New Music

KT Tunstall - Black Horse & The Cherry Tree - Whoo Hoo. Whoo Hoo. She's got a wicked new sound that I love.

Jack Johnson - Upside Down - From the Curious George movie soundtrack. I really need to add some more Jack Johnson to my music collection.

Beyonce & Slim Thug - Check On It - From the Pink Panther movie soundtrack. I know, I know, It's a little "pop-py", but I like it anyway :)

Nelly Furtado - Hey, Man!, ... On the Radio, I'm Like A Bird, Turn Off the Light, Well, Well - I just bought this album last week and I love it. Thanks for the recommendation Chris!

Engineering vs. Support

I remember when I used to get paid to write code for a living. I liked my job back then. Recently I feel like I am working in support rather than engineering. A couple of months ago, management decided to have engineering spend more time responding to issues in the newsgroups. They thought that it would be a good idea to make the whole development team more accessible to our customers. Generally, I agree that this is a good idea.

It becomes a bad idea when people start taking issues outside of the newsgroup and contact you directly for every little issue that they encounter. I feel like my entire day today has been spent dealing with customer issues. Again, I would like to re-iterate that interfacing with customers is not a bad thing. But we have an entire team of support people whose job it is to do that. As a "for instance", on an average day, I send and receive about 10 emails through my work account. Today, I have already surpassed 40 emails and the day isn't even over yet.

I want my old job back!

Fun in the Snow

I had an awesome time in West Yellowstone this weekend. The snow was fresh, deep and fluffy. In fact I think that it was snowing the entire time that we were there. Unfortunately, none of us got a ton of photos. We were all too busy riding. The ones that we did get are posted here.

Rough Start
Things got off to a bit of a rough start on Friday morning. As we pulled over to the side of the trail to rest I spotted a big park down below us in a valley. It was inaccessible from our current location but I figured that there would be an opening further up the trail. While the other guys were resting, I told them that I was going to scout ahead to look for a place to get down into the valley.

I found a makeshift trail that led into the valley less than half a mile from where the group had stopped. I pulled off of the trail so that I could swing the sled around and rejoin the group but managed instead to get stuck in the snow. Ironically I was less than 50 yards off the trail, but was obscured from plain sight behind some pine trees. By the time that it occurred to me that I should go wait for the group on the trail it was already too late; they had sped by hoping to "catch up" with me further up the trail.

In the meantime, I was stuck in snow that was chest deep. After spending about half an hour trying to dig myself out, I finally gave up and flagged down a guy on Ski-Doo that had a tow rope. We busted his nylon strap twice before we were able to finally successfuly exhume my sled from it's snowy grave.

The whole time that I was stuck, I felt horrible for being so stupid as to go off on my own. I imagined that everyone else was worried sick and had spent the last hour in search and rescue mode. I discovered when I met back up with them at the condo later that morning that they had never even stopped to look for me. They had just assumed that I was cruising ahead of them on the trail.

I was uncertain whether or not I should be flattered that they were so convinced of my competency that they couldn't possibly have imagined that I had run into trouble or if should be offended by the fact that they were essentially indifferent to the fact that I had gone missing. I'm going to go with flattered :)

Slow Learners
We apparently didn't learn our lesson from my little expedition in the morning. History managed to repeat itself on our afternoon ride. We weren't half an hour into the ride when we came upon a clearing in the snow off the trail. Rand was in the lead at the time and questioned me via hand signals (we couldn't hear very well over the sound of the sleds and with helmets on) which way we should go. I signaled back to him that we should stop and play for a while.

Apparently, either Rand or I were not fluent in snowmobile hand signals (Oh, who am I kidding, I was making the shit up as we went) and Rand mistook, "Let's stop and play here", for, "Let's forge our own trail through the woods instead of following the main trail". So, as the rest of us began to play in the deep snow off the trail Rand vanished into the distance. Fifteen minutes later, when the rest of us were tired of playing, we finally noticed that there was one less person in our group.

This time we were a little more coordinated in our search effort. We split up into pairs so we didn't get further separated. One group tried to follow the trail through the woods and the other group waited back on the original trail. When that plan didn't produce any results, we switched up and sent one group up the official trail while the other stayed back and waited. Just when I was convinced that we were going to have to admit defeat, Rand came buzzing around the corner on his sled.

It didn't take a third incident to teach us to always ride in pairs.

Trying to Kill Ourselves
We all managed to survive the weekend despite our best efforts to kill ourselves. There were a number of "accidents" but fortunately no injuries. I think that I won the prize for the most violent spill. It was on our second day of riding and we were off the trail in a little park. The park was separated into a higher and lower area by a medium sized hill.

I was acting more on impulse than forethought as I decided to go cruising up the hill at high speed. I mean, if there's a hill you have to go gunning up it, don't you? The only problem was that my faceshield was starting to fog up a little bit and I really couldn't make out the terrain in the snow. I knew where the hill was and I figured that as long as I knew that I would be OK. What I missed, however, was the little 2 foot dip right before the incline of the hill.

I hit that dip at about 40 mph and was sent tumbling over the handlebars. I wish somebody had captured it all on video because I imagine that I must have looked pretty funny doing somersaults through mid-air. Fortunately I landed pretty clean and didn't hurt anything. My snowmobile was undeterred by the lack of a rider and continued it's way up the rest of the hill without me.

Gunning For Free Gas
It turns out that our snowmobiles came with a free tank of gas for every day that we rented them. The only hitch was that you had to have them back to the rental place by 5PM in order to get them refueled. At 4:30 on Friday afternoon we were on our way back from the Lionhead Loop and about 30 minutes away from town. As we pulled over to rest, Dale informed me about the free gas rule and taunted me that if I could get us back by 5PM that we would all get free gas in our sleds.

I think Dale came to regret saying that, because no sooner had the words left his mouth then I hopped back on my sled, fired up the engine and went tearing off down the trail. I was hauling ass. I was taking corners so fast that I had to hang my entire body off to one side to keep the tracks on the ground. It's not so much that I cared about free gas, but I wasn't going to back down from a challenge :) 15 minutes later the entire group pulled into the rental place with plenty of time to spare.

Home Sweet Condo
The second best part of the trip (second only to the snowmobiling itself) was the place that we were staying at. I had managed to find a condo to rent for the weekend. I had pretty high expectations just based on the photos on the website, but the actual unit far exceeded my expectations. It's not that it was very fancy or extravagant but it was just very homey and comfortable.

There were beds for 8 people, a full kitchen stocked with dishes and cooking utensils, a pantry partially full of food left by previous occupants, a comfortable living room with an awesome leather sofa and even a washer and dryer. We didn't really use the washer, but the dryer was certainly handy for drying out and warming up all of our snowgear at the end of the day.

The biggest benefit of the condo was having the kitchen. We had originally planned on eating out for most of our meals, but the kitchen was so convenient that we ended up eating nearly every meal in. I became the unofficial cook (a title that I usually welcome) and prepared both breakfast and dinner for both of the days (Dale helped on the second night) that we were there. The best part about accepting the unofficial title of cook is that it left the official title of dishwasher open for someone else :) Fortunately, both Jay and Dale were pretty good about accepting that title.

Given my recent trend of healthy eating, meals were prepared with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. Although noone really complained, several of the guys found it rather amusing that a bunch of guys on a snowmobile trip in West Yellowstone were eating things like steamed sugar snap peas, fresh broccoli, fresh cut cantaloupe and red grapes. It may very well have been the most healthy guy's weekend in the history of guy's weekends :)

If you need me, I'll be in Montana

West Yellowstone, Montana that is... I'm heading up for the weekend with some friends to do some snowmobiling in one of the most beautiful snow covered places on earth. After a very hectic week of finalizing our plans, as of about 15 minutes ago, we have finally settled on who's driving, where we're meeting and when we are leaving. Thank God that's over. Although we are only going to be gone until Sunday, I think that I have packed enough gear to move to Montana indefinitely. What exactly do you need an Xbox, a barbecue grill, and 2 bottles tequilla for on a snowmobile trip? I'm not sure, but I'll let you know :)

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

I started piano lessons last night at Art City Music Academy in Springville. It's something that I've been meaning to do for years but have perpetually put off. I even bought a keyboard (actually it was a gift from Dad) several years ago with the intention of learning.

It was kind of a terrifying experience to start something new like this. It seemed like such a good idea in my head as I imagined myself learning to play. But as I sat in the lobby waiting for my lesson to start, listening to kids not even one quarter of my age playing much better than I will probably ever be able to, I couldn't help but ask myself, "What the hell am I doing here?".

Fortunately, once my lesson started some of the fear melted away. My teacher, who is 7 years my junior, told me that I was learning much faster than most of the 5 year old kids that he normally teaches. Phew! What a relief :) Actually, once we got started it was kind of fun. We were largely covering notes and rhythm but I still had the opportunity to pound out a few short melodies as I was learning the keys.

I think that my biggest challenge is going to be whether or not I can get into a habit of practicing regularly. I have heard from several people that success in learning to play comes not from the lessons themselves but from the amount of practice that you get. So, as you all see me over the next couple of months make sure to ask me if I've been practicing lately.

Blazing My Own Trail

I did some snowshoeing in American Fork Canyon today. It was in an area that I had never been to before near Tibble Fork. The official trail was actually a cross country ski trail. and there were signs asking people without skis to stay off of the groomed trail. I took the signs to heart and decided to just blaze my own trail through the snow. That is what snowshoes are for after all, isn't it? The snow was probably five or six feet deep and, on average, I was sinking about a foot with every step that I took. On top of being really beautiful, snowshoeing is much better exercise when you get off the trail.

A Night at the Opera

I went to the opera for the first time in my life on friday night. I saw Puccini's, "La Rondine" (The Sparrow) at Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City. The music was beautiful; there were spots where it gave me chills.

The opera was sung in Italian and super-titled in English. My only complaint was that we were seated so far to the left that to read the super-titles (which were hung from from the underside of the mezzanine) you had to shift your focus away from the stage. This made it difficult to just get lost in the music. I was tempted a couple of times to just stop reading the super-titles, but in the end I was just too curious to know what was going on.

The heroine, Magda, is the kept woman of a rich and powerful man, Rambaldo. She dreams of finding true love. In an attempt to relive one of her fond childhood memories of being in love, she sneaks out of her house dressed as a grisette (a working class woman) and goes to Bulier's, a parisian night club. At Bulier's she is accidentally thrust into the arms of Ruggero, the son of a friend of Rambaldo. Although they come together accidentally they quickly fall in love and run off to the French Riviera together.

Magda never tells Ruggero anything about her past or who she really is. Just as Ruggero is (basically) proposing to her and speaking of their future together, Magda decides that she can't bear to live the lie anymore. But she also knows that if she were to tell Ruggero the truth that it would devastate and humiliate him. So, she tells Ruggero that they simply can't be together and that she must leave him for his own good. The opera ends with Magda leaving Ruggero; both of them broken hearted.

I was pretty disappointed by the ending. I'm not one of those people that needs a happy ending, but this just felt like the tragedy was invented. Ruggero was basically telling Magda that he didn't care about her past and that there was nothing that she could tell him that would make him not love her. I guess that the real tragedy was that Magda didn't have enough trust in Ruggero's love for her.

Four Year Old Wisdom

I was testing a bug yesterday that required me to load my personal Outlook data file from home. My personal file is a good test case because it is old, large and contains several thousand email messages spanning several years. It's been years since I have actually run Outlook at home (I prefer Thunderbird now), but I still have basically every email that I sent or retrieved between the years of 1997 and 2002 in an Outlook data file.

The moral of the story is that when I opened up the data file, I realized that I had started typing a reply to an email that Holly sent me 4 years ago that I never actually sent... or at least I don't think that I did anyway. The message was still sitting in my drafts folders. Here is the [partial] content of that message:

[...] Although, I wouldn't give it too much consideration, considering that "utter disappointment" has become a common response from me as of late.

That previous statement reminds of a bumper sticker that I saw recently. It read, "If you're not pissed off, you're not paying attention". I think that I've been paying way too much attention lately :) Actually, in all seriousness, I thought that it was a pretty clever saying. It ties in nicely to some recent thoughts I've had regarding the "secret to happiness". My theory really isn't earth shattering or even original, it basically boils down to, "ignorance is bliss". Of course ignorance doesn't always look like ignorance. On a good day, ignorance can look a lot like a busy schedule. The secret to happiness then, is to fill up your schedule with so much crap that you don't have time to "pay attention" and get pissed off. I suppose a more positive spin on the saying might be, "If you're pissed off, get off your ass and do something" :)

New Toy

I finally broke down and bought a black 30 GB iPod tonight. It's amazing that I held out this long. If I continue to travel as much as I have been lately, I'm sure that I will get plenty of use out of it. Right now, I'm sitting in front of my computer typing this while listening to my new iPod. That is particularly ironic considering that the speakers that I have hooked up to my computer are exponentially better than the little earbuds that come with the iPod. But, I have a new toy and I must play!

Wisconsin Weekend

I just got back from spending the weekend in Wisconsin. I alternated between visiting my friends Chris and Shannon in Madison and Holly in Milwaukee. Despite a lack of grandiose plans (we didn't climb any mountains or swim across any oceans) the weekend was still a lot of fun. Chris and Shannon are the type of friends that are fun to hang around even when we aren't doing much of anything. We did get out for a couple of short walks at Parfrey Glen and Natural Bridge State Park, played several hands of cards, ate good food (God Bless the Mammoth Muffins), watched Transporter 2 (laughably implausible but still entertaining) and went to the Milwaukee County Zoo.



Holly has been fighting a cold for the last week or so and was losing the battle on Saturday night. We cancelled our plans for Saturday night so that she could get some much needed R&R. By Sunday she was feeling better and we went to watch several of her friends play volleyball and then joined them for dinner afterwards. It was a lot of fun to finally meet a bunch of the people that I've heard her talking about for the last couple of months. I imagine that her friends had heard a thing or two about me as well and I could feel myself being silently judged (one her friends, Angie, wasn't so silent), but I think that I made a good impression... or at least good enough :)

It was also kind of cool to see Holly's "thing". Wow, that sounds kind of dirty when you read it the wrong way :) By her "thing" I mean league volleyball. Even though she wasn't playing on Sunday night, I still got a nice introduction to the atmosphere, the sport and the people. Now I understand a little better what it is that she does with her life several nights a week. There are much worse things that you could do with your life; it looked like a lot of fun. Hopefully the next time that I am in town I will actually be able to see her play.

Jogging

I went jogging for the first time in a very long time this morning. I'm still not sure what came over me. I got up, went down to the basement to workout like I normally do, sat down on my recumbant exercise bike and I even started to pedal as if I was going to do my normal workout. And then all of the sudden, I got off the exercise bike, went back upstairs put on some warm clothes and headed outside. Before I even fully realized what was going on my body started to break into a jog. It was a little frightening, but the most frightening thing of all was that I kind of liked it.

I didn't exactly pick the best day to pick up jogging; it was 20 degrees this morning and there was ice on the sidewalk. But still, I persisted. Like I said, I'm not sure what came over me.

I thought I was in pretty good cardiovascular shape before this morning. I haul ass on my exercise bike, and I think that I was a force to be reckoned with on some of the hiking trails in Hawaii... I may breathe a little heavy but I have pretty good stamina. But for some reason jogging was just kicking my ass this morning. I would jog a block and then have to walk a block. I think that I have found myself a new challenge.

2005 Highlights - A Year in Pictures

I was going to write a long-winded year in review post, but I decided instead to just let the pictures do the talking. I took about 1200 photos this year with my digital camera as I travelled around the country and the world. Fortunately for you, I reduced this down to just 63 photos and set them to music. Here is the video, or if you prefer you can view the pictures here.

A Negative Vocabulary

I've noticed something disturbing in my writing as I've been working on my memoirs from my Hawaii trip over the last couple of days. I seem to have a much greater vocabulary for describing negative experiences than I do for positive experiences. As I look back over some of the writing that I did (that I haven't published to the blog yet), I spend several paragraphs detailing every aspect of some trivial negative experience, but then will only dedicate a few short and simple sentences to the positive experience.

That would be OK if the amount of writing dedicated to any given experience was proportional to the relevance of the experience. The problem is that the general positive experiences that I had over the course of the vacation exponentially outweighed the couple of trivial negative anecdotes. But you might not guess that from reading what I've written so far.

In the movie, Orange County, John Lithgow plays father to a son who is considering a career in writing. He asks of his son, "What do you have to write about? You're not oppressed. You're not gay." He seems to be implying that there is a natural connection between writing and bad experiences. Is this true? Is it easier for everyone to write about negative experiences than positive ones?

The Snowshoeing Trip That Wasn't

All week I've been meaning to call ahead to the ranger station at Bryce Canyon to make sure that there was going to be enough snow for our snowshoeing trip this weekend. When Friday came and I still hadn't called, I decided that it wasn't worth it anymore. I already had hotel reservations at Ruby's Inn and it was too late to cancel them even if there was no snow on the ground. Fortunately, I was with an adaptable group of people who were happy enough just to go hiking and sightseeing in Bryce when we discovered that there was very little snow on the ground.

Click here for more pictures

Of course I was familiar with Marci and Steve G. but this was my first time meeting Brenda and Steve L. who were both friends of Steve G. They were both a lot of fun to hang out with. Steve L. was kind enough to drive us down to Bryce in his pimped out Tahoe.

We did a short (roughly) 6 mile hike that started from Sunrise Point, walked along the rim to Sunset Point, descended into the canyon on the Navajo Loop Trail, continued through Queen's Garden and back up to Sunrise Point. Well that's how it would have gone anyway had we not decided in a moment of bravado to go off trail to hike to some formations that we could see in the distance.

Although Marci and I led the charge, Steve G. quickly passed us up and disappeared over the horizon trekking up and down the rolling hills. Eventually everyone else ended up stumbling onto an old horse trail, but we had already lost Steve. We spent a couple of minutes shouting into the canyon and hoping to hear Steve's response among the echoes of our voices. After a little bit of backtracking on the horse trail I spotted Steve G. in the distance standing atop aforementioned rock formation. I signaled, he descended, our group was reunited, and all was well.

All was well except for the fact that now we were kind of lost and disoriented. Of course, we could just backtrack up the horse trail, but what fun would that be? We voted and "pressing on" won out over "backtracking" three to two. A mile and a half of trail later we finally reconnected with the Queen's Garden Trail and then ascended back up to the canyon rim.

Succumbing to the Forces of Evil

I finally gave in and bought a cell phone when I got back from my trip to Hawaii. After borrowing someone else's cell phone for the 5th time in two months it occurred to me that I really just need to get my own. I wasn't quite ready to commit to a monthly fee or a 2 year contract, so I just picked up one of the T-Mobile To Go phones and bought 1000 minutes of service. I figure that if I use it enough over the next couple of months that I may upgrade to a regular cell phone plan and get one of the really cool new phones.

My Hawaiian Vacation - Day Two: Christmas Day

Check out the video, and the pictures.

We woke up early Sunday morning to watch the kids open their presents. For some ungodly reason Church was at 8:00 in the morning and was followed by a baptism that the family needed to attend. So, the plan was for the kids to open and play with their gifts from "Santa" before Church and then wait to open everything else up after Church... sometime around noon. Talk about cruel and unusual treatment of children :) Jaron and Kayla seemed to be so excited that they were bursting at the seams as they came downstairs to the living room where all of the presents were. It's always fun to watch kids on Christmas morning.

While Mom and the Muh's went to church, I decided to check things out a little. Jenni was letting me use her car while she was visiting in Utah. It was actually a pretty sweet deal considering that she drives a BMW. It's not brand new but it was still pretty nice and was a lot of fun to drive. It kind of made me think about trading in my Cavalier.

My first order of business was to find a) an internet connection and b) coffee. I figured that I could satisfy both of those needs at a Starbucks. I don't know why I'm so nuts about having an internet connection. On any given day it's not like I expect to have something really important arrive via email that couldn't wait a couple of days. But being connected has just become such an integral part of my life that I feel really uncomfortable when it's not there. I think of it kind of like indoor plumbing. You don't spend a lot of time thinking about how great it is to have indoor plumbing until you stay at a place where you have to take a shit in an outhouse.

The other reason that I wanted to find an internet connection was that my laptop had recently been re-imaged and I forgot to put my mapping software back on it. I use the mapping software pretty regularly when I travel to plan out all of my trips. I wasn't sure if it was going to be as necessary when I was travelling on an island as opposed to riding through the western United States, but I still felt uncomfortable without it.

It didn't take long to figure out that there was a flaw in my plan. It was early on Christmas morning. Nothing was open, not even Starbucks. Still I parked in their parking lot and managed to pick up an open wireless network from a nearby residential area. I've said it before and I'll say it again: God bless unprotected wireless networks :)

I wasn't able to download very much of my program before it was time to pick Mom up from Church. She didn't want to stay for the baptism, so I ran her home. I was going to head back to the Starbucks to resume my download when it occurred to me: I'm in Hawaii... what the hell am I doing sitting in the parking lot of a Starbucks? With my newfound clarity, I pointed the car in the direction of the beach and other tourists in Waikiki and started to drive.

I didn't actually make it all the way to Waikiki before I started to worry about the Muh's getting home from Church and making the kids wait even longer to open their presents. It was still a nice ride. It felt incredible to just be driving down the freeway with the windows rolled down and my arm hanging out of the window. I love the feel of the sun beating down on me. It was a gorgeous day.

When I got back to Mililani, Tina and the kids were home, but Ernest was still wrapping up some things at church. After Ernest got home, we finished opening all of the presents. I didn't think that I was going to have many presents considering that most of my presents had already been mailed or otherwise delivered to Utah, but there were still a few presents for me under the tree. Mom gave me an international cookbook and Tina gave me a copy of the "Tao Te Ching". The copy of the Tao Te Ching that Tina gave me actually has the original chinese text opposite the english translation. Even though I don't read Chinese, I still thought that was pretty cool :)

My luggage finally showed up at around four in the afternoon. I hadn't showered or changed clothes in the last 24 hours, so I was pretty glad when things arrived. Of course, rather than shower at that point, I thought it would be an even better idea for me to go to the beach and jump in the ocean. Earlier in the day when I was drving around, I had the brilliant idea of going to the beach at least once every day that I was in Hawaii. I mean, that is why you come to Hawaii after all, isn't it? To soak up the sun and salt water?


Despite the fact that the beach is normally not a Sunday activity, Mom accompanied me to Ko'Olina, which is one of her favorites beaches. Ko'Olina is a collection of manmade lagoons. They are very pretty but feel kind of artifical (since they are). She just walked around the beach while I jumped in the water. It felt great to submerse myself in the sea. I had forgotten how much I love swimming and floating in the ocean.

My Hawaiian Vacation - Day One: Travelling

Check out the video, and the pictures.

It all started on Christmas Eve day around noon. It was such a beautiful day in Utah (nearly 50 degrees) that I almost didn't want to leave. When you go on a trip to a tropical destination you hope to be leaving behind miserably cold weather. Marci, Malina, Jenni, and Grandma picked me up at my house and took me to the airport. It was kind of ironic that Jenni was visiting Utah from Hawaii while I was going to be visiting Hawaii from Utah. Fortunately, she did get back to Hawaii before I left and we got to spend some time together.

I planned plenty of extra time at the airport because I was expecting Christmas Eve to be ridiculously crowded and understaffed. What I found was just the opposite. The airport was empty and I basically ended up spending an hour and a half sitting at the terminal and waiting for my flight to leave. You would think that I would have spent the time reading one of the 5 books that I brought along, but instead I did some writing on my laptop.

My flight had two scheduled stops. I had to switch planes and airlines in Las Vegas, and then again in San Francisco. The connection in Las Vegas was not terribly tight but enough so that I didn't want to waste a lot of time in between flights. When I got off the plane I talked to one of the gate agents to find out where my connecting gate was. It told him that I was on a U.S. Airways flight. It was actually a U.S. Airways flight that was operated by United and serviced by Ted... whatever the hell that means. Which of the 3 airlines was I actually supposed to go to?

I got routed to the opposite end of the airport. It was so far away that there was actually a tram that I needed to catch to get to the other terminal. When I got to the other terminal, I had no choice but to exit security to get to where I eventually needed to go. Of course, since I didn't have my boarding pass yet for my next flight this now meant that I needed to go to ticketing to get my boarding pass before going back through security.

I stopped at the U.S. Airways counter and was met with blank stares. They didn't know anything about the flight that I was on. After a couple of minutes of panick and confusion they eventually looked at my itinerary and noticed that it was a U.S. Airways flight operated by Ted so I needed to check in with them. When I got to the Ted counter, the lady started to freak out. Apparently my flight was already boarding and it was all the way on the other side of the airport that I had just come from. So, I had to run across the airport, take the tram, and then run through the terminal to make my connection to San Francisco. The interesting thing is that the gate that I left at was only two gates down from the one that I arrived at. Had the gate attendant not had his head up his ass, I could have saved a lot of trouble and running around.

Apparently I wasn't the only one that thought it would be a good idea to fly to Hawaii on Christmas Eve. The gate at the San Francisco airport was packed with people and they had overbooked the flight. Normally I would offer to get bumped, but I didn't want to make Tina come pick me up from the airport on Christmas day and besides I had gifts to deliver to the kids. Unfortunately, my seating assignment hadn't been made yet and I had to wait until everyone else was on the plane before I got my assignment. I was the second to the last person that actually got a seat on the flight.

Of course, being the second to the last person to get a seating assignment I got a choice seat directly in the middle of the plane blocked in by people on either side of me. I tried to sleep but couldn't. I thought about getting up to walk around to try and beat the Chlosterphobia but the people on either side of me were sleeping and I didn't want to wake them up. So, I just sat there. Slowly, but surely, losing my mind. Just when I thought that I couldn't take anymore, the pilots voice rang over the intercom that they were making their final descent into the Honolulu airport. Hallelujah!

After spending half an hour watching the luggage carousel spin endlessly and fruitlessly until no more pieces of luggage were being ejected from it's bowels, I got in line to speak with the United baggage people to figure out where the hell my luggage had disappeared to. Apparently I wasn't the only one who was missing luggage. There seemed to be an inordinate number of people looking for luggage considering the size of the flight that I had just come in on. When I finally made it to the front of the line, I discovered that my luggage was still sitting in San Francisco and would be delivered on the following day. They didn't tell me why the luggage didn't make it; just that it didn't.



Mom and Ernest picked me up from the airport. Apparently Ernest had been expecting me to call on my non-existant cell phone so they were rather late coming to pick me up. Fortunately, because of the debacle with my luggage the timing was perfect. They were just pulling up for the first (or maybe the second) time as I was coming out to meet them. I was greeted by hugs and a a beautiful lei. After getting Tina's address back to the United folks so that they could deliver my luggage the next day, we pressed on to Tina and Ernest's house in Mililani.

Hawaiian Vacation Video

I was hoping to get my pictures posted online and to write a narrative on my blog about my vacation but this day has quickly vanished out from under me and it's getting late. So, here is a slideshow that I threw together of my vacation. Hopefully more will follow over the weekend.

Warning: The slideshow contains pictures of me without a shirt on and may frighten small children or causes epileptic seisures in people who are sensitive to bright light reflected off of pale white skin.