So, it's been a while since the last post. It's been a pretty busy last couple months between working all day, trying to plan a move to Grand Junction, and planning a trip to Europe. Over the next few weeks I'll hope to include the exciting bits, specifically what transpired in the old country. In the short term here's the scoop and the notes I took while over there. I flew out on the 30th of December to Brussels, Belgium where the Pirate picked me up. After a fun New Years we spent a day in Belgium before driving to Venice, Italy via Lucern, Switzerland. A few days in Venice was all we took and then we went to Rome via Assisi. We ended up in Rome a little longer than expected because someone or something decided they preferred the car with one broken window rather than a complete set of intact windows. Following the repairs we drove down to Sorrento, Italy and the next day we drove to Pompei, which is pretty friggin awesome. The next day we drove to Florence via Mt. Vesuvius and stayed at this really sweet 17th century palace in downtown Florence. After Florence we drove to Nice, France via Pisa, Italy. The plan was originally to visit Cinque Terra, but after our car troubles we were a little too uncomfortable with leaving the car unattended. We left Nice for Avignon, France and traveled through Monte-Carlo, Monaco and Marseille, France. The next day we drove to Paris via Millau. On the last day we made it back to Brussels and flew home on the 19th. Like I said I'll expand later and some of the 2000 odd photos, but for now just the notes:

Stucco is for lazy artists
European bathrooms; belgium, venice minimum surfaces to clean; they're thinking ahead.
Venice and the little streets
Hot chocolate
Not enough handouts
Hotel nerva, rome.
Hotel baserlator, lucern
Hotel orion, venice
Camera died venice, too bad
Assisi looked fantastic
Roman police all day, was it just the rain?
Bricks; bricks are friggin tough. The whole forum was brick faced with marble. Makes me really want to learn about masonry. It was crazy the way they just kept piling rocks and cement on top of each other.
No alarm clocks.
The coffee! Pages about the coffee!
When they say take everything out of the car, they mean everything!
Hotel antiche mura; standard american hotel room, amazing breakfast, great location and grounds
Pompei was the highlight so far,batteries died just at the start of rick's tour.
In sorrento get a scooter.
When the gas light turns on fill up; 1km I pushed, we coasted 10km, I maxed out at 20kph!
italy is very poor.
Naples truly looked horrible, pompei was trying (had the first public recycling bins).
Speed limits, staying in your lane, and stop signs. Yeah right
No truck passing signs and automated radar guns would be cool in the US
The hills; italy has them eveywhere! It's no wonder that they make good cyclists, the hills and the traffic.
Palazzo nicolini; amazing room, worst coffee, lame breakfast for the price, very nice staff, safe parking..
Florence; lots of bikes, scooters, natural gas buses.
Wicked sore from pushing the car.
Paintings for suckers; if a child can do it, it ain't nothing special.
Accademia; david and a bunch of religion.
am I in florence or the US?
Who pays for the restoration of historic churches? Does the church or city pay, do they share ?
Cardinal virtues; fortitude, prudence, justice, temperance; theological virtues; faith, hope, charity.
Pisa was awesome, could definitely live there.
Cinque terra looked gorgeous, I can only imagine what the coastal villages were like.
Monaco is a country! Who knew!
You can't drive to cinque terra,so go to Nice instead! The weather would've made it a letdown anyway. The drive through the area was beautiful though.
Good bread in france, bad coffee.
I don't like crème caramel
Didn't make dijon, went to monte carlo in monaco, had coffee (not bad) in marseille at Bar de la
Marine, which was made famous in the movie Marius (french)
spent the night in avignon cuz marseille was shady. Then onto paris, which meant no bruges.
Will need to go back to marseille.
Southern france is as gorgeous as they say.
going someplace without a plan is not good; nice, marseille, carcasonne, could be great if we had a plan
Oh, have a fucking map of where you're going. Or bring the internet next time!
Marseille was sad; it had great buildings that were really rundown. We had the highest temp though of 14.5 C. Oh and finally the smell of the sea.
Millau viaduct was awesome!
Highways were empty in france, was it because of the outrageous tolls, gas and car costs? In italy all the roads were always packed! Are the french more poor? It would be interesting to know the answer to this one.
I will never own a car in europe. Need to look into the tradeoffs between a scooter and a motorcycle.
Send laeti the pics
2 days in sorrento without seeing a mcdonald's
If you drive a gray fiat bravo you're a dork.
Citroen makes the ugliest cars i've ever seen, opal next. The audi s5 is a sexy beast of a car. who makes alfa romeo?

Secession

I got this the other day and it was too funny. Funny because I live in a blue state, come from numerous red states, and am very appreciative of why living in a blue one feels so good!

Dear Red States:

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes California , Hawaii , Oregon , Washington , Minnesota , Wisconsin , Michigan , Illinois and all the Northeast. It may even include Florida and Ohio , they are seriously considering it. We've given them until Nov. 4th to decide. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country. Since we're dropping the middle states we're calling it United America, or simply the U.A.
To sum up briefly: You get Texas , Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. You can take Ted Nugent. We're keeping Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. You get WorldCom. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get Ole' Miss. We get Harvard and 85 percent of America 's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama . We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms, and the highest concentration of pregnant unwed teenagers. Please be aware that the U.A. will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs eventually turn up, really we do, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush/McCain's Quagmire. We'd rather spend it on taking care of sick people, and educating our children.
With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines, 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT. With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite , thank you.
Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy Redies believe you are people with higher morals then we Blues..

Peace out,Blue States

The Big Apple

On hearing of my grandmother's passing, I immediately bought some tickets back east for the Pirate and I and instead of the Grand Canyon we decided to spend a few days in The Big Apple. We spent the first few days in Connecticut and the family got introduced to the Pirate. From talking to the Pirate and my folks it seemed everyone was equally enchanted with the other. Being back east is always great! The people just seem less subdued by life and are definitely more quick to know. If they had big mountains I'd be living there right now! Course knowing about the ice in New Hampshire and Vermont is always intriguing.

Well after a few days we went down to New York and we stayed right downtown, 2 blocks from Times Square. We checked out all the big sites: Central Park, the Met, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Times Square, Wall St., the World Trade Center and of course Ground Zero. Ground Zero was infamously impressive. It was really tough when walking through the visitor center to keep the tears back. What a horrific tragedy. I remember exactly when I heard about it. Fortunately, it's an amusing story, that I feel horribly guilty about now. I had just started my first second semester of graduate school and my biophysics class had just started with Dr. Climatologist. He opened the class by saying, "I understand that having class today may be hard for some of you and I won't mind if any of you feel the need to leave." I knew the Dr. fairly well so I said something dumb like, "What's the deal man, eat something bad last night and you don't want to share your gas?" Well, maybe not that dumb, but something close maybe. He asked, "Haven't you heard?" "Heard what," I replied. Then I got the scoop. I think we had class, but I'm doubting anyone rememberd anything that was said. I honestly don't remember anything after being told except spending the rest of the day in the Student Union building watching the news. I really thought I'd moved on, but going to ground zero was really tough. Fortunately, I had the Pirate, and she makes everything in my world easier to deal with. We finished up our trip to New York and came back to Denver for a real busy last few days. It would've been awesome had she stayed longer, but I'm going to Belgium for New Years to hang out for three weeks. The Pirate says Belgium is boring. My reply is that, how can some place famous for so much beer be boring?. She shrugs. Instead we're going to spend most of the three weeks in Italy. The plan is Venice, Rome, Pompei, Florence, Piza, and Cinque Terra. We'll also spend a few days in Paris, one in Chamonix, France and one in Switzerland: Zurich being the most likely city. Lots of driving, but at least we'll have a lot of freedom to do whatever. I like a pretty loose schedule when I travel, so we'll hit as many as we can. Well, this has certainly helped me escape my election anxiety. Now I'll have to go home and find another way to divert myself for the next few hours. Peace.

Loved one lost

Sadly, on the morning of our last day in South Dakota I got an email from the Hobstar letting me know, through a real round about way, that I needed to call my folks. My mother had told me my grandmother was in the hospital before I went on the trip, so I kind of knew it was something related to her. What I didn't expect though was that she'd passed away. She was great! She'd always been my favorite. She always seemed fair and ready to laugh. I will always remember her laugh. I didn't get to see her as often as I would've liked, or any of the Morris family for that matter, but I'm happy to have shared the time with her I did. Here's he obituary:

Olive A. Morris of Waterford, died on Sept. 27, 2008, at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital.
She was born on April 20, 1927, in Mass., and was the daughter of John and Elizabeth Burns Broderick.
She was the widow of William G. Morris whom she married on Nov. 16, 1947, in Rockland, Mass.
Mrs. Morris resided in Pembroke, Mass., until she moved to Waterford in 1968. She lived at Twin Haven in Waterford since 1985. She was a member of the Garden Bowling League and of the Senior Citizens Pinochle Club.
She is survived by her children, Jean Linard and her husband, Ed of Rupert, Idaho, David Morris and his wife, Janet of Niantic and Daniel Morris of Waterford; her grandchildren, Ben and Josh Linard and Jacob and Patrick Morris.
In addition to her husband, she was also predeceased by her son, William K. Morris.

I love you Grammy.

Back in the saddle

Ok, so it's been a long time since I've updated this thing. Good reasons, I promise! I'm too excited to work today so thought I'd catch up on the old blogging. Since September I've vacationed in 6 states and have planned a trip to visit 5 countries. At the end of September, the Pirate came to visit for 3 weeks. We immediately drove up to the Black Hills in South Dakota. What a wonderful place! A true hidden gem in all that nothingness in the middle of the country. Rushmore was really impressive. I didn't know anything about the logic behind the sculpture before I went. Basically, the four presidents (Washington, FD Roosevelt, Jefferson, and Lincoln, incidentally) were chose because they embody the best of what Americans have, are, and can do. I like the feeling of those guys watching over me and of trying to live up to what they were to our country. They're with me all the time now. We also went to Devils Tower, which I've wanted to see since I first watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind! It was totally cool, and I can't wait to go back and climb to the top. We went to the Badlands which was awesome too! Totally crazy geomorphology going on. I'll get some pics up, but they're pretty impressive. We also went to Custer State Park and drove through the Needles, which also beckoned me to do a little climbing. The coolest part of the South Dakota trip could've been the last morning and going to watch the buffalo round-up. Once a year, the state park herds all the buffalo in the park to give them immunizations. Luckily, that once a year was the day we were there. If you mentally blocked out all the trucks you could almost get a sense of what it would've been like back in the day. Truly a great experience. So great that the people behind us had travelled all the way from Australia just for the Round-Up. Pretty cool!

False advertisement

This post it totally about how the GOP is skewing facts to make it seem like Gov. Palin is anything but your standard self-righteous, manipulative conservative willing to crush anybody who thinks differently than her. That's all we need in Washington is more boneheaded stubborness. It continually amazes me how gullible and naive some Americans can be. What kind of idiot would vote for someone simply because of their sex without doing any research to figure out who they really were. Fortunately there are people out there who can voice thier opinions better than me so first I would ask that you Google Anne Kilkenny and hear from someone who's dealt with Palin first hand. The rest of this post is taken from a letter written by
Gloria Steinem: an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center.

"Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying,"Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that
he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine.. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their
children.

This could be huge."

Snot is dead!

Yep, it was a sad day when I showed up in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago. I'd gone up for work, but came in a weekend early to hang out with Kamath and his fam. We were trying to figure out what to do and the evening news mentioned that Joe Kudla, aka. Thomas Snot had died. There's an obit. at their webpage. Too bad for us.
On Saturday we went to the Walker Art Center to check out some sculptures, play a little mini-golf and generally not appreciate any of the art that was on display. The sculptures and low impact, low carbon buildings were cool. We watched put together by Sundance films talking about 3 ways to limit what goes in a landfill: 1) At the landfill, sort out all the stuff that has any value and make it available to the public: appliances, clothes, wood, compost, etc. 2) use all the misprinted food wrappers, and old billboards and posters and make clothes and accessories out of them: purses, bags, hats, etc. 3) recycle old computers: refurbish ones that can be refurbished or pick out the parts with valuable metals in them so they can be recycled. Personally, 1 and 3 are right on, but accessories! It's a good idea, but if you're making a movie and you want to pick 3 ways to improve the world through recycling I'm not sure if buying a handbag should make the list.

That night we decided to head downtown and Abi joined us. We hit up a real good pizzeria then went to Gameworks to play video games and have a few drinks. The four of us played a racing game and while Kamath and I fought for first S-works passed us to win. Kamath and I played your standard shooter; at the end 153 kills for the Lamestar, 5 for Kamath! Guess scoring expert on the pistol range back in the day payed off. After this we decided to go check out Tropic Thunder. Long story short, I don't think I'll see a Ben Stiller movie ever again. It had it's moments, but the comedy is just too blatant for me. It's like listening to a kid tell the same knock-knock joke over and over. The Sailor has assured me it was good and that I was just not in the right mood. Really though, I'm tired of having to be in the right mood for a movie. Ah well, $10 down the drain.
The next morning Kamath convinced me to go to Bootcamp with him at his local gym. It's one of these circuit courses that's supposed to keep you're heart rate up. I usually don't eat breakfast before something like this, but Kamath said I'd need it. As I'm unable to turn down food, I gorged my self. Not a good idea before any workout, let alone a Bootcamp thing. I had to walk away twice during the class so as not to throw up. I was pretty happy I was coming from altitude; I think it was the only thing keeping me from passing out!
During the work week Jacko and I were hugely successful. We were out measuring the depth to water in different residential and municipal wells around the Minneapolis metropolitan area. General results were that water could be found anywhere from 15 to 150 ft and Czech food is extremely good and filling! One day I had a bratwurst hamburger on a pretzel bun, on another goulash and dumplings, crazy soups, great beer, it was too fun trying to find a place that wasn't amazing! I gained 10 lbs! We worked through Saturday. Sunday Kamath and S-works went to the Renaissance fair for a few hours before I took off to Sioux Falls, SD. I picked up a Puke & Snot dvd and caught the new show. A new guy was filling in for the season. I'm not sure what'll happen next year.
I'd been dreading Sioux Falls since leaving Denver. Nothing like your "friends" telling your boss that you suck behind your back and then having to spend a week with them pretending like you don't know. Made for a great birthday you can guess. I made it a point to try and talk to the Pirate, which conveniently proved a very viable excuse for not going out with everybody. I was comfortable enough by mid-week to at least have dinner with them. On the last night I went out to the pub with everybody and felt like I'd really missed out. Who'd a thought a great pub with great microbrew and great imports could be found in Sioux Falls! Monks House of Ale Repute: pretty friggin awesome! Google it.
That's the scoop. I'll be back for a while and should be more regular again. Oh, Bobbo and I just saw Babylon A.D. and it was really good all up till the last 20 min. It still felt worth the money though.