Summer So Far (Also an unintentionally lengthy rant about 8th grade promotionals)

Evening gents, sorry I haven't posted in a bit but I have been sort of living out of a suitcase for two weeks. I haven't had a job since I got home but have been busy dealing with family stuff. My grandfather had a stroke while I was graduating (don't worry, he does this every few months, stubborn bastard refuses to let it take him down). As a result he was a little more mentally discombombulated than usual. So the first few weeks of break I was heading out to the grandparents house pretty frequently to keep an eye on him while Gram ran chores in town. He keeps on forgetting that he can't walk good and getting out of bed and falling over. His head is absolutely covered in bloody scars from all his falls (as I said, stubborn bastard, refuses to admit it hurts as he bleeds out multiple holes in his face). One time he fell out of a chair at our house and went right through the sheetrock wall. Laughed it off as we pulled him out. So I'd sit over there and watch Deadliest Catch while he'd explained to me how women did all the work in Okinawa while the men just sat around and drank. Also they would apparently cut your lawn with scissors for $1 which one of my relatives informs me may be a metaphor for something. My mother is 100% convinced she has a Japanese half-sister she hasn't met. Korea was a neat war, MASH told me all about it.

Then I got on a plane for Detroit, MI to see my cousin Heather graduate high school. Not a very eventful trip, all the flights were on time, TSA was helpful and courteous and I ate a really big steak. The graduation ceremony was textbook, they wanted to thank family and friends who were present, the faculty, but most of all this graduating class of 2013. A bunch of stuff about how Davison was a unique high school, which is super touching when you went there and think of it fondly but when you're an outsider flown in to view the ceremonies it is hard to relate. At the end of the day their super unique local graduation ceremony looks like all the other several thousand super unique high school graduations happening all around America. Perspective can be a bitch. Flew back and was happy to get home to my desktop computer.

Side note: My family has referred to my desktop as my girlfriend for some time now. It doesn't help that I call her Linda. This is primarily because Linda is one of the finest female names, in my humble opinion, to yell angrily when the damned thing won't play The Matrix on Blu-Ray. Ended up watching Equilibrium instead, which is really the poor mans Matrix. Fuck you Linda, you Blu-Ray scratching cuntloaf. This side note got off track quick...

Side Note II: Adding this because the following rant got way out of hand really quick, I didn't even know I was going to rant about this, but I did. If you want to read this later skip down to the TL;DR, conveniently in bold.

Anyway, the day after we got back I went to my cousin Ian's Grade 8 promotional (my fourth godforsaken graduation in a month). I went because Ian is Grade A respectable folk and deserving of celebration. He ranks high on my Quality Related Peoples list. In spite of Sir Ian's qualities, this promotional was by far the most unbearable of the cavalcade of congratulatory ceremonies I had to attend this month.

First of all, hot ass gymnatorium or audinasium or whatever the official terminology, hot as hell ceremony. Bad start, poor air flow is never good. Then there were the awards. Everyone got like twelve, at least it seemed that way. The awards were frequently explained to be prestigious and incredibly difficult to obtain and then like 75% of the kids got it, which in my opinion is not very prestigious at all.

Then there was the fact that this 8th grade promotion was longer than most of the real graduations I attended, it took like two hours. It was lengthened by the horrendously inefficient awarding style. Even though every award had like 96 recipients they first would call out all the names, so they could form the line. They didn't call names to receive the award, they called them up to form the long ass line. Once this line was formed, they called all the names again and the recipients walked all the way from the left side of the stage to the right to receive the award. Keep this in mind, every student walking alone across the whole stage, it plays into the final nail in the coffin.

We had to wait until the end of each award, so all 96-ish 8th graders, before we could applaud in anyway. Would have been nice to break the monotony and maybe stir up a little airflow in this hot box they may or may not refer to as an audinasium (gymnatorium? It might be a cafeteria too, I just don't know) . So they called a name, that student walked across the stage, alone, awkward and in complete fucking silence. Each time they called a name the audience member was greeted with an 8th grader who would walk out and look out at the audience. They were trying to find their family whom they couldn't find because the family isn't allowed to make their presence known. Then they get awkward as they realize the only noise in this entire Cafetorsium (Audicafenasium?) was them walking across the stage. They usually sped up about halfway across, I mean that's only natural. Then there were some kids whose parents couldn't hold it in, so you'd hear a solitary whoo-hoo that was usually cut off before the hoo by a bystander. Therefore it came out as sort of at a "WHOO-Heeeeeyyy sorry..." which left that kid feeling more awkward and left out. They would resort to averting their gaze from the audience and staring at their friends with an eye roll. No matter what strategy the family/kid went with, it was awkward.

Then there was the sheer number of awards. Perfect attendance for the school year, perfect attendance for all of middle school, high score on reading section of exam A, high score on math section of exam A, high score on reading section of exam B, high score on math section of exam B, presidential fitness award, honor roll, high honor roll, presidential scholar award, citizenship award, community service award and fuck all just about everyone in that damned class won every damned award.

Also lets just break down the reality that they had a proper goddamned ceremony for 8th grade graduation. The parents around me were lamenting that this ceremony was more agonizing than the 5th grade graduation they had just attended. 5th grade graduation? Who are these ceremonies for? The kids don't like dressing up and sitting quiet, the parents don't want to sit in a crowded auditorium and none of those certificates will be remotely locatable in one years time. They said that the perfect attendance awards would look good to employers. Tell me how many middle school awards you list on your resume? Did the fact that you made high honors in middle school ever matter at all in day to day life? IT'S MIDDLE SCHOOL! The entire purpose of middle school academically is to prep you for high school and socially the purpose is to learn how to cuss properly and get into awkward prepubescent relationships! Nowadays it's main purpose is to create a generation of people with exceedingly embarrassing Facebook histories.

Now I want to rant about that, maybe later.

TL;DR Congratulations to Ian. Not you Ian. Congratulations to Ian, not Ian, Ian.

Seriously Long Walk On the Beach

This past Saturday my friend Liz and I went to Dungeness Spit (click for map).  It is apparently one of the best examples of a (nautical) spit in the world.

Moral of the story, it is a REALLY REALLY REALLY long walk.  Like 5.5 miles each way through sand long walk.  I really missed the memo on this one and wore jeans and converse and didn't bring any water.  Oops!  Even though I read the wikipedia page in my head I thought it was like a mile tops.

After spilling coffee all over my car and turning a cupholder in a coffee lake, we got in line for the ferry at Edmonds around 10AM.  We were on the ferry by 11, and off on the other side of the sound by 11:30.  I was very impressed with the size of the ferry (202 vehicles!!) and the efficiency of the crew at loading and unloading the boat.  Then it was an additional hour and change to the spit.  This included my favorite intersection ever, where Woodcock Road meets Kitchen Dick Lane.  I am not kidding.

This is the beginning of the spit.  There is a lighthouse at the end, but its so far away you can't see it.  When you can see it on the walk you are about halfway there.

This is the sweet sign out by the lighthouse.  Apparently I neglected to take a picture of the lighthouse, so you'll have to internet search it.  It was very pretty, and apparently you can volunteer for a week to be lighthouse keeper and maintain the place.  Definitely worth it, the views were just insanely gorgeous.

They also had one of the old Fresnel lenses from the lighthouse inside.  It was old (made around 1906 I think it said), and very brass and expensive.  You could see the toolmarks in the metal, amazing to think the old lathe that turned out some of the fittings...

After the 11 mile hike (did I mention it's hard to walk on sand?!) we headed back to Sequim (pronounced squim) for fish and chips and then caught the ferry back to our side of the sound.  Dumping our shoes out was fun, I think there was more sand and stones in there than there was foot.

Southern Maine Weekend

So it feels kind of strange to have a Friday night where not much is going on. It's been a while since there wasn't some sort of social gathering on a friday night. Anyways, I kicked off my weekend basically Saturday morning by going to the "Great State of Maine Yard Sale" which was kind of cool but also kind of a let down. It was $5 to get in and I wasn't that impressed with the stuff they had there. It was so commercialized that there were a lot of antiques, crafty things and stuff you generally would not actually find at a real yard sale. That being said, Kevin and I both scored towel racks for $5 each.... ehh I'll take it. I passed up on a pair of LL bean snow shoes for $35... and I will probably kick myself for it this winter but we'll see.

Anyways, after that we took off to the beach and enjoyed chilling in the sun. The water was pretty damn cold but it was fun to stand in it anyways. Got a couple small awkward sunburns in the places that I clearly missed with sunscreen. Overall not bad though for a beach outing. Hung around the old port for a bit late that afternoon and ran a couple errands. Also met a dude with a sweet 1972 honda 175 in the old port, ended up talking with him for a while about cool motorcycles and VWs. His bike was immaculate and the paint was in great shape for the year despite not being restored. He also had a helmet painted gold (same as the bike) which made him pretty easy to spot.

I went to several places to find the right coat hook setup. Basically I really wanted some hooks to put my coat on after I came inside (seems like a pretty natural thing to desire). For some reason our apartment doesn't have anything to fulfill this need. Anyways, since I live with two other roommates I discussed what I wanted and after disagreeing completely.... then realizing it was a good idea they allowed me to put up some hooks with one condition, it must have a shelf on top of it. Why? I have no idea. Oh actually there was another condition, it had to be black so it would match everything else in the living room. After striking out at two places I finally found an unfinished set of coat hooks with a shelf. Spent a little time this afternoon painting it and installing it. Feeling pretty Bob Vila right now, not going to lie. I also mounted the towel rack that I got at the yard sale, awhh yea!

Also went on a nice long motorcycle ride today, after fixing my bike earlier this week it has been kind of painful not being able to ride it due to loads of intermittent crappy weather. I actually rode out to Sebgao lake briefly which was kinda cool.

Chatted with Tyler today about starting a food truck and it has been on my mind all day after seeing this craigslist ad. Also been reading about it online. Seems kind of awesome but might be a lot more money to start initially than I realized. Some folks say like $60k but I find that pretty hard to believe because I would definitely just do all the retrofitting of the truck myself. Anyways, I've been thinking about cool little business ideas to put money towards as a kind of investment and a food truck or something similar doesn't sound like it is that far out of reach. Also, I know enough unemployed people that I feel like I could always find someone to work at it.

Well, there is your problem...

So we're pretty legit, Pika even has a sign now.

Almost like we're a real, live company!

Anyways, it's been a slow past few days. Went to David Jameson's going away shindig which of course consisted of hitting up a bunch of some of the Old Port's finest establishments. I acquired a bunch of the stuff he was trying to get rid of before moving to Oregon later this week. Things like a laptop with no power cord, a broken printer that had been hit with a hammer, a broken and a working airsoft gun, a set of logitech speakers and some old books (grabbed a cool one on model rocketry for you Ian). So best of luck to David (who seems to have come full circle and made it back to the land of tried and true awesome gentlemen) on winning gay marriage on the other side of the country!

After last weeks motorcycle failure, I regrouped and found a replacement oil filter cover for a reasonable price on Ebay. Tonight, I went to town replacing the cover and oil filter.

Gee guys, I dunno why it leaks...

Started it up and seems to be running fine and not leaking. Great, this is just in time for ... an entire week of rain. Damnit. 

Since the bus is home and all I've been trying to find a couple little projects here and there to occupy my time when I'm in Westbrook. Also still keeping my eye out for garage space down this way. Part of the reason I got all that stuff from David was to try and fix some of it (no, not the special edition hammer time printer). I ordered another power adapter for the laptop hoping to start messing with that but it seems that the address where I live is far too complicated for FedEx. I'll be giving them a call tomorrow and probably having all packaged delivered to my work address from now on. 

Also keeping my eye out for another two-wheeler of the human powered kind to commute to work with. In other news I just sold my old boat yesterday for some cash money. Had a lot of good times on the lake in that boat when I was in middle school. Luckily it is going to a young chap a couple towns over who will probably love the crap out of it, definitely a win-win situation. Still trying to sell my outboard motor though, had a guy call me and low-ball me today... gotta love that craigslist. 

There is some construction going on in our new facility at work. It's pretty funny actually I left at about 6PM last night and I guess a construction crew showed up at 7:30. I came in this morning and they had completely framed and an entire wall right next to where I was working. We figured they were probably there  until about midnight. Those guys don't mess around! If they keep up this aggressive overnight work schedule, it will be done very quickly. 

Basically been bein' a lazy bum though. Hoping to get into some sort of routine to do after work. If last summer was any sign, posting here usually encourages me to do cool stuff so I'm gonna work on that. 

Still Alive!

Doods,

Sorry it's been a while since I posted (March?!).  Life in the PNW has been going great.  Winter is over, so the sun is typically out and June has been surprisingly nice.  Been hitting the bicycle pretty hard, trying to do at least 100 miles a week.  I typically fall short, but its fun anyways.

Last night I went to a rooftop spot called Frolik with work people.  Pretty fun, they had ping pong tables and would just happen to give you 20 SOLO cups.  They also had real shuffleboard, which none of us knew how to play, so we made up our own rules.  We met up with some of our intern's roommates, and it turns out one of them is from Machias and really close friends with a dude who was in my cubscout troop... weird.

Last month I went to a major league soccer game, which was crazy fun.  It's basically like going to a hockey game, but the crowd is twice as big and you stand for the entire game. Also we got pamphlets on the way in saying that the league does not appreciate some of the chants, so you know it is going to be fun.

Also after going out the last few weekends, been making a point of stopping by Dick's, which is basically Seattle's hipster McDonalds.  No one ever told Dicks that the 1950s are over, and I am fine with that.  The food is super good (real fresh cut fries!), relatively inexpensive, and dang tasty.  Also, so many innuendos.

I also went sailling last weekend and saw Stefan.  That was fun, twas a pretty windy day.

Figured I'd Check In

Starting tomorrow at Pika, seemed like the right thing to make a post here.

Essentially all moved in to the new pad in Westbrook. I've been helping paint the soon to be new home of Pika. Painting stinks. I wouldn't recommend it. However the painting did give a little time for me to catch up with what has been going on over the past months. Also, we're apparently getting not one but two summer interns. One marketing guy and another mechanical dude. That along with myself an additional full-time employee and we've nearly doubled the amount of people that will be around daily. The new place will take a lot of work to setup properly but it'll be very cool once all the moving and setup is done. We'll actually have a place to assemble our products and start shipping them. Exciting times.

Speaking of exciting times... When I left our new facility Saturday evening my motorcycle began leaking oil all over the place. It was night time and I didn't realize this was happening for about a mile and when I did, I immediately shut it off and pulled to the side of the road. I recently changed the oil in the bike and when I did, I unscrewed this die-cast piece that holds the oil filter in place and as I took it out a small piece of metal fell off of it. I saw it, showed it to my dad and we both thought that it might not matter because it didn't immediately appear to screw up the gasket on the part so we figured it might seal just fine. When we started it and ran it, it did run just fine but not Saturday night gents. So, here I am on the side of the road about a mile from home with a motorcycle that I am certainly not going to run and my phone is very nearly dead. I tried to reach my boss who actually had a truck and a trailer with him, but no dice. I got in touch with another employee, fellow MSSM alum and all around awesome guy (Adam) who came and helped me out. After calling AAA and figuring out I did not opt for the RV and motorcycle package so I was not eligible for free service.... we decided to man up and push the bike.

So, we pushed the bike and it was pretty much really hard. I was able to coast on it for a little ways and Adam pushed me along to help. We actually gained a lot of distance this way but by the time we made it to my house we were out of breath and sweating bullets. It was well into the 80's that evening too. So after getting some water and thanking Adam profusely, I now have a bike in the garage with a pretty serious oil leak. Hoping to get on that this week and see about sealing it or getting a replacement piece.

Go figure that the largest malfunction my bike has ever had happens essentially my first night in Westbrook. I feel like life has this way of giving you bullshit just as you become an adult to try and mess with you. Another example is the dresser I own which has intermittent problems with opening/closing drawers. Sounds like no big deal right? No. That shit is fucking obnoxious. It would literally lock you out of certain drawers but only sometimes when this internal lock thing got messed up. I JUST WANT TO ACESS MY FRESH UNDIES, IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?! WHO MADE THIS THING ANYWAYS?!

After messing with it last summer and before I moved it here, it started pulling more creative bullshit. Luckily life didn't plan on me bringing a fucking Dewalt power drill to the game. Solved that shit. That's right life, bring it.

Dinty Rides Again and Other Tales From The County

Good evening Gentlemen. I am now safely within the borders of Aroostook County after an arduous journey from the Finger Lakes region. What's left of Athena A fills 3 totes in the entryway to my house. I did get to some adventures though on the drive up. Took my brother to New York City for pizza and Bo Burnham. Saw my Alfred friends in Connecticut. Also met up with the one and the only Sir Ton Ton of Nuzzles. Oh sorry, I meant to say Graduated Sir Ton Ton of Nuzzles.

That reminds me actually. Tony, I got an update on that Colby bus. For Ian's sake allow me to first explain that while Graduated Tony and Graduated Tyler celebrated their Graduatedness in the Old Port, we were not alone. Colby had the good grace to send it's senior class to Portland to celebrate with the assorted spirits and festivities the Old Port has to offer on a Monday night. Thus the streets were filled with these Colby people who were all any number of sheets to the proverbial wind. After I left you Mr. Nuzzo, my brother invited me to join him at the local Denny's, for milkshakes and other late night goodies. When we got there, we found a wait staff braced for a storm. They had been called and told that a bus full of drunk Colby kids was bearing down on them. They asked if I'd seen them in town and I told them the truth, it going to be a total shit show.

Well I enjoyed my meal of biscuits and gravy and wouldn't you know the lush bus never arrived. We brought it up with one of the staffers while we payed for our food and he explained to us that the bus driver had cancelled the food stop. Apparently the illustrious Colby scholars had made the decision to use every seat in the bus as their puke bucket. A sort of chain reaction of one person covering another in vomit making them puke on another person and pretty soon things are getting out of hand. We'll go ahead and refer to it as Liquor Dominoes. Anywho, the bus driver informed the Denny's that they would not be stopping and also that they would have to pressure wash the bus in the morning.

Now that I'm done filling your minds with terrifying imagery, let's move on to County matters. The Havu's arrived in the County on Friday night in order to attend this years MSSM graduation. They stayed at Sharon's so I stopped by and stayed up until 3 AM having some brews with the Jimmy James Havu who is apparently an avid reader of our fine blog. I don't know why that surprised me, of course he'd already found us. Hello James, nice to have you hear. How's your mum?

Anywho we went to MSSM graduation which is just so much better than University graduation by a lot. I really hated Alfred's graduation ceremony (I'll rant about that later). Their keynote speaker was Dale Dintaman by popular request of the Senior Class. Believe it or not he went ahead and delivered the finest graduation speech I've ever had the pleasure to sit through. My favorite bit, paraphrased I admit:

"I was asked to do this speech in February, so I've had several months to prepare it. After so many years here at the MSSM, watching all of you work so hard on all of your assignments, I wanted to show this speech the same level of seriousness and commitment that any of you would show on your McCartney papers. So I wrote it last night, with two cans of Redbull and a Mountain Dew"

The entire Alumni section gave a standing ovation right there. It was awesome. Then they handed out the diplomas, so Dan and I looked up how to clap the morse code for M S S M.  Then we headed to the reception where I almost immediately spilled an entire cup of steaming hot coffee on Mr. Berz. He didn't seem to mind. A shotgun of random Alums were there, it was awesome to see all of them. I talked to McCartney about Alfred Boffer Club. Exchanged game ideas. Luke Shorty talked to all of us about planning a big Alumni reunion in Limestone next summer. Could be interesting.

Dan made me take this picture. I'm glad he did.

Then I went across the border because Liz and James had to say hi to Karl and Theresa at the Lakeside Lodge. Then we headed back to the Gerrish abode, making sure to pick up a bunch of Chinese food and beer. Then I stayed up until 2 AM drinking beers and enjoying good company. I've been doing these graduations every year except one since our own graduation. It's always kind of surreal, because for a couple days I'm steeped in MSSM everything, people/culture/politics. Then Sunday comes and I remember I graduated 4 years ago and everyone lives all over the goddamned place.

Well now I got to figure out how to live in the County again. Going to start the summer job hunt this week. See how that goes. Good night Gents.