But now I've come back again...
...and posted at http://motownbilly.blogspot.com/

please come and visit me.


I've missed you.

I'm moving:
http://motownbilly.blogspot.com/

Alison and I are coming out of our spring illnesses just in time for finals week and then a 2 week road trip. We've got vague plans to meander our way south and west. We've got a couple of thumbtacks on the map, as it were, and we know we'll be ending up in Tennessee with the climax of Dollywood. Much, however, is up in the air. The general map has us driving about 3-3.5 hours a day, which allows for multi-day stops here and there without terribly long days to make up for it. We'll swing through Kentucky, where I'll visit the Maker's Mark barrel with my name on it (literally) and visit the homes of all our friends who live in Nashville but won't be there during our trip, but for the most part, we'll just go where the road takes us.
If anyone has any knowledge of places worth a visit (or websites that give details on local fairs/festivals/flavor) please do tell. Suggestions for on-the-road entertainment/road-trip success are also very welcome.

The egotistical part of me hoped we might win, the realistic part of me thought we'd at least make it to the final rounds. Nowhere in there was the get knocked out right away option, but sadly that's what happened. Much could be said about the crappy set-up of the tourney, but such is how it was.

After our ousting, our program (students and teachers alike) grabbed the bag lunches provided and left. We walked a few blocks to the closest dive bar and drowned our sorrows. I think it was the first time in decades there was anyone below retirement at this place, and they were quite thrown by us. A good time was had hanging out, and like I said the format really wasn't indicative of competency, but nonetheless it feels sucky to lose.

Philly went from cold to muggy in one weekend. This is the "seasons" that everyone purports to miss when they leave the east coast?

I've been one of 2 folks from my class selected to represent the program at the annual "Tech Bowl" competition between RT schools in the PA/NJ/DE region. If we place, everyone in our class will get extra days off of our final clinical rotation, so everyone's REALLY keen on our doing well. It's next Friday, so there's a week to review/cram 2 years worth of classes, on top of standard assignments/tests.
It's flattering, I guess, but past performance is no indication of future gains, and this goes against everything I've been led to expect about the academic reward system, where doing well means having to work less. Instead, I'm now casting about for coffee shops that stay open late as when I'm at home the temptation to reclaim my well rested place in the fat of the bell curve grows overpowering.

16 Pretty Breakfast Club Candles

Senior Dinner Dance, 1996

That hand on my thigh, like all things in high school, was platonic.

On Tuesday I finally got a haircut, almost a year's worth of shag cut away.
The next day, rather than cutting the bread, I sliced open my pointing finger, requiring my first trip to the ER (for my own emergency needs) since college. There's 7 stitches of truth to that Sampson story.

This weekend it got up to 60, but then it snowed 8 inches and now it's in the 20s. Alison and I joined up with our neighbors to plant tomatoes and herbs into an indoor starter kit in anticipation of final frost, but I'm not sure spring's coming this year.

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Inspired (eventually) by Roo:

5/8/07 San Miguel De Allende (Mexico)
Whuh. Such a heavy nap that even the rooster thinks it must be daybreak. That and the steady tam-tam-tam (bigger than a tap, smaller than a bam) of the adjacent (surely) stonemason, whisking of sweeping and some distant organ music (plus the occasional truck rolling past) are the sounds I awake to.

Alex [Someone I met in my hostel dorm room that morning] invited me along to a weekly market that's held outside the walking, gringo side of town, and we got along well. The market wasn't quite the assault on the senses that other markets can be, most likely because being just once a week it doesn't get the chance to build up an attack. Just like [Alison and I] had forgotten that we wanted to stay in a local hostel, I hope to be better about visiting our local flea markets on my return. Not necessarily to buy anything, just to enjoy the chaos/contrast of it all. Patterns are so easily formed, and it's very true that travel is a state of mind, something that you can work to achieve right at home (just as you can avoid it if you travel in certain stereotypically American but more likely just rich/isolated ways). To prove the point, in a town so jam packed with gringos, I didn't see a single one besides us at the market. While Alex said that there can often be more [of them] it still shows that many moving here aren't coming for "Mexico" but for something else. This town has so many gringos of a certain age with purebred dogs, I'm really reminded of my Uncle Gordon.

But, to Alex's point, just as you can create your travel at home by working to change patterns here and there, you can find travel or "authenticity" (whatever that is) even in the midst of gringoland. And at the market, amidst the cheap underwear, fresh fruit and veggies, rusty springs, random TV remotes, fish (aren't we in a desert?), baseball caps, etc., we ate ourselves some fine cactus gorditas and the BEST horchatta I've ever had in my life. I didn't know it could be like that.

On the way back we were told the bus we got on would take us back to the city center. It took a long way to almost but not quite do so. It worked out, though, because we got to see more of the city that way, including the part that the Mexicans live in - not so fancy. Just another part of the mixture of Mexico, which fits as that's how this country was formed. Clowns got on the bus, which also may be indicative of something, but I have no idea what.

So I wouldn't have to deal with this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/health/05chen.html

bad news: the hospital has put the new tech aide job on hold indefinitely
good news: I started a weekly drawing class and it rocks.

There's a two hour delay for school! Haven't had one of those in a while, I didn't even think of it as a possibility. It's no snowday, but considering I got the news when I was at the door with my hat and snowpants on, it's a pretty sweet surprise.

Not sure what I'm going to do with the reprieve. Maybe just sit here and pet the cat, who seems pretty happily thrown by the change in pattern. (I picked Fanta up this past weekend when I went to Chicagoland to visit Alison - turns out her 'rotator cuff reaggravation' was a dislocated shoulder*.) Or perhaps finish the art project I got into last night (which had me promising myself as I lay awake in bed well into the night "no more arts & crafts after 9PM, you get too excited").

Either way, I'm excited for the rare day that I get to finish my coffee.

*prompting my father to suggest the Alison corollary to Murphy's Law: If something can go wrong, it will...to Alison

If you've got any old magazines lying around, bring them to your local hospital for them to put in the waiting areas. Because if you don't, someone else will...

Indian food was just delivered to me, sent by Alison who wanted to take care of her sicky but was too far away to do so.

Included in the meal is an order of "barfi". She didn't know what it was, but couldn't resist ordering it. I have to say, it's quite onomatopoeic. But I feel hugged nonetheless.

mass amounts of dayquil and tea got me through the day much more easily than I expected when I woke up this morning. I'm planning to be taking this semester's two allotted 'sick days' off to go see my premiere next week so I was really reluctant to take a sick day unless absolutely necessary. I have another floater day to use, but I'd rather save that for the summer, or at least for when I'd have some company while staying home sick. Alison was supposed to come back from chicago yesterday, but the poor kid reaggravated this old injury and now who knows when she'll be up for flying.

But while at the hospital, the manager told me that he put in a new hire requisition to take me on as a part time per diem worker for the rest of the school year ("but don't tell any of the other students"). I'm pretty psyched about that: while I want to go straight into MRI, the hospital employment history, regardless of focus, I think will help distinguish me from the pack once I'm done with school.

Ok. My head feels like a basketball so I'm going to zone out until it's time for my 8pm nyquil.

from my brother (thanks, Joe!)
http://valleywag.gawker.com/5124184/the-russian-bear-slashes-a-social-network

here's a list of ways to do the back-up, no promises as to their worth.
http://chipuni.livejournal.com/620260.html

Wrestlers are athletes for those who find the human-interest stories part of the olympics to be just as important, if not more-so, than the question of who's "better". Modern day gladiators give as much of themselves not just as much as any traditional sports athlete, but also as much as any artist pushing themselves to burn brightly just a moment longer (a la Rourke himself). Finally, these oft belittled and scorned Jackasses as by Joseph Campbell and their fans have a movie of our own. Raging Bull mixed with Bull Durham crossed with Sunset Blvd ("I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. MacMahon").

I can't write a better movie review than was written by Mick Foley. Mick was my favorite wrestler as soon as he debuted on WWF back in 1996 (though his career spanned decades prior to that point, including years in Japan fighting matches like the "hardcore" match in the movie). He is someone who can entertain and tell a story with the written word just as well as he did with his body and his mic skills (which was pretty damned well).

Be careful: when he says Spoiler Alert, he means it. Stop reading at that point if knowing exactly how it will end (both in action and in cinematography) will bother you.

http://www.slate.com/id/2207076

- When walking down the street you're not accosted quite so agressively by the dogpoo-like smell of ginkgo tree fruit

- Fanta won't leave the radiator to greet us at the door anymore

- The tree out back is positively teeming with noisy out-of-towners taking a break on their way south (damned foreigners!)

- It's snowing