Kung Fu Brew

This past week has been great.  For the first time in four weeks I didn’t travel to Portland for work.  So last week I actually got some down time because I wasn’t busy tracking down materials, making calls, and catching up on sleep.  That meant focusing on my next project, my Halloween costume.  I had decided on making a Pac-Man costume and hopped on Google’s image search to find some examples of how others had accomplished my favorite yellow man.

…a full 3 hours later I had my design.  This isn’t because finding pictures of Pac-Man costumes is difficult, in fact they are on the first results page, but there are just certain things you do on the internet that prompt you to click a link, and then another link, and then another, until you’ve gone so far down the rabbit-hole that you can figure out how the page you are currently at even relates to where you started.  Google image searching is one of them, Wikipedia is another, and of course the best-of-class time sink, StumbleUpon.

On this particular rampage I started with Pac-Man and ended up with reading about the life of Chuck Taylor.  The link from Pac to Chuck is through Thundercats (Hoooo!).

I blurred his bits...it was disturbing

After seeing my childhood hero in chucks I got to thinking how many times I’ve seen these shoes in movies, or on musicians, etc and started looking around. Of course with a broad search topic like “converse in movies” you can essentially kiss a few hours goodbye. Toward the end of that string I hit this site: The Chucks Connection.

Elijah Wood has worn chucks in more movies than any other actor

This site’s creator has donated a lot of time to researching Converse shoes.  For 10 years he was been collecting information about chucks in movies and TV, along with personal stories and shoe lacing guides.  It’s really quite amazing how much time he has devoted to one item and it’s pretty interesting (well if you’re on the nerdy side, but lets face it, most people who don chucks are, self included).  I had no idea that chucks were so pervasive in media.  The Chucks Connection is what finally led me to the Wikipedia entry for Chuck Taylor where my time sink ended…for now.

All in all it was a pretty good day.  The Pac-Man suit got finished, a pretty incredible Halloween party followed, and I now know enough information about chucks to maybe come in hand someday on Jeopardy.  What is Charles Hollis Taylor? FTW!

I suddenly feel the need to eat some fruit

Making the move to Colorado was the most drastic thing I’ve done in my life.  Not to say that I haven’t made more “interesting” travels, but never have I removed myself so completely from my usual safety nets.  When you think of your life and the various forks that the path takes along the way, many of them are small diversions that can easily be looped back, but moving 1200 miles across the country affects everything.

I had been coasting through life in Austin.  I’ve had the same friends and same job for long time.  My life was more like a river that I was just tubing down, enjoying the view with a cold one in hand and an occasional rapid to keep things interesting.  Now that I’m on Mountain Standard Time I find myself realizing that everyday actions are shaping my future.  I thought, like many, that moving would provide a clean slate from which to build the perfect existence.  I’ve got the clean slate but the idea of rebuilding a group of friends and finding a new job is too daunting.  The idea that meeting someone new or getting a new job could irrevocably change my life prevents me from making new friends and finding a better job – what if I don’t like where it’s all headed.

Fortunately there have been enough distractions to not have to worry about all of this too much.  I’ve spent a month and half of the last three traveling for business and two of the weekends have been filled with people from Texas coming for a visit (more come please).  This last weekend Meaghan’s parents came up and we showed them around town.  It was a little difficult to be tour guides when we are still tourists ourselves.  While we may not know the best restaurants or shops, you can rely on the mountains to entertain guests.

On Sunday we drove over to Estes Park and then up into Rocky Mountain National Park.  The park contains the highest highway in the US and it goes straight up to the tundra above the tree line.  With Meaghan’s Mom in the backseat gasping at every winding corner, we drove up into the mountains to breathtaking views.  While it may have been 75F at the foot of the mountains, it was in the 30s at the top and windy.  It’s amazing that anything manages to live up there.

The ruggedness is what makes it so appealing.  I know that when it gets a little colder and the snow a little thicker, I’ll be wanting the challenge that the tundra provides.

So what does this all mean?  It means that currently I’m happy to distract myself from finding new friends and from finding a new job in order to get to know myself better and discover what challenges Colorado has to offer me.  I think I’ll be perfectly content with snowboarding, backpacking, cayaking, and rock climbing and hopefully along the way, direction will find me.

Yesterday was worthless, I can’t seem to get back into the grind.  I figured more coffee would be the cure only to end up so jittery that I couldn’t think straight.  During one of my distractions from actual work I read over some of my old diary entries.  It was strange to read a few of them, I have always thought of myself as being an independent person, not really following or idolizing anyone in particular, but I must say that looking at my entries, my bookshelf, my netflix rental history; one person dominates above all others…Henry Rollins.

If you liked Black Flag, or have seen his spoken word DVDs, then you absolutely must read some of his books.  The Black Coffee Blues series is a good place to start.  While I don’t recommend that anyone follow the Tao of Rollins to the T, the way he attacks life is inspiring.  If I could incorporate even a pinky’s worth of Rollins I’d be benching 250, finishing my first novel, and on a plane to Okinawa right now.

Vote for Obama

Oh and it will be my birthday too, so vote first and then do your part to stimulate the economy by purchasing me a nice present.

After a long hiatus, I’m back…we’ll see how long this lasts. I started this blog as more of an excuse to play with using a CMS than to actually blog.  Once all the buttons had been pressed, various CSS edited and plugins added, a nerd like me becomes bored and thus no more posts.  So with that, onto the first topic, why even blog…

Recently I have found my self inspired.  Slowly micro-blogging sites like twitter (ithangover) have gotten me accustomed to the idea of sharing my thoughts publicly and other blogs like Chris’, and various podcasts have made me want to take advantage of the free press that is the Internet before it becomes overly censored.  Plus, as long as everyone else is allowed to spew their mind garbage onto the intertubes, then I’ll do my part to end traditional writing and journalism.