I have a friend which is a few years older (M, that would be you) than me that used to tell me that time was running out and that I better make the most of it. I shrugged it off and told him he was crazy since we're not even out of the first third of our lives. Of course now that's changed with me passing the thirtieth mark more than a year ago. We all know that time is supposed to be constant and unchanging, but I'm taking a different approach, time is quite subjective to me. The last few years have been blowing by at break neck speeds with me wondering where did it all go? (much to the chagrin of those close to me constantly asking "what the hell happened to the time?) I'm sure there were days interspersed in there where I had a few "longest day ev-ar" days but on the whole the seasons are changing faster than I can keep track of. I used to be quite aware of my circadium rhythm but now, it barely registers.

Which brings me back to my day-to-day. I used to have gobs of time, even during my 20s. I didn't crawl out of bed until 9am back then, leave work at 6pm and I'd still felt like I had so much free time to kill. Now, I don't think I do, which doesn't mean its a bad thing, but its just a drastic change from my youth. I could play hours upon hours of video games, and I wouldn't care that I wasted all that time. Now, I have that twitching feeling that I should be doing something productive, and although most would call that responsibility, I think I just know there are consequences if I don't pay the bills on time, make dinner, clean up the house, do adult chores and errands. Its because without the shelter of parents, I'm now working without a saftey net and I know that. I try my best to devote most of my free time to spending some quality time with my wife.

Which leads to Memorial Day weekend. MM wanted to paint the front of the house, and we set out doing it with the naivete of thinking it would be as simple as painting the living room walls (which also weren't as simple as they looked). First off, the front is made up of old concrete pressed bricks that have the same porous roughness as a thousand grit sandpaper which meant if you rolled paint roller over it or tried to brush it with a paint brush, only 30% of the surface was going to be coated.

I tried to counter that by grunting and forcefully pushing hard on the roller to the wall to squeegee the paint into the pores of the bricks. I did this for most of the morning and afternoon of Saturday with little success. After that I was wiped. I'm still recovering now. My chest felt like I was having a fat ballerina dance on top of it for the last few days and I've basically laid on the couch for most of the holiday weekend while my dedicated wife soldiered on outside by meticulously painting each brick. I guess getting back to the gym the last month wasn't enough prep for trying to tackle such a project.

I guess if you don't make time to just relax, your body is going to force you to do it whether you like it or not.

I'm not sure this all ties together somehow, then again, I'm not writing an essay I need to turn into the teacher either. So be it, summer starts, and the reality is that it won't make a difference to my schedule now, where as before, I'd be looking forward to months of endless time to kill at the pool, with my neighborhood/school friends, in front of the TV, or at a mindless summer job. Now, my life chugs on, and the summer of 2006 will be filled with lots of different memories that will be in my mind within a blink of an eye. My first year of marriage to an awesome person, home ownership, good times with good friends, and lots and lots of chores.

First and foremost, I just came back from lunch at my beloved Elevation Burger only to find out they had raised the prices on the menu and dropped their combo menu! Now everything in the place has gone up 30%. I used to pay six fiddy for a number two and now its over eight bucks. I'll grumble, but I'll pay because their burgers are probably the best in town. Damn them and their heavenly burgers!


We went out to dinner last night with SS at Bangkok Joe's in Georgetown. What was interesting is that I found out over dinner that SS and her friends have a newfound hate for NBC4/WRC-TV's Barbara Harrison! You know, when ever someone goes on a diatribe about any local news anchor here that has been in this market for more than 10+ years, I have to question it. I mean, most of the people that work at WRC-TV are sort of DC institutions (which my wife hates me calling them that). I don't really have an opinion about Barbara Harrison since I don't wake up early enough to watch NBC4's news coverage and even if I did, I'd rather be tuning into channel 7 / WJLA's hottness Alison Starling and the awkward comradery between her and Doug McKelway with added geekiness from weatherman Brian van de Graaff. My little sister seems to think Ms. Harrison seems to be a nice lady since Barbara came and visited her elementary school when she was a kid. (Which leads to the wife ridiculing me for giving these people angel points for just coming to visit kids at local elementary schools.)

What was shocking to hear was that Barbara Harrison has been flubbing up her news delivery as of late. She told me that she would trip over words, seem in an altered state of mind, or just genuinely screwing up all over the place on live tv. SS and her friends have apparently attributed Barbara's antics to a bad train wreck. So bad that its good to watch every morning just to see how far she can take it, as well as see the tortured look in Joe Kreb's eyes. They even were thinking about developing T-shirts that say "Free Barbara" and "Save Joe Krebs." Hilarious.

I was still not convinced that such antics would be allowed on such a large market local news channel so I did some searching. Apparently a search of DCRTV's mail bag brought many hits back. One particular week of the beginning of March elicited numerous anger, concern, and heckling from viewers in the area. I even found another blog entry about the whole incident that was geniuinely concerned for Barbara's health. (What about Barbara?). Meanwhile digging deep into the blogosphere turns up the fact that this is not the first incident that has shown Barbara slowly loosing her marbles (Barbara made a funny). With all these incidents and just local news anchors gritting on some people's nerves, I found a site that just dishes out the hate on several local news anchors including Barbara Harrison.

I'm just confused that if Ms. Harrison isn't in the perfect state of mind, how in the hell did she score a fluff interview with Condi?! SS has several conspiracy theories which I can't get into since it does involve some slanderous/libelous suggestions. What's even funnier is that Katie Couric seems to wish her know-it-all self had beaten Barbara to the punch! Anyway, this entry is for you SS, you're right, somehow the DC news anchor "institutions" are seemingly breaking their own legacies down before my very eyes.

So I added a new feature amongst all the obtrusive ads on my blog on the sidebar, and its the daily links. Basically things I see online that seem interesting to me, I'll tag and post and it'll get refreshed on the side, at the top.

So now that I've somewhat recovered from the camping trip over the weekend up on Rocky Gap National State park in Western Maryland (WAYYY Western), I can actually try to post something here. Things I've learned on this trip:

• Apparently I'm a 80 year old man named Mortimer trapped in a 30 year old body. I told my wife that if she didn't bring lunch to work she should go to the Whole Foods to get "a scoop of something" to which I will never live down now.


• I should also not open my mouth and say what is was just triggered off by a neuron in my mind, which lead to me spouting off about how someone could get an STD in their eye.


• If something so vulgar is said enough times and modified, it becomes less taboo and just something to giggle about. See if you can find our word of the weekend in the scrabble board.



• You can't rent a boat on the lake if there's an adventure race, because the racers hog all the boats.








• Beehive Mullets still exists out in the wild at places like Super Walmarts. Walmart has also become a piazza of sorts for the towns in the middle of nowhere to go and mix and mingle since there is a McDonald's inside.



• Staring at dancing fire for hours never seems to bore me.





• Coleman makes the most snuggly sleeping bags, but come with no directions on how you're going to squeeze it back into its tiny little carrying case

"Fuck off with your sofa units and serine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may." -Tyler Durden

I also had a very interesting conversation with H. aka Lady Danger about growing up (which is the loose theme of this blog) while we hung out and gathered wood for the campfire. From what LD deduced, life's journey itself is what we should be revelling in, but I find myself more focused on a destination, a goal. If I get there, it'll be better. That was I guess the jist of my old daily mantra, one that I'm trying to unglue myself from. All the pain, suffering, trials, tribulations, that's what life's about. Not the end result but the day to day crap. I guess I'm in this transitional phase where I'm trying to realign my outlook on life from one of expectations to just a life that I should just enjoy each day. What the big conundrum is for me is that the whole point of life is what me and most of my peers that grew up in suburbia have been trying to shy away from.

Which sort of is thrown into great conflict with how my parents did a lot to try to shelter me from all the pains of the world, which in turn brought on all these expectations and entitlement issues that I've been trying to come to terms with. I guess that's why getting thrown out into the real world was sort of a shock to me. I used to have a friend back in highschool that always said that I was priviledged and didn't know how good I had it. He was right, its because he's been through a lot, and he learned from it, while I did very little to attain the comfort I had. In the end, it really is sweeter if you get it yourself. What I don't get is, all this stuff we're hoping for, working towards, its to relieve ourselves from the same discomfort, pain, suffering we should be seeking, seeing how humanity itself is based on just that. This also seems to conflict with me wanting to win the lottery. Make no mistake, I still want to win the lottery. I guess its just a human condition and it confuses me to no end.

Other than that, there were lots of just relaxing and good times. And even though it looks like I spent most of my time there trying to film a dangly worm, I swear, it was just quality time with the people I care about, which for me and has always been a constant belief is really what life is about.

Googling "Krystal Koons" turned up some interesting facts. Apparently Krystal Koons is in fact not an android, she's just a high falootin' Georgetown prep graduate and some people are unhappy with the repair service they perform. Hopefully this is the last post I post about her. I swear I'll try to blog about something else.

I think its been an ongoing joke in my life everytime I drive by the Koons dealership in Tysons. Obvious snickers ensue for such a horrible name for a car dealership. But now they're having the last laugh, they're invading almost every facet of my multimedia life. This was covered in whyihatedc's blogspot but I think its worth recounting. Every morning I turn on the TV, it doesn't matter what channel I turn to, Krystal Koons is on the freaking TV shilling her family's empire of cars. When I turn to WTOP, aka my old man radio station according to the wife, to get the local traffic report (traffic and weather on the eights!) she's there telling me she's going to wow me.

And when I say Koons empire, I mean it. They must have a deathstar somewhere constructed out of every possible car model possible. Surfing over to their website, you'll see they sell them ALL. Toyota, Ford, Chevy's, Mazda, Dodge, Volvo, etc. You want them, they got them. I remember a time back in the 80s when the Koons brand was just one among many. They only sold Chevrolets but then they gobbled up Jimmy Kline's Toyota (and his equally annoying commercials), and from then, I guess they just started acquiring every small dealership.

I used to hate those Eastern Motors commercials, but they've been overtaken with Koons's massive advertising budget. Apparently there's a shared sentiment on the washington post discussion from a few weeks ago and someone has reported she's showing up before movie previews?! They must be stopped.

Most people hate Krystal with the lingering thought of neopotism that has led her to the opportunity to be a local (hated) celebrity and to line the Koons family deep pockets even deeper by supposedly "wowwing" them. However, I think there's something more sinister afoot.

I personally think Krystal Koons is an android and the Koons mad scientists thought it would be cute to give her a non-removable blue sweater vest abdomen. I mean how else can you explain that she's always wearing the same outfit in all of the commercials and that she moves and talks like the animatronics at the local Chuck E. Cheeses? If you look at all the ads, she's always planted in one place, she never walks, and her arms always flail around in the same way in a robotic fashion. I think its funny that this post article from last year says she's "seems like a Shakespearean actress" when they're comparing her to other local ads. Take a look at the photo below of Koons founder.

Its obvious they just took a mold of his cryogenically frozen head and recreated Krystal's facial mold from it. Also, look at the following photos, never is she photographed below the stomach. Its because there's a huge Cray supercomputer underneath powering the "We're gonna wow ya!" propoganda. What is the Koons evil end game? Only they seem to know.




What I find even more amazing is they're offering all these commercials online! In all print, video, and audio formats! Why on earth would I subject myself to her shrill voice of telling me she's going to wow me over and over again? Whoever goes to that site for fun is masochistic.

All in all, if the Koons marketing department is reading this, its time to fire and deport this person that came up with this campaign. I'd also like to personally flog him or her, but I want think locking them in a room for a month with these commercials playing 24/7 might be a good start.

I hope this isn't my only fifteen seconds of fame but maybe its my blog's fifteen seconds of fame but I got cited in the Washington Post Express!. Its even in hard copy that I'm a freakshow because I dig the local celebrities, page 32. I feel like Homer Simpson when he started his Muck Raking blog and got all high off the exposure. Now my counter is gonna be like and I'll feel obligated to start making stuff up to seem interesting. Ok, maybe not.

So now with the umpteenth article on the net about scooters being really popular with the soaring price of gas, Piaggo, the makers of the original Vespa, have introduced the mp3. Not an audio player but a 3-wheeled scooter. I guess its easier to ride and you're not guaranteed to lose all of your limbs if you happen to hit a pothole or hit by careless drivers yapping on their cellphones (even though its supposedly illegal in DC unless you're using a handsfree earpiece). I know this because I've almost been hit twice on our Vespa ET4.


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These days I've been splitting my news watching between WRC-TV aka channel 4 and WJLA aka channel 7. I used to watch 4 religiously because I just liked their style of news, and most of their reporters are DC institutions and I had no life. This resulted in some sheer geekdom excitement everytime I spot a local report out on the town. Here are the ones I remember:

• I spotted Bob Ryan a few years back out when he was doing the weather report among the cherry blossoms and was going around telling everyone how cool it was. This was deflated by the wife after she told me he acted like a complete jerk to her back in her restaurant hosting days because she didn't recognize him. Apparently he was all like, "I'm BOB RYAN, don't you know who I AM?!" attitude, which I find completely atypical since I've been brainwashed into believing he's the most affable guy in the world.


• I sat behind Arch Campbell at a movie preview a few years ago too when my sis scored some free preview tickets to some forgettable Jet Li movie. I immediately called up one of my friends just to tell him that I was in the presence of a local celebrity.


• I drove by Eun Yang last month as she was powdering her nose in the news van after they had just finished a report on Pennsylvania Ave. I immediately pulled off to the curb and texted Brian that I just saw his favorite girl.



• We were driving in Capitol Hill a few months back and I saw Elliot Francis step off the curb and screamed to my wife, "Hey, its that dude! um from the TV!" That dude is larger than life, and was all decked out in a full anchorman dapper suit. Yeah, I'm a big dork.


• Last but not least, a few months ago I saw channel 7 hottie Alison Starling doing a report outside in front of the WJLA building in the morning while dropping off MM at her old job and started hootin' and hollering like usual.

I'm liking how WJLA is trying to be hipper now that they've set up shop in the heavily trafficked Rosslyn area and their big ass Time Square TV screen hanging off their building. Its sad that channel 9 is first in HD and their newscasts are amazing to look at in widescreen highdef crispness, the same can't be said about their news delivery nor their reporters. Maybe its just me.

Anyway, NBC4 is profiling the blogging scene here in DC since it appears to be a flourishing community of bloggers that are getting online in the DC metro area. The DCblogs guy was first profiled, and what he says about blogs towards the end of the extended interview online is so true about this city, and also could've been applied to the big deal about chatrooms and homepages back in the 90s. I guess with blogs its just easier to get your voice out there and be heard and not have to worry so much about the technical jargon (thanks yahoo, google, sixapart, myspace, friendster, livejournal, etc!)

Go here if you want to see the video and transcript.

I haven't been camping that often in my life, in fact I think I can count the number of times on one hand, but last week, I can say that I've been camping twice in the last 2 years. We took a leisurely drive out to the Shenandoah National Park on Saturday and got there in the early evening. I learned a few things last time that we prepared for this trip. Bring some padding unless you're ready to sleep on a bunch of rocks. Last time, we didn't know and I got about a few hours of rested sleep until I realized there were a million jagged stones underneath the tent and they were digging into me whichever way I rolled. This time, we learned the hardway, bring shitloads of blankets if you don't have a decent sleeping bag. Weather.com had told me that the weather in the mountains were going to be in the 60s and 70s during the day. What I failed to notice was that it was going to be 10 degrees cooler in the mountains, and that it drops below 30 at night. So we all woke up shivering our asses off around 4 in the morning. Also, if you bring an air mattress, you need to have something lining your ass, or you will be literally freezing your ass off since all the heat will escape under you even if you're bundled up with blankets on top of you.

We also brought some wood up since last time we were ill prepared to make a fire, but I realized that if you want bonfire quality campfires, you gotta either drop the cash on bundles of wood from the sundries camp market, or you go foraging into the woods. The only drawback of foraging is most of the wood is too wet to burn, so the fire will smoke and well, by the time we got back to DC, we smelled like we were hung upsidedown in a smokehouse for 48 hours. We also had 2 little charcoal bags that we got from the Columbia Heights Giant, but I've since found out that they're a complete rip off. 3 bucks for a little burnable bag of coals? I bought 2 family size ones from CostCo just yesterday for 14 bucks.

Thanks to my wife, we were well fed with lots of campfire foodstuff, and junkfood to pass the time away between playing cards, poking our bonfire and talking about life philosophies. I've also found out that Coke from a bottle tastes about 10 times better than when its from a can or the fountain. I wish they came in the bigger sizes, and yes, I try to recycle all my glass bottles.

On the way back, we stopped in Sperryville to find some apple butter, another thing that I'm fascinated with but I don't seem to stock up on. Sperryville is also apparently right next to Washington, VA aka home of the famous Inn at Little Washington. While stopping off, we saw a huge biker/hog meetup. Its funny though cuz none of these guys seemed very authentic, more weekend warriors than anything. It was neat to see though. We also stopped by this pretty neat place that was a nursery/restaurant/fancy grocery store called The Epicurious Cow, sorta felt like something that would existed in Cicely, Alaska if Northern Exposure was based in a real town.

By the time we got home, we stopped for a quick bite to eat in Clarendon and then got home and passed out around 5pm and more or less slept til we had to get up to work the next day. It was fun and we're going again this weekend, but this time, I'm gonna try to be more prepared.

Tech toys are basically that, toys for the adult kids in us. And there are a slew of announcements today that have me stoked.

Apple Macbook

Apple releases the Macbook and kills the iBook line.

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Sony VAIO UX Micro PC

Sony releases its fancy little Micro PC. Should be out in June for 1800 bucks. Too rich for my blood.

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Google and Nokia Internet Tablet

Google and Nokia Team up to update their internet tablet to support voice over IP with Google Talk and an integrated gTalk client. This excites me because I already own the tablet.

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The NEW Super Mario Bros.

The NEW Super Mario gets released today on the Nintendo DS. I don't even have one yet, and I'm excited!

I eat enough fast food to make me feel guilty bout it and there has been a line I saw on Chef's A'field on WETA I saw few weeks ago. Of course its a cooking show and one of the featured chef's said how she couldn't understand how so many americans ate processed food since the whole point of food was to nourish you. So I was at the walmart of organic foods a few weeks ago, Whole Foods, and decided to pick up a fancy cut of meat to pretend I could be on pbs as one of those chef's. I don't think I did that great of a job though. I used way too much dijon mustard, and my side items were kinda weak. And presentation was weak too.
Then again, I didn't really do that much cooking, it was a pretty simple recipe that involved popping it into the oven. But hey, it was different from my usual repetoire of dinner foods when its my turn to cook, so it was a nice change of pace.

I joined the blogroll on dcblogs.com and for some odd reason, I've been mis-listed as "The Life of Red." I feel like Morgan Freeman in the Shawshank Redemption. "Maybe it's 'cause I'm Irish." I'm just as Irish as Morgan Freeman was in that movie. But I digress...

So with most of the country and the area bitching about the cost of gas and someone I know whispering global conspiracy and aliens on IM to me, it got me wondering. I actually brought it up with MM (the wife) about what would the world and political landscape be like if there was some technological breakthrough like in that horrible movie I never saw with Keanu, Chain Reaction. What if there was something that turned water into energy, or like Doc Brown's Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future 2?



Russia's attempts to use energy as a way to have more clout with Europe and the US would dissipate, and would we even care about the instability in the Middle East? Of course MM pointed out to me that it wouldn't happen. Entire global industries would be rendered obsolete, and billions upon billions of potential revenue would be wiped out.

Its amazing that big corporations act exactly like people. They're completely afraid of change. e.g. Witness the RIAA and the MPAA grasping to try to force consumers to comply with their business models instead of embracing new technologies to create new revenue streams. Didn't they learn anything from the cassette tape and VCR? I guess not.

So then there's the conspiracies that we could have renewable energy sources much sooner if it wasn't for the lobbiest out there. I'm amazed how much K Street has fucked over society and the world looking out for their special interests. I know, its not as clean cut and pat like that, but there's got to be a better way. I'll save that for another post though.

I would be curious to live in a world where some type or renewable fuel was abundant as the water on this earth, then what would we be doing? I guess if you took an optimistic approach, it would be like the world winning the lottery. One less thing to worry about, and with that, a step above savagery and a closer step towards the betterment of society. Of course the pessimistic point might be we would just be figuring out easier ways to blow each other up with it. I am still curious though what that world would be like. It would be cool to have a hoverboard.

http://www.yarukinoki.net/flash/pendulumeca/
This game is surprisingly addictive. I've gotten 892m as my highest score right not.

I took the day off to roam around DC with the wife since she starts a new job tomorrow. Walking around DC during a workday is a different experience than when I'm out during the weekends. Downtown in the morning near the DMV, while it is overly crowded on the road, its not too bad on the sidewalks.

There are 2 things that usually strike me when I'm not at work on a weekday, who are all these people that also out and about? They seem to all not have jobs but yet they can shop, eat at fancy places, and not seem to have a care in the world. Which ultimately makes me feel like a chump for sitting my ass at work for 40 hours a week in a cubicle while these guys get to hang out in starbucks. Then again, I do realize approximately 90% of these people are tourists, but still, I don't think all of them are.


I also think I should just start working weekends and taking weekdays off. The city is so much more peaceful and quiet. I really liked it. Its like having the whole city to myself and not having to wait in line for anything. Although parking is always atrocious either way.

Another thing that I always get from being out in Georgetown during a nice day is that I wish I had gobs of money like Paris Hilton or someone so I could live in one of those really fancy houses or ornate rowhouses right near Dumbarton House and be neighbors with Senators and Moguls. That'd be sweet.

But what was sweet about the day was I was able to pretend that I didn't have a job for a day, and that was worth its while.