Category: Travel and Acronyms

From the pokéblog

July 14, 2004 /

We watched out the balcony window last night as a huge storm thrashed by, and today there are a lot of downed trees along my bus route. This is remarkable mostly because it’s not a particularly arboreal area–I just got on the bus, and I live downtown.

Update 0810 hrs: Actually, our bus has had to take a detour because of one road-blocking tree, after the world’s most laborious three-point turn. The tree didn’t look all that big, really. My GTA experience suggests that we totally could have taken it.

Update 0825 hrs: Almost had to detour twice more, for trees blocking like a lane and a half. Both of them had pulled down power lines; we just managed to squeeze around. The way it looks up here in the Highlands makes me grateful that our building didn’t blow down last night. There really is a lot of damage.

June 14, 2004 /

After two years, Sean is about to come back to the US from his time teaching music as a Jesuit volunteer in a Nicaraguan village. I’ve been reading his journal continuously for about three years now; he’s a funny and intimate writer, and I’ve tried to incorporate some of his observational style into my own voice.

I’ve known one (other) Jesuit volunteer teacher in real life, and I feel like I know Sean, in a way. Neither has exactly been entirely gung-ho about the program, but if my own personal sample is any indication, it attracts some pretty incredible people. I wonder if I could do what they did, and if I would. Or will.

May 19, 2004 /

I’ve done a lot of work today, but I’ve also spent hours geeking out over my camera that I don’t actually own yet and can’t afford. This is silly, because I have no serious photography equipment or experience, and even if I did I’ll already be putting myself into debt this fall to buy or build a new computer.

Regardless, I’ve been looking at it for a year with absolutely undiminished hunger (so long the price dropped). There are two things I can think of on which I’ve geeked out this long and this hard:

  • The trip to Comic Con this summer.
  • A good camera with which to take pictures on that trip.

The former is rapidly becoming a reality, as I paid for the train tickets a couple of days ago. I hope the latter can too.

Once, the thought of a new computer would have filled me with butterflies. Now it’s more a hassle than anything–I can’t afford one, but I have to get one, because my current box is no longer capable of doing the work I need to do in grad school. The Digital Rebel has taken its place, I think. It’s a specialized technical hobby; it’s highly modular; the value of my investment drops very quickly; and it’s going to take me years to get any good at it, by which time I’ll cringe at the things I inflict on you when I’m starting out. Man, I can’t wait.

Zing!

May 11, 2004 /

“Walking through the turn-of-the-century expositions devoted to ‘small press’ comics, visitors were greeted on one side of the aisle by roughly drawn ‘zines’ about disaffected white youths with bad jobs, failed relationships and genital warts; and on the other by strange, multidirectional experiments and oddly-shaped cardboard constructions with day-glow silkscreen covers.”

I don’t feel about Scott McCloud the way most comics people feel about Scott McCloud, but his pre-emptive introduction to the Flight anthology is clever and even biting, as quoted above. Self-indulgent, too, but what do you expect? It’s comics people.

“Zines About Disaffected White Youths with Bad Jobs, Failed Relationships and Genital Warts” is really too long to be a band name, but it might work for a horse.

March 23, 2004 /

This is the second Spring Break Follow-Up Post, and it’s mostly to say that Spring Break Was GREAT! I wasn’t as good about keeping a personal travelogue this time as I was when I went to California, but fortunately I have a roommate and trip companion with a photographic memory. I’ll try to finish that up and patch the holes today or tomorrow.

Notable events that are true:

  • We did get caught in a blizzard, ditch the car, and walk five blocks with only a vague idea of where we were and an increasing chance of hypothermia. We lived, though. As did the car.
  • We did have every intention of seeing Kid Koala and other assorted DJs at a Real Club in New York City.
  • We did learn to appreciate the beauty of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
  • We (this time including Bee and Graham, Maria’s college crew, who are awesome) did stay up until four in the morning for no apparent reason, eventually acting pretty drunk without actually being drunk. This is what grownups do for fun, kids.
  • A cool thing about that night, though, was that Graham and I learned to communicate with gamma rays!
  • We did share our floor of the Days Inn (in Bodily Region) with the entire high-school Asian population of Pennsylvania.

Notable events that are not true:

  • I completely remembered to tell everyone at my job that I was leaving for a week on March 14th–long before, say, March 12th.
  • We did way more in Providence than mostly hanging out on the third floor of the mall.
  • I in no way embarrassed myself on the Dance Dance Revolution machine in the Brown Post Office. (You can take that as “I did play, but did look ridiculous,” or as “I did not play at all,” really. Your pick.)
  • We did actually see Kid Koala, because the show was not sold out.
  • We were extremely nice and careful with your car, Mr. and Mrs. Barnes, and certainly never killed its battery with a cell-phone charger and had to get a recharge from the hotel man. Thank you very kindly for its use. Look! Over there! Behind you! You’re not looking!
  • I came home and, on our self-appointed Monday of Rest, did something more useful than get mad at Prince of Persia all day.

It was a great trip. I can’t say the past month and a half was the most traveling I’ve ever done, but man, it was a lot of traveling. Who knows, I might even grow a beard now!

March 23, 2004 /

Oh, right, we’re home and not dead. We got in Sunday night after driving (or, in my case, passengering) like long-distance maniacs all the way from Bodily Region, Pennsylvania. I learned to hate Pennsylvania on this trip, by the way. It’s like Wyoming, but colder and less populous.

March 18, 2004 /

In New York! Going to see real live Disc Jockeys spin tonight! Maybe! And have Thai food, and see the Wheelies rehearse!

Maybe I die!

March 17, 2004 /

It snowed a bunch, so Maria and I punched a yeti in the face and then we went to the North Pole. Also there was breakfast.

Very, very cold. Very slippery. Good food though.

March 15, 2004 /

In Providence. Maria is shocked at me for being unhip enough to mention that I don’t like the Strokes in a record store, but dang, man, they’re all 2002.

It was a long drive but not so long as California. I have now visited both ends of the country inside 30 days, so basically I’m the king and I get a special hat.