wouldn't have believed it if it didn't happen to me.

So what company is this you might ask? What company is it that hasn't gotten the memo that customer service is something that big companies just don't bother with any more? Normally I wouldn't give out the free advertising to all 4 or 5 people who read my blog, particularly not to a big company, but this experience definitely warrants the big ups. Southwest Airlines, you just earned my return business. Impressive. Very impressive.

Salmon River: Take 3!

So I just got back from the Salmon River. I've been worked up their once, went back a few months later and did OK. Today was Round 3.

Steelhead are a cool fish. But they're really really hard to catch. I fished hard for about 5 hours, which is tough enough to do b/c it's hard to pay attention when the fishing is tough, and if you're not paying attention at the exact right moment, game over. You lose. Anyway, I finally stuck one, and I got a decent look at it. If it wasn't over 10 pounds, then I've never caught a fish before. It was a super bright chrome steelhead. Generally, the brighter chrome they are, the harder they fight, so this guy had plenty of steam. I only had him on the line for about 10 seconds b/c he ran downstream about 40 yards, and broke me off. It sucks that I didn't land it, and that I didn't get a picture to prove how big it was. But suffice it to say that I don't remember the last time a fish left me weak in the knees. I had to sit down for a minute to collect myself b/c wading with jelly legs is a bad idea.

So then I fished the rest of the day and didn't catch crap.

But, I did manage to land something earlier in the day, so I wasn't totally blanked.


I go fishing for steelhead, and I catch a little smallmouth. Don't ask me how that makes sense.

Anyway, here's a couple of other shots that turned out OK.

We spotted this guy from the bank, and fished to him for about 10 minutes with no response. Then my buddy walked up to him, which was weird b/c they usually don't let you get that close. Before the fish swam away, my buddy got got close enough to see that the fish was missing its right eye. Every cast he put past the fish went on its right side. I was having a hard time figuring out how the fish didn't even respond a bit to his fly. It was like the fish couldn't see it or something...

Anyway, it was a fun day, but the steelhead game is a little different than western trout fishing, where you can have 20+ fish days. That ain't going to happen with steelies. At least not for me.

Gallery o' Terror

So I was looking at my brother-in-law's blog, and I realized that Halloween is a pretty cool time of year. I'm not anything close to as creative as Guy is, so this picture is the best I could come up with to participate in the Gallery o' Terror. The sad part is that Guy is the one that did this picture. So my best shot at getting in on the Gallery o' Terror is by posting something that Guy did. That's lame, I know.

The story behind the picture is actually kind of funny. A few years ago my mom paid for family pictures. The package my mom bought included pics of the whole famn damily, and pictures of all the couples in the family. Being that I am not a couple, but am actually a single, I got single pictures taken. The photographer was a total dork, and I'm pretty sure he always saw himself photographing in Hollywood, or some stage much more grand than Orem. Worse, I'm pretty sure he thought of me as his best shot to break into the big time by nailing a killer head shot for me. You'd have thought that to listen to the guy work his magic, anyway. I've never felt like a bigger tool in my life, and I've probably never looked like a bigger tool in my life (at least I hope I've never looked like a bigger tool in my life). The whole thing was pretty laughable.

Anyway, there's one particular photo where I somehow held a conflicted/pensive/sophisticated look long enough for him to take the picture. Most of the time I was laughing too hard b/c I kept on thinking of rude names to describe the photographer, and because Willus snuck into the room and was dancing around behind the guy and making faces. A bit juvenile, that one. So most of the shots are of me with a big, stupid turd-eating grin on my face. However, he did manage to get one shot of me being lame and trying to look cool. My mom loves it. I hate it. Guy got ahold of it, and with a little Photoshop magic, this picture is the result.

If I can ever get Willus to email the real version to me, maybe I'll toss it up here. It's pretty bad though, so I might not.