Eurobound

My tickets for my trip to Euroland in September have been purchased! I'll be gone for two and a half weeks, which isn't really enough time, but unfortunately it'll have to do. I'll be in Spain for a week and half and then on to Slovakia for a week. Hopefully I'll slip in a few days in Vienna, as well....

Wanted: A Book as Good as East of Eden

I just finished East of Eden. Boy, what a book! If anyone is looking for a deep, intriguing, thoughtful masterpiece, look no further than John Steinbeck's classic. I am not exactly a big Oprah (Harpo is "Oprah" backwards!! ) fan, but this was her book of the year last year, so I might consider giving her props for that reason alone.

Someone please start reading this book. I am going to start re-reading it again (for full effect). I want to grow a ponytail and discuss this book over a cup of java with someone, so get on it!! This book is beyond words, you have to experience it for yourself....

Mental Drippings is a pretty funny website. Check it out!

Indiana: Well, Could be Worse....

This morning I woke up with a new challenge: No, not whether I can break my all-time record of Monday morning preparing-to-waste-a-week-of-my-life-in-Delaware time (15 minutes from wake-up to departure for Penn Station; Impressive, I know!). No, this week I'm going to Indiana for a new project. So instead of going to Penn Station, I was en route to the airport.

I arrived in Indiana only to find out that my coworker on my project, my manager, was in the hospital with a colon infection. I felt really bad for the guy (I've never met him) and hope he recovers soon, for his sake. It will cause a delay in the project, but that's the least of this guy's worries, in my opinion. Nonetheless, he insisted that I call him in the hospital...where I found his voice slow and slurred (thanks to the morphine he was high on). The project can wait, I hope he gets well soon!

Strangely enough, I found Indiana kind of serene. Maybe it's the quiet, open-fielded farms surrounding my hotel, the warm mild weather, or the birds chirping. I also have to say that I've come to terms with chain restaurants and strip malls. An epiphany, for sure!! I figure that it's easy for me to sit back and critisize the Walmarts for taking over the mom and pop shops, but isn't there value in the fact that Walmart (and the others) give less-educated people the opportunity to have health insurance, retirement plans, etc.? It's easy for me to critique them while my 401(k) grows and after my $10 visit to the doctor to have a few (possibly cancerous) moles checked out. So, I've come to terms of some sort with these places. I will continue to support the mom and pop shops as much as I can, but at least I'm not full of agony when I have to drive by a Walmart, Kmart, Target, and Home Depot all on one block.

An epiphany, indeed!

Welcome to Gmail

I have a Gmail account (jhaines@gmail.com). I was able to get an account thanks to Blogger, which is also owned by Google. But only active bloggers got the opportunity to sign up for an account. Finally I've been rewarded! And, since I had an account, I was allowed to give two other people accounts. So, I did. Well....turns out there is so much demand for a Gmail account that I could have made money off of this! Check it: Ebay and a new site, Gmail Swap. So, if you get an account, at least get something for it!

Also, please note my professional portrait in my profile on the right. I admit it was when I was young and.....mulleted.

Mullet Sighting

Napster Mullet at Subway captured in its element by Jeff Buxton. Thanks to the person who made the comment about the girl "napping" for the idea behind defining this genre of mullet,  

I Can See Clearly. Wait, No I Can't...

I went to the local optometrist yesterday to get my eyes checked out and fitted for contact lenses. I've been wearing glasses for a few years now and I've been curious to try out contact lenses so that I can actually wear sunglasses -- and be able to see -- for once. Well, it looks like I'll be out of luck...or out of money. My choice.

Apparently my eyes have a special "feature" (similar to Microsoft's "features by design"...a.k.a. software bugs ;o) that requires me to have contact lenses that don't move around on my eye. And, naturally, those contact lenses are about four times as expensive as standard lenses. In addition, this "feature" means that I won't be able to see as well out of my contact lenses as I can see out of my glasses since glasses will always be in the same physical position while contact lenses, even the rip-off pair that I would need, will still move a little bit. Maybe I should get lasik-ed and be done with it altogether. At least until they discover that everyone who's had it done will suffer permanent structural damage to the eye and will be blind...

The last weekend of May is Memorial Day weekend, which means VACATION! Now that I'm done (for now anyway) serving my sentence in the Delaware State Penitentary (also known as Citibank ;o), I'm being shipped off to Indiana. Just when I thought things couldn't get worse than Delaware, they pulled this rabbit out of the hat. But I'll keep an open mind about it since it's only a two week project. And the work might actually be interesting (imagine that!). Since I'll be in the vicinity, I'll spend Memorial Day Weekend in Chicago with some friends of mine. I look forward to seeing some of you again!

Last night I enjoyed the company of a family friend (Vicky Gibson from San Diego) at a very hospitable and delicious Italian restaurant called Bricco over in Hell's Kitchen. An evening with Vicky gurantees some entertainment, and last night was no exception! Great food and great company!

The New York skyline is approaching and beckons for me to shut down and prepare to say goodbye to the Amtrak train that I ride, or should I say "rode", to and from Delaware....

SOLD to the lady with the blond curly hair...

Well folks, you snooze, you lose. The window of opportunity for all of you that had one day hoped to own my lovely GTI that is (was) for sale has closed. The car has been SOLD to....my sister Summer! Thanks, Dad, for loaning her some of the transaction cash. Boy, that lump of cash is going to burn a hole in my euro-jeans pocket. I feel a three month sabbatical from work coming on....

Fun in the Sun(day). And Vacations.

You wouldn't know it by looking at my parched skin, but the weather has actually been quite beautiful lately in the city. This weekend was no exception. The humidity has been creeping up every once in a while, but I don't have any problem with that. Oh, other than for the small fact that I can't sleep at night. I really can't wait for the temperature to increase another 20 degrees (Celsius or Fahrenheit, take your pick) so that I can lower the hours of sleep I get a night down to the 1-4 range from it's current 6-12 (hey, weekends included) range....

Sunday, however, Apollo the Sun God was with us here in the city. It was probably in the 75-80 F. degree range and not a lick of humidity present. In other words, like every day in California :o/ . I realize now that one trully appreciates one's weather when one's weather's only consistancy is that it's inconsistent (If I used too many possessive (pro)nouns and thoroughly confused you, raise your hand).

Sunday was another volunteer day for me, so I spent the day with a bunch of kids from the Regent Housing Center up in Harlem again. Last month we went to the Space and Natural History museum, but this time I got to enjoy some time in Central Park and on a Circle Line boat tour of Manhattan's West Side and Liberty Harbor (aka Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the world's largest clock, and even Hoboken, NJ! ;^). On such a clear and lovely day, my only expectation was that I would get a nice little sunburn and hopefully contract skin cancer. Of course, as my previous mobile-phone blog states, it just wasn't meant to be.

In any case, I enjoyed my time with the kids again. Since my previous buddy Jeffrey wasn't there this time, I had a 10 year old Dominican girl named Carla to look after me. She was pretty darn mellow, as were her sisters. Her 9 year-old sister Elaine apparently has some sort of physical handicaps that cause her to walk a little slower than the others and she broke out in rashes/hives when she was exposed to the Central Park grass. But her sisters were like a mother to her, helping her out all the time...while I slept. Joking! But they were very caring for their little sister and it was nice to see that....

On my way out of Harlem after the day's events, I stopped by a baseball field where some teenagers were playing some baseball and I joined their game. I had a stellar day in the batter's box, hitting 2-for-3 with a couple RBIs and a reached-base-on-error-by-the-arrogant-shortstop. Not bad, even if I was hitting against a 12 or 13 year old pitcher :) . My fielding was a little sub-par at left/center/right-fielder/2nd/3rd-baseman. I made about four throwing errors to the first baseman, dropped a pop-up in short right-field, and booted a few ground balls. I guess I have some work to do on the fielding part of my game...

Saturday I didn't do too much. I headed out to Central Park and read some of my current book, East of Eden. At night, I had a brew at the local German restaurant pub and saw Troy, the new movie starring Brad Pitt. It wasn't too bad, but it definetely wasn't up to the standards established for epic-war-stories by Gladiator!

On the vacation front, I have a reservation booked for a round-trip flight to Vienna with a week and a half layover in Spain for September. I'll be visiting Alex in Spain and Roland Vas (the CD importer...at my expense ;) in Slovakia, as well as Leif in Vienna if Austrian Airlines doesn't decide that he needs to fly a plane out of Vienna when I'm there. Not having spent much time in any of those locations, it should be a great trip. Note to all of you global hoppers: If you book your flight as an "open-jaw" flight, you can pull off a layover in one location for a few days/weeks (like I'm doing in Spain) and use only one round-trip flight's-worth of points. How tight is THAT!

I AM the whitest

I AM the whitest man alive. I spent all of Sunday in the sun and my skin STILL glows in the dark...

Bill Cosby is on my

Bill Cosby is on my train tonight, sitting just a few rows away. Judging by the service crew on the train, he's a regular..

"So" sorry...

I am blogging from my phone for the 1st time. Anyway, I just realized that i use the word "so" a lot. So, sorry about that (D-O-H!)

Juliano's Mocha: I thought drugs were illegal!

The sun was shining, the skies were blue, and I'd just given $10 to a doctor to look at me for less than a minute and tell me that I need to go see a specialist for my cancer-prone skin. On such a wonderful day, why not stop by Juliano's on the way home and pick up a mocha to sip and enjoy before having to go to work? Seemed logical to me, considering how much ranting and raving my friends do about their mochas.

Bad Idea.

Those of you who know me know that my typical form of tongue lubrication is neither coffee nor soda, but water. And on those really really bad mornings when I don't want to be at work (pshea, like I ever want to be at work), I can have a Starbuck's frappachino or mocha and I'll be running strong within minutes. Caffeine is always there waiting for me with open arms when I need it, which is rarely. Just as it should have been on that jubilant Wednesday morning.

Instead, the caffeine I injested was waiting for me with a sledge hammer to the face! Unbeknownst to me, Juliano's has a reputation for making their mochas unbearable for people who neglected to eat a hearty breakfast beforehand. I mean, the surgeon general should require them to put this on their door and coffee cups because this coffee made me STONED it was so strong! I was so out of it for the next few hours that I couldn't eat lunch (my favorite meal of the day normally).

Most of you can probably imagine how I feel about sitting with a bunch of old white men wearing suits, mostly lawyers and sales people, listening to them talk on their cell phones loud enough for the whole train car to hear about how important they are and how critical it is that "we close the sale today!". But the caffeine put me in a utopian state, and I watched with interest as the lawyer in front of me drafted a letter to the plaintiff about "responding to high priority communication requests...etc.", all of it in legaleze (an English dialect). I was amazed at how smooth and swift the legaleze rolled out from his brain, through his hands, and onto the screen.

I felt like a Yoga guru for the rest of the day until I ate dinner, at which point I returned to normalcy....for better or worse!

Blogger (and Vacations) Rule!

Blogger, the Google organization that lets me post my random ruminations, has relaunched! So, hopefully you like the new template. Also, I should be able to blog on a more regular basis now that I can blog from my cell phone! Expect random blurbs...I mean blogs. Also, please note that you can now comment on my blogs if you are so inclined to do so. Just click on the "comments" link at the bottom of the post....

Let's go back to talking about vacations, one of my favorite subjects.
Vacation: NOUN: 1. A period of time devoted to pleasure, rest, or relaxation, especially one with pay granted to an employee.
2a. A holiday. b. A fixed period of holidays, especially one during which a school, court, or business suspends activities.

I am going to start formulating a list of places where I can devote time to pleasure, rest, or relaxtion, especially one with pay granted by my employer. I will add this to the side bar of my blog, so keep your eyes on it. If you want to be graced by my presence and your country/location is not on the list, I recommend that you let me know or else there's no chance of seeing me before I am grey and balding. Actually, make that just "grey"... :o/

Vacations

My vacation plans are in turmoil. I am planning on taking a few days off in August to go backpacking with the Haines clan somewhere in California. I believe that my sister is going to come with my dad and I and we're trying to get my brother to come as well, but it remains to be seen if they will all come. In fact, it remains to be seen if we'll go at all!! But I can safely tick off a week for that trip. One week down, three to go. I thought that my buddy Alex wasn't going to be doing a study-abroad in Spain, but now he IS! So, I would like to check out Spain...sometime, maybe in September. But I had already formulated travel contingency plans (like a true BCP professional) and was working on those. So some are going to need to be scrapped now or I'm going to have to cut back on the amount of time at each location. And, just for kicks, let's throw in the fact that I'm POOR now and couldn't afford my rent last month (which I can blame on my employers expense reimbursement policy). So here's what I'm considering today. Ask me tomorrow and everything might change ;o)

-- August: Backpacking
-- September: One week in Spain, one week in Slovakia, maybe Vienna as well
-- One additional week is up for grabs. I may use it for a.) random days off here and there, b.) Christmas / New Years, c.) a trip to South America, d.) a trip to Southern California to visit my brother and sister, e.) etc.

Disarray. Complete and utter disarray.

Spring Cleanup Day

Ahhh...what a productive weekend. Friday night was spent enjoying the beautiful weather at a couple of local happy hour joints, one of which was a French pad that's owned by a coworker's husband. I enjoyed a massive pot of steamed mussels in a tomato-basil-garlic soup-like concoction (sp.) . Scrumptious. But not with beer next time :oX.

Satuday's main event was NY Care's Spring Cleanup Day! I spent the day at Fort Green park in Brooklyn reconstructing a garden/flower bed area. We planted a tree, roses, and several other plants and reorganized the location of several plants and an anti-erosion Belgium-block border. Doesn't sound like much, but it turned out pretty tight when we were all done. I couldn't have done it without the lunch prepared for Cathy and me by Paul. Nicely done, Paul, but you're going to have to put that green thumb of yours to use next time...



Sunday was spent recovering my back and hamstrings. Other than my finger tips, this masculine body of mine doesn't get involved in much manual labor (including my brain, unfortunately). And, since Friday was payday and because Paul got a rental car for work this week, what better way to stretch out than to go shopping! We went to Woodbury Commons, supposedly the largest outlet mall in the country (hearsay!). I updated my wardrobe for Spring and unfortuntely used my right arm a bit too much -- reaching into my back pocket for my wallet :o| . But, I can't complain, I got some awesome gear. I'm still looking for some new Euro shoes, however....