Delayed Seattle Post

While trying to come up with an excuse for why this post is so post-poned (pun intended), the best thing I could thing of was.... jetlag? JET....LAG. 

Here is the part where I recap the trip and dump some photos. 

Tried to sleep the night before but it didn't really work out... Got up at 2AM to drive to portland to catch a 3:00AM bus to Boston to catch a 6AM plane to Chicago. Blasted out on time to Chicago where I caught my connecting flight to Sea-tac airport where I landed at about 11:00AM west coast time (longest morning ever). Took a train that looked slightly like an orca whale to meet up with the one and only Allie Holcombe. Hooray! 

It was nice to see Allie even if I was dead tired and kind of loopy. Ended up seeing where she works and I even got a business card, a legitimate Allie Holcombe business card. I was impressed. Anyways, met up with Ian later that evening after a dinner at red robin in the mall. 

Ian had to work part of the next day but then we went out plane hunting at this place called Future of Flight across from the Boeing factory. We also went on a tour of the factory which was SUPER cool but we were not allowed to take pictures because factory secrets and stuff.... Anyways. 

Above is Antonov-124 which is a huge russian plane for lifting heavy things! This was chilling next to this runway for some reason next to the future of flight place. Also off in the distance in the upper left is where all those grounded Boeing 787's are chilling out because of that battery thing..... Lots of planes on the other side of the runway in various states of repair.

That night I got to meet Ian's other windmill buddy, Brian who now works at Boeing and does space arduino stuff, cool guy. We hung out at this Brewry until they kicked us out. The next day we got up and went out to drive around the city and do more cool stuff. 

Yes Ian, we can all see the Space Needle, it's right there.

 Walked around at this place called gasworks park which had beautiful views of the city skyline as well as lake union. Lots of house boat visible from the park too, next time I go visit hopefully I will be loaded and can rent one. It would be amazing to rent one for a week and hang out with a bunch of buddies while being tourists there. Some day guys, some day.

Kicking off the theme of Ian and I doing romantic things together, we enjoyed a long walk on the beach. We also took pictures of each other with our eyes closed.

Actually I have more pictures with Ian's eyes closed than open from the trip.

Hey looks it's almost sorta kinda the pacific ocean. Note: Looks warmer out then it actually was.

Spotted a bunch of VW buses parked and on the road, also saw a pretty rare VW single cab in semi-rough shape. We ate like champions the entire trip sampling eggs benedict, drinking hipster coffee and feasting on mongolian food (Tyler you would love it). On this particular day we ate at this fish and chips place where an old school Volvo that had been converted to electric was parked out front. Apparently it was the same restaurant where they filmed After The Catch, then we drove around toward the tallest point in the city.

This thing!

 Before scaling the beast that is the space needle, we explored some of the finer things. There is this sweet place called the Chihuly Gardens which was amazing and totally beautiful. Before going in we were berated by a bunch of protestors, apparently upset about some "promises" that the garden wasn't fulfilling. They tried to tell us it wasn't worth the money.... They were wrong.

That is probably the best picture I took but my camera honestly couldn't do the stuff justice. The place featured enormous pieces of colorful hand blow glass, that was jaw droppingly cool. Ian and I had fun trying to figure out how some of them even stayed together. Definitely a must-see place if you are being a tourist in Seattle. Not to mention, you get a "deal" if you go to the garden and the space needle all in one day. 

Hey, no one's eyes are closed!

Got a picture from atop the space needle. It was a beautiful day and you could see the mountains on all sides as well as lake union and the city. Picked a prime time to visit as I was told it was probably the best day they'd had in a long long time. 

At some point along the trip I pointed out that I'd never been to a Jack in the Box so of course we HAD to go. Have to say I was not really impressed with Jack in the Box at all, it was so middle of the road I don't even know what to say about it. It was fast food, plain and simple. A secondary objective of my trip became to assist Ian in making his apartment not look like a..... uh well.... to make it look less like his side of the room from junior year. He didn't have much on the walls, so in an effort to add some more flavor to the place we made a one of a kind piece of art.

That's right, we framed the nutrition facts from Jack in the Box. Hey, we signed it. It is legit art. 

We also went to Ikea, which was a first to me. It was pretty sweet and has a restaurant in the middle of it. It's huge and we got lost and bought good shit. There was also an electric car charging station.

Oh and we went sailing with DW!

Saw Bill Gate's yacht too. It has a helicopter pad, just in case.

 Also spotted this sweet ride outside the center for wooden boats. Like a boss.

That basically concluded my adventures in seattle. Had a good time just hanging with Ian and eating like a goddamned king. Had a pretty rough ride home as I was pretty sick and had a runny nose and pretty terrible sinus pressure. Would not recommend riding across country with a cold. 

Solid trip, next time maybe I'll get to bring some more friends and we can rock out in a house boat. 

The end!

Jeepin'

Hey guys, where is that whole you were both west coasting blog post? Jeebus. Also sorry I couldn't video chat on the highway, I didn't get back until 2 AM and then I had to set up my desktop and then I fell asleep and then I was sick the rest of the week for whatever reason. So yeah.

Anyway I had a good day today. Here's the bullet points.

• Woke the fuck up.
• Was poopin' for too long so didn't make it to my first class.
• #senioryear
• LUNCH
• Went to my afternoon class.
• A buddy with a Subaru Impreza and I decide to go hooning in the state forest.
• Find some Honda in a ditch.
• Push that guy the fuck out.
• Receive copious thanks from Marc Antonio.
• Drive into the damn forest.
• Go twice as fast as the Impreza up the damn mountain while making a point to drift every damned corner.
• He may or may not have questioned my Jeeps abilities before we left.
• Get to the top.
• Watch Elliot immediately get the Subaru in a ditch. (not his car)
• Try and push it out.
• Succeed in pushing it into another god damned ditch.
• This ditch is much deeper.
• Get in the Jeep, start driving to Lowes.
• Drive the Jeep right off a god damned cliff.
• Drive the Jeep right the fuck back out, zero fucks given.
• Buy a chain at Lowes.
• Pull that fuckin' Subaru out.
• Go get some cheeseburgers to celebrate.

On the drive to the celebratory cheeseburgers I rolled the meter over in the Jeep. 

Happy Birthday buddy, I fuckin' love you.

So I might have taken a picture at 50 MPH, what you gonna do.

Musings

Got back at 4 AM from seeing a Muse concert in Cleveland. Hence the punny title. Appreciate what I have done. I hope you found it a-muse-ing.

PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN

Guess that means it happened.

It was a great trip, left at 1 PM yesterday, got their early, found our seats, had some expensive as hell stadium beers. Asked the lady at the bar there what the difference was between a Single Cocktail ($7.50) and a Super Premium Cocktail ($10.75). She said Patron. Most straightforward answer I've ever heard.

The show ruled with the lasers and the explosions and the leds and what have you. Muse is keeping a large number of electrical engineers employed. Everything is covered in leds, fucking everything. Like all the god damned things. At one point even Bellamy's eyes had monitors on them. Not to mention the pyramid of monitor thing you see there, which inverts itself and even covers the drummer over entirely. The amount of things that could go wrong that didn't is really kind of astounding to me. Their bloody road crew has gone ahead and made a rock show about as technically complicated as some NASA endeavors. Just because.

Then after the show we had to move with the mob back out into the streets of Cleveland to find our cars. This one group started pushing through everyone screaming "LARRY!" over and over again. Within a minute, the several thousand people in stuck in the hallways were all screaming for Larry. Where the hell is that guy? Fuckin' Larry.

Then we drove home. Now I'm back at Alfred and I've been handed a take home test, so yeah.

Also on an unrelated note, I'm enjoying the fact that Elliot's mom is Neil's unofficial StarTalk photographer. We just got handed some of her photos and were told to leak them to Reddit, to which I replied, "I can karma".

The Marden's of Beer

Well it's been a while since my last post.... Kudos to Tyler for keeping it real. 

So, a lot has happened since the end of January for starters most of February happened. I have been somewhat reluctantly getting through things for school. Pretty sure I have 4 written tests (including finals) between me and graduation, pretty excited about that. Nothing incredibly notable has been happening recently though, which is too bad. Also, with the advent of SnapChat I tend to take more pictures with my phone but they aren't saved. Oh but we did get some snow! There were some nuts snow drifts, see below. 

Got this water bottle from Analog devices earlier this year when I went down for an interview. Credit to Sam for a witty modification. I still use it everyday in the lab and I've only had a handful of people notice it without me pointing it out to them. 

Been working on a senior project report and getting better at technical writing a little. Also, I've been making at least one trivia night per week in the downtown Orono area. My buddy Josh is a trivia maniac and he some weeks hits nearly every trivia night in the Bangor area. His team is usually called "Quintanaroo" which I'm not a huge fan of. I made a team named "Four Score and Seven Beers Ago" which I think is much more fun. One week we won at this restaurant called The Family Dog and got a $25 gift card which we spent on pitches of beer this week, hooray beer! 

Speaking of beer, there is a store in Old Town called Tim's Little Big Store, where they have a huge table with loose bottles of beer that are slightly past the expiration dates (ever so slightly). You can assemble your own 6 packs of these out of season beers, $10 for 3 6-packs. At this point I'm pretty sure these guys are just loosing money and straight up promoting alcoholism. I've heard Tim's Store described as "The Marden's of Beer" and after a trip there this week I am inclined to agree. 

Went to an MSSM open house held on campus in Orono, Friedmonster showed up and a couple of Umaine freshmen who graduated from MSSM. Weird to not know the freshmen at all but they seemed like cool enough kids. Luke Shorty is a boss and Larry Berz may have single handedly inspired the entire room to attend MSSM or scared them off completely. If that's all it takes to scare them, then they probably shouldn't go though. I was impressed by the number of people who came out to support the MSSM but it was a little weird hearing parent's questions about their little Johnny's rooming situation.... Moral of the story, good things are happening up there but I have very little patience for silly overprotective parents. 

Anyways, I'm in Litchfield for most of the weekend where the pace of life is very, very slow. I am currently in eating mode. I don't know what it is but for the past couple weeks I have been constantly hungry, just never feeling full. Now is the time to change that, the picture below mostly describes my feelings. 

Currently watching the Maine High School Basketball tournament which is AWESOME. I never watch pro basketball but this tournament never disappoints, year in and year out. Proven by the recent Hampden vs. Lawrence game where Hampden pulled it out in on a last second buzzer beater shot from half court. All the games I've seen today have been tied at least a couple times in the 4th period and usually come down to a matter of about 5 points for a win. I think Ian and I once reminisced about how epic these games are. 

One more week till spring break, I'll have to start looking at places to live soon. Also, there are four tests (including finals) between me and graduation. The clock is a-tickin'. 

 

This past week: A Wedding, Smoked Eel, 3 Hangovers and a Neil Degrasse Tyson

I seem to be keeping myself busy on a whole lot of shit that isn't school work. Tonight I am locking myself in the observatory class room to force myself to be productive and after being here all day, I still haven't done much. I need a massive dose of "give-a-shit". I joke about senioritis but this semester I might need to get it looked at professionally. I just didn't go to class on Thursday because my PJs were comfy and outside was cold. I made a new bow from scratch instead. It's nice. Once it has a string I'll post pictures.

So last time I posted I said I had something big for next time. That is because I got a press pass to see Startalk Live with Neil Degrasse Tyson. The press pass means backstage access before and after the show. This is some pretty thrilling shit. So I went to NYC two weeks ago on a Thursday. Elliot, his mom and I had dinner with their social media guy before the show talking about what was wanted. I would take video, Elliot would shoot photography. They wanted us to video Neil going to the bar and making the drink of the night. Every night they do this they make a drink themed on the nights topic and they film the process between Neil and Bartender.

We got to the Bell House and went backstage to get our bracelets. When Neil arrived he gave Elliot's mom a huge hug and said "Stacey! My favorite photographer!" He then looked at me, realized he had no idea who I was and kept walking. Good enough for me! Then Jeff, the social media guy told us that something was weird. Elliot and I set up to video the drink creation when suddenly this other hipstery type guy shows up and starts setting up. Then Jeff tells us we have to put away our cameras. Apparently the venue booked their own guy to video and told StarTalk they couldn't use their own folk. Whacky. So I had to put my video camera away. We still got front row seats for the show and still had our backstage bracelets. Elliot told me to wait until after the show, we'll meet Neil. Elliot has done this two times prior and said that usually they get to hang out with all the StarTalk folk for a good hour or two after the show.

After the show we went backstage and picked up our coats from the couch. I was getting pumped to finally meet everyone (Michael Showalter and Questlove were the celebrity comic-types that night). Suddenly a bunch of dudes in really nice suits showed up and Jeff came over and told us that all StarTalk staff had to leave. Turns out they were some important donor types who naturally don't enjoy the company of common folk. So we left. Oh well, still a really amazing time, I can't even begin to complain. Plus Jeff is cool shit. He used to design RPG's at Marvel, writes his own cyberpunk novels, he is just plain cool shit.

The next day Nemo was baring down on Connecticut. We woke up an hour before the storm was predicted to start, but low and behold Nemo arrived early. No matter, not the first time I've had to race God (Irene was a bitch). We outran that bastard before he shut Connecticut down for a week. On the way back, at the request of my roommate Josh, we got off the highway and Jeeped our asses into the middle of the Catskills looking for a man we call The Eel Guy. He is called this because he makes a living smoking Eel and selling out of his cabin in the middle of the god damned woods. Cool dude, gave us a discount on the Salmon we bought if we promised to pray for the troops.

Then I got back to Alfred and my roommates and I suddenly realized that our broke asses could actually afford liquor for once. I don't remember much after that, though there are apparently some shirtless snow angels with my name on 'em.

Then this weekend my friend Ken who left Alfred last year and is an officer in the Army came to town with the intention of wedding his Russian girlfriend. So I got to go to a wedding and it was a nice ceremony (there were only like ten of us there).

And that is what I have been doing instead of my work. Now if you'll excuse me, these continuous charge distributions aren't going to solve themselves (that would be neat though).

Happy Valentines Day

Oh Right, The Blog

I am now back at Alfred which means I have tons of work all the time, except now most of it I'm making myself for Boffer and my newly found Dungeons and Dragons addiction. I didn't know how to D&D two  months ago and now I'm GMing a Firefly based campaign. Life is weird. At least the playbook has an entire chapter on cursing in Chinese. Very important.

So due to some cock-ups on my part I've had to drop my Math major, but life goes on. It is weird not having a math class though. Then again advanced Physics classes are essentially math classes so it's not that weird. Doing Advanced Electricity and Magnetism and Particle Physics this semester, so you know, I'll get my math. Don't worry. Also taking Piano and Islam in Politics because why the fuck not that's why.

Also spending an awful lot of time organizing a big event for Boffer this semester, the Civil War. I've convince a contingent of barbaric types from Alfred State to invade and then convinced my school's activities director that fighting in the streets won't do too much damage to the school. I'll be interested to see this one play out.

Haven't done too much since I've been back. But I got something big planned for later this week. If all goes according to plan, I'll have some interesting photos.