Another sign of the apocalypse

Quick side note, this is post three hundred. Sweet.

A sad moment passed through in my life earlier this week as I walked into the break room at work. There was a copy of People magazine on one of the tables and on the cover was the guy from the Twilight movie. The dude with the freaky standing up hair and cracked out looking eyes. Yeah, him. So, big old picture of him and a headline about his love life and this that and the other thing. Not a big deal usually, but in the upper right hand corner of the cover is a little blip that said 'Walter Cronkite 1916-2009'.

I know that this is People magazine, but come on...does some teen movie star (who will probably never be heard from again after these twilight movies are done) warrant a cover story over Walter Cronkite's passing? The answer is no. There is no argument.

Surely if there were more reputable magazines around, there would be cover stories about Cronkite but alas...

mini writers block

I feel as though I have something to write about, but I don't. I can't keep enough consistent thoughts together to create a well rounded post.

Right now we are watching a Deadliest Catch special about the film crews getting use to being on the boats. It is basically guys on boats puking. It was fun. Kind of like being back in college.

I can't wait to get back home. Vacations are nice, but they never seem to last as long as they seem. I'll be home for eight days. Eight days away from Kansas and back in the Great Lake State. I am really looking forward to the bonfires while we are at the cabin. Just like fishing, bonfires are something that I think I almost took for granted while we lived back home. The oppertunity was always there.

We are flying into Detroit, so the trip doesn't just end with the flight, we still have to drive another five(ish) hours. The best part...it is with Chuck and Lauren. We haven't seen them since last October.

Three work days until vacation, and five days total until we leave.

Trip approaching

Our vacation home is coming up quickly. We fly out eight days from today. It will be very nice to get home. The trip I had in June just was not long enough. You can only cram so much into four days.

One thing that I really want to do while we are home is fish. I did not take advantage of the oppertunities to go fishing while I was living in Michigan. We did fish a lot, but it just seems like there were many times when we didn't go out but could have. Or maybe it just seems that way because I have only been fishing once in the past year.

Fishing isn't always about getting the fish. Sometimes it is just about getting out in the lake and just relaxing. Just having a great time. The middle of the lake is just about the most relaxing places I have ever been. I think that it is just the quite with no one else around. No phones, music, sounds of the city. Just silence, or the occasional bird song. And that is okay too. Unless it is foggy and a loon calls out. That is just chilling.

Best of the weekend

Here are a few pictures from the weekend camping trip. Some of my favorite pictures.

The sunset over the lake

A tree that is in the wrong place at the wrong time. The dirt is slowly eroding.

Schlitz!

Camp and working out

We got back from camping with some friends today. It was nice and relaxing. The weather was perfect for it too, it wasn't too hot if you were in the shade. Some more clouds would have been even better, but oh well. And we made fire! What is camping without fire?

I have been thinking recently about starting to swim again. I don't know why, I just started thinking about it. My brother has gotten back into it, and he has good reason to. He partook in an open water swim in Seattle. Which is great, it made me miss it a little. The only problem is that I don't have something like that to shoot for. It isn't like they have the open water swim of the Arkansas (that's pronounced ar-kan-saw, not ar-kansas) River. There are no larger open water areas in state in which to have said open water competitions.

So if I were to start getting into it, it would be just for exercise. And I think that once I were to get into it, it would start to get easier, but it is the whole getting started thing that is a big road block.

And that's the way it is (and forever will be)

Walter Cronkite died today. One of the greatest (or possibly THE greatest) news anchors ever is someone I never got to see bring me the news, but I have watched many many clips of his broadcasting career. The JFK assassination, the Martin Luther King assassination, the moon landing, announcing that the Vietnam War was unwinable. These moments are what he is famous for. He delivered the stories like no one I have ever seen deliver the news. He cared about every story, got his viewers invested and interested. There was a sense of comfort listening to him. The way I love listening to Papa (my grandpa if you have never heard me use that name) telling a story. Any story, it doesn't matter what it is about. I don't know what it is. It just.....is.

He brought the funk (news wise) and will forever be the greatest in his field. Walter Cronkite, dead tonight at the age of ninety two.

New blog

After my post earlier today about cheap beer, I have decided to write a new blog to go along with this one. This will continue to be more of a day in and day out blog, the other is for the experiment.

The Cheap Beer Experiment

Quest to buy cheap

I have no idea why, but I have started looking for cheap beer. Just to see how it is I suppose. It just came into my head one day, so I have decided to start documenting it. You get what you pay for, this is true, but it is also fun to check out some of these products. I have had my share of beers like Milwaukee's Best, and Natty Light, so I will skip those. They are pretty bad anyways.

The quintessential cheap beer I have found is Pabst Blue Ribbon. It is my favorite cheap beer I have ever come across. Before it regained fame as a cheap decent beer, I could buy a thrity pack for about twelve or thirteen dollars, but since then, the price has slowly crept up to fifteen or sixteen dollars. A sign of the popularity.

A few weeks ago, I bought a twelve pack of Hamm's for six dollars and fifty cents. You can barely buy a twelve pack of pop for that price. It tasted very watered down, but was still enjoyable. I unfortunately have recycled all the evidence of purchasing this beer (I think I will also post some pictures to go along with these posts.) so I may have to go out and buy some more.

The next purchase on my list is Schlitz beer. We are going camping this weekend (see previous post) and campfires, for me, have long been associated with drinking. Just sitting around and having a good ol' time. I remember hanging out with my sister and a bunch of her friends one summer when I was in college and they were all drinking beer and then bottles of Boone's Farm started getting passed around. Classic moment in campfire history.

So off I go to buy my next cheap beer.

Since forever...

For the first time in a very very long time, we are going camping. Just camping. We have done several float trips the past couple of years in which we get on canoes and go down the river and camp along the river. But that is different. There is an agenda. You have to make it to the end of the river by a certain time to be picked up by the outfitters. It is a lot of fun, but I always end up very tired at the end of the weekend.

Camping, you don't have that. You just get there and then relax. You want to go for a swim, you go swim. Want to hike, go find a trail. Want to sit around and read a book or watch a fire and drink beer, you can do that as well. Don't want to take a shower, you don't have to take a shower.

So, come Friday, we are heading to a camp ground with some friends to relax and get back to nature.

People watching

Author's note: I started typing this in Chicago while waiting to fly to Michigan, so it is a bit dated. However, it is still relevant. The reason it is a long time coming is that Andrea kept the lap top, on which this was saved, with her while she stayed home and I returned to Kansas.

I digress....

One thing that has interested me for a long time has been people. People watching seems to be in my family's genes. But I think that it is just our nature as people. Airports present prime targets for people watching. I just enjoy seeing what people wear.

You see the people that travel in comfort: jeans or sweatpants (for those who want to be extra comfortable), tee shirt, tennis shoes (or sandles in the summer time).

The professional traveler: dress shirt, dress pants, bluetooth headset, cell phone used to text other professional travelers.

Military people: self explanatory.

Skanky sorority girls and over dressed frat boys with their Hollister plastered too tight tee shirts.

The family with the screaming kid, the family with the quite kid (the former outnumbers the latter).

That is about it, at least that I have seen. I am sure that there are tons of others, but they are less frequently spotted than others.

A bad person?

Does it make me a bad person if I don't care about all the Michael Jackson media coverage?  Is it tragic?  Yes.  Do I really, deep down care?  No.  He was a great entertainer and changed a lot in the music industry, no one can argue that.  Once he fell off his rocker, I just stopped paying attention to anything he did.  

So when I heard the first reports about his death, I thought that it really was too bad.  Then a week passed, and another week.  I got fed up with it.  There are more important things going on in the world than his death, and it seemed that every time I would stop on the news channels they would be talking about it.  Why doesn't someone develop a television station or two dedicated just to music (oh wait...) to focus on the entire situation.  

I just want it all to go away, as bad as it sounds.  On top of my frustration there was a lottery for tickets to his funeral.  Are you fucking serious?  More important people have died (like Billy Mays!) and I don't recall there being a lottery system for their funeral.  There is something disturbing about that.  Is that what our society is coming to?  Surely I hope not.  

Man grilling time

At work yesterday, I was discussing with a co-worker what we were doing this weekend.  I have nothing to do because I don't have to work and Andrea is still back in Michigan.  So, in a joking manner, we determined that any time a wife or girlfriend or fiancee is out of town there has to be a 'Man Grilling Time'.  Man Grilling Time (or MGT) includes the following:

• Red meat for a meal (just red meat, no vegetables) and possibly potatoes
• Beer or straight liquor (most likely scotch or bourbon or whiskey)
• Grunting
• And, location permitting, a loin cloth or just plain nudity

So that last part was added as a fun little joke, but if that crumbles your cookie go nuts (ha, nuts).  MGT is along the same lines as the Man Corner at clothing or shoe stores.  The back corner where all the husbands go and punch each other in the junk, grunt to communicate, and piss all over each other to show male dominance.  The Man Corner was first brought to my attention by our good friend Marc while our wives were shoe shopping in Dallas.  Ahhh, testosterone.  Don't you just love it?

 So guys, enjoy some MGT the next time your lady is out of town.  Go to the closest liquor store and buy some cheap beer and go get an expensive steak from the butcher (if there is one close to you) and get your grill on.  

Work

I have been happy at work the past couple of weeks and I don't know why.  It is very strange.  I enjoy doing my job, but everyone has their days when they just don't want to be there.  I haven't had one of those in quite some time.  Scary.  I got past my 'burn out' phase right around the beginning of May and it has been improving since then.  

For those who don't understand the burn out, it is quite simple.  You dread going to work every day.  You also hate being at work every minute that you are there.  It usually last a couple of weeks and then you get over it.  For me, it has never been around the stressful time of the year, that is just the busy time.  Instead it ends up being a few months afterwards.  The simple solution to the burn out is to go on vacation, but we really haven't taken a big vacation since February.  So I don't know what it is.  

Today should have been one of those days when you hate being at work.  I went out for some drinks with friends last night and got home after 11:00 and had to be at work at six in the morning.  There was a lack of sleep, about four or five hours.  But still, I was in a decent mood.  I was really busy and behind for most of the day, but never was too stressed out about anything.  

Weird.