Electric Ladyland

I've planted my own little flag here, and here, and here

I just ran into this site where you can plug in your visited countries to date.  I'm a tad ahead of myself including Ghana since I still have a few days before officially being able to say that I've been there but hey, it's close enough.  Looking at this map I realize I have a lot of places left to visit.  Gotta get on that!

create your own visited countries map or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Ironically, it's actually harder for me to put together my map of visited U.S. States.  I'm not really sure if this is accurate but it's a stab.  Seems I've been around the good old U S of A quite a bit so far in my young life.  Go me.

create your own visited states map or check out these Google Hacks.

Red Sox 7, Yankees 3. Bon appetit!

Dad's in town for a quick visit and I took him out to Keen's for a birthday dinner.  Outrageous!  One of the best meals either of us has ever had.  Right up there in my hall of fame.

So what's better than a great steak?  A great steak and a Red Sox win against the Yankees!  (We were following along on my cell phone.)

Eat it, Steinbrenner!

What up my Frenchman?

Tom DeLay was on the Colbert Report the other night and he busted out a little of the French solidarity with Colbert, which was kind of funny.  DeLay referred to himself as "another Frenchman who never surrendered," to which Colbert replied "Don't you mean the only Frenchman who never surrendered?"  Admittedly I am French and biased on that count but man is that getting old.  Surrender schmurrender.  I'm not sure where DeLay was going with that "Frenchman who never surrendered" bit -- I think he was mixing that up with his general pro-Southern rhetoric -- but he really set himself up for a joke about cheese-eating surrender monkeys.  And you don't want to do that with the quick-witted Colbert's mischievous eyes on you.

So I don't know... it's a little odd to see people bonding over their shared Frenchness on TV (shared Irishness, shared Italianness, shared Jewishness, sure -- but the French, well, they're really keeping it on the down-low I suppose) but I gotta say I'm not finding much of a reason to bond with The Hammer.  And even Colbert's not sure he'd want to get on board with a Colbert-DeLay 2008 ticket because there is the small matter of DeLay being... what's the word... indicted with the possibility of heading off to jail.  Hm.  Cheney's French too.  I'm not feeling well represented here...!

Undocking

So it's just beginning to set in that I'm going to Africa and not just sometime, but next week.  I am mentally prepared but not practically prepared.  I've got a lot of shopping and packing to do.  My last round of shots is tomorrow so my arm will be sore again, hopefully for the last time in a while. 

Every once in a while my job rears up and makes like it's going to swallow me whole.  It never actually does -- I have safeguards in place -- but it makes threats every so often.  My Outlook calendar is so crammed full there's no blank space.  This initially freaked me out but now I've detached from it somewhat and have been able to find the humor and ridiculousness in it all.

A lot's getting done.  That's good right?  Gotta be productive.  Get stuff done.  That's our mantra over here in the US of A.  A good person gets stuff done. 

Well, I think the paradigm's about to shift a bit and the prospect of encountering a different take on life sounds pretty good to me.  Lately I've been feeling like my job's had its hooks in me.  The best way to describe it is to say I'm really in it right now.   In deep.  It's job all day, then dinner and passing out.  Wake up, repeat.  And that's all right for a time.  I'm actually enjoying it in a certain way -- this is not negative over the short term but over the long term it would not be all right anymore. 

Tonight at calligraphy I enjoyed a good break from it all.  I mentally went offline and spent an evening writing beautiful characters with friends.  Turned out a nice gyousho (semi-cursive) piece.  After class a few of us went to dinner at Soba-Koh and when my classmate mentioned some of the things that were troubling him our teacher started advocating the Zen theme of detachment.  "Detachment," I thought.  "That sounds good right about now."  Since I'm in it and would rather not be so in it, yes, detachment seems a bit of all right.

I'm about to get really detached.  I like the idea.  I have no idea what to expect and somehow that makes me feel comfortable.  A new experience.  I wonder what philosophies and views on living I'll encounter in Ghana. 

You will not see this coming

So the imp in me has been plotting to mess with a buddy at work by putting the label maker, which he oversees (keeps locked in a desk -- a little OCD manifestation there), in Jell-O.  I'm planning on buying an exact copy of the label maker in question for this purpose.  Haven't yet selected the color of Jell-O to be used.  There are a lot of variables I have to work out.  The fact remains, though, that this has to be done.  And, crucially, it has to be done when my friend least expects it.

I don't know what it says about the state of the Internet today that all I had to do was Google "stapler in jello" to find jellostapler.com where they actually have an article, complete with photos, called "How to Put a Stapler in Jello" and, for unorthodox people like me who want to put other office supplies in Jell-O, a handy forum where you can discuss putting things in Jello.  I find this alternately disturbing and heartwarming.

Sarkozy elected, Colbert congratulates

So Stephen Colbert may be 3/4 Irish but he still took time out to comment on the French elections because "I don't pronounce the T in my last name."  In a very humorous film noir spoof he congratulated fellow conservative Sarkozy in French (not too bad French, all being said and done, especially since he doesn't speak the language).  It was pretty cute but it did bring up that question in my mind:  how does the French diaspora relate to national goings-on in a country that may be connected to them by family name but not in a real everyday life sort of way?  I have friends of other ethnic backgrounds who have varying affinities for and levels of consciousness regarding the current political climate in their countries of origin.  And this being France, I could cry heigh ho to find another person of French descent to give me their perspective.  Anyone out there?  What are you thinking about all this? 

Snot rocket

Do not try this at home, people, do not try this home.  Or anywhere. 

So I had a rather intense, serious day fraught with heavy discussions about the future of this and the meaning of that at work.  All very grave and filled with portent.  By the end of the day my head was hurting -- too much unbroken concentration.  Tonight I decided to watch my first movie on the new Apple TV, Jackass.  Hadn't ever seen the series because it had been on while I was living in Japan.

So here I am, watching the first of the two movies, and whaddaya know but they're in Japan part of the time!  Some of the skits so far are pretty cute.  This last one I just watched, though, uh... yikes.  Yeah, don't think I would ever want to snort wasabi.  It was kinda funny to witness on the screen, however.  Other stunts I'm liking so far are the Night Pandas and the Midnight Fireworks Wakeup Call.  The Roller Disco Truck is pretty good too.  A good dose of inanity goes a long way towards balancing out the overly serious stuff.

Tee hee.

French-bashing

Oh no.  According to The Colbert Report there are news reports that the French dislike themselves even more than the American dislike them.  I guess the Americans can feel self-satisfied about having gone on their anti-French rampage with the Freedom Fries and conspicuous pouring of French wines down toilets.  I wonder what reasons the French gave for not having such a high regard of themselves.  The article also didn't mention how Americans view themselves.  Are we satisfied with how we are?

Booyah!

Just got in.  I'm tired, it's raining, yadda yadda.

But I also just found out that I got an A in my project management class.  Woohoo!