Quick update:
Drywall party yesterday - 33 sheets went up, mostly ceiling stuff
Finally found a painter willing to do the outside of the house

Back to work.

For the lack of anything better to do, I figured I may as well spend a bit of time writing since believe it or not, there is little to entertain me at 40,000 feet. On the other hand, the Jack and Coke I just had tasted fantastic. Yeah, I’m one of those tools that gets drinks on the airplane. Early on, it was hard to justify the cost, I mean $5 for a drink but having spent a week buying $7 drinks, this seems like a hell of a deal; plus the view is (nearly) out of this world. Anyway, as I rock up the west coast I can’t help but reflect on what an amazing and dynamic trip this has been thus far. It is almost to the point where I get to wake up in a new city I wanted to visit every morning. This lady sitting next to me is so reading everything I’m writing. Hi Lady! You and your boy toy are the reason I’m drinking! Anyway, so I’ll do the rundown thus far:

San Francisco: We stayed up in China town with Emily’s friend Dre. And yes, it was defiantly China town no doubt about it. Interestingly enough, China town is adjacent to the Italian part of town and let me tell you when Italy won the World Cup last Sunday, that place erupted into some bizarre mix of beer, wine and Italian verbiage the likes of which probably haven’t been seen since the Holy Roman Empire. I can’t even fathom a guess as to what it was like in Italy.

Sacramento: Strange town, it has a very nice and well manicured downtown area, but besides that, the town is a tremendous hole in the wall. Don’t go there.

Monterey: Interesting place, sort of like a small city on the bay. Really seems to be more of a weekend town then anything else since it had tremendous infrastructure but not a a lot of people during the week. One of the main attractions there is scuba diving so of course we indulged. The first dive we did sucked due to the very poor visibility but there was still lots of neat stuff to look at. Unfortunately, I wasn’t properly weighted so every now and then I would end up rocketing to the surface from 20-30 feet. I imagine that when I broke the water I probably looked like one of those whales you always see poping out of the water and landing on their back. The second dive was much better though. We dove out in the kelp forests where are notorious for their vibrant life and I can attest to that – there was tons of stuff living down there. It was basically like swimming through a big salad bowl. I would highly recommend it.

Santa Cruz: Nice beaches with some non-trivial waves rolling in. Sort of made me want to grab a board in hit the waves despite the fact I don’t know how to surf. I hoofed it around town as well as strolled along the beach for a few hours. It was absolutely beautiful day.

Well, it is time to land. See you on the ground.

No long winded update today, for today marks my second day of actual vacation. Rather then expounding upon the past (as in the conference et al) rather I’ll lay out my plans for the next few days: NOT A DAMN PLAN ON THE DOCKET. Neat huh? I’m staying with my friend Michael down in Santa Cruz today and I pretty much plan on wasting away on the beach drinking Margaritas whilst musing on such topics such as why is oil black, what does ‘wet’ really mean and is the privatization of foreign trade zones destroying the otherwise robust world economy.

The next stop on my west coast tour is Seattle. I fly out this evening around 8pm and apparently there is some big party going on in that town, so should show up just in town. It is interesting though how this trip has sort of evolved into basically an interview process; not for me, but rather for the cities I’m visiting. I’m trying to figure out which city I eventually want to call home which in turn will sort of dictate the job options as well (holy shit, did I just say the J word?). California is doing so-so in the race but I’m really looking forward to “interviewing” all the microbrews as well as the music scene in Seattle since the music scene totally blows in Cali. But all that nonsense is for this evening – today = beach bum.

In case you haven’t noticed, there suddenly seems to be a bunch of free time on my hands. Well, that’s because in about 12 hours I’m going to be rocketing towards the west coast to attend the Joint Propulsions Conference leaving all my troubles (but hopefully not my phone) behind. I’d like to say it has a crazy productive last 2 months, but in reality, I destroyed a lot of things and overall I would have to call it frustrating. 32 tests in about 48 days really sort of sucked the life and the desire out of me. Not that it won’t come back, of course it will, but wow I just don’t want to see that thruster for another two weeks. Lucky me, I don’t have to.

I’m leaving for San Francisco tomorrow around noon and well slowly plod my way to Sacramento on Sunday. After that, the game face comes back on for a few days of rocket scientist intellectual masturbation culminating in a Wednesday evening mad dash to Monterey to do some scuba diving on Thursday.

Next Friday will bring another plane ride up to Seattle to kick it with Frasier and the sis as well as one Rob character (said sis’s SO). I’ll be there until about Thursday when I return to the Keweenaw only to be scooped up at CMX by my parents who will have just arrived in town. Got that? Good.

My internet presence will be . . . well, I don’t know. You’ll just have to check back. I have lots of good stories to tell ranging from the roof top concert to slicing up my feet by riding my bike off of some docks. Say tuned America.

Q: “What should we do tonight?”
A: “I know! Let’s play Bury Jerry!”

Aren’t you glad you don’t work with me?

(Click pic for the video ~9 MB)
This is me, in tip top shape tossing a fish at the 25th Annual Gay Parade in Gay MI (like 30 miles from Houghton on the lake). What the video doesn’t capture is that the fish smoked some old lady in the back who was engaged in the futile effort of escape. Yeah, she went down. Hah!