Thursday, September 24, 2009

Day 24 - Blogging about the Internet

Why is it that every time you find an article that you like and that sounds interesting, moments after clicking on it you realize that its just a video? For some reason this seems to happen to me quite a bit, and while I don't mind the video, sometimes I just want a transcript of the video. What happens if I don't have my speakers or headphones? I mean come on its not rocket science to have a link at the bottom to a .txt file that would have the transcribed contents of the video. Unfortunately that's probably not why they decide to omit it. I'm betting its clearly NOT an oversight on their part, but rather its intentional. Why? Because they are probably paid by on a click-by-click basis by someone who does advertising on the lead-in of the video (I mean article) that you are actually interested. Either way its incredibly annoying, I just want to read what happened rather than be told by someone or to actually watch it most of the time. Its kind of like that whole book better than a movie thing, well it holds true here too.

Here's a great example, MSNBC.com had a headline today of:

"For First Time a Vaccine Helps Prevent HIV", but when you click it all that comes up is a video...why?

One other thing, why is it that whenever you click on an article that that you're hoping has a picture of something that drove you to click on it in the first place, the article never has the picture? Just yesterday I clicked on an article that said giant squid attacking Oregon beaches, I'm like, "Hell yes I want to see giant squid". Unfortunately for me the writer of the actual article must have thought, "Nah, no one's gonna need or even want to see these squid, they'll be way more awesome in their imaginations than actually seeing a picture of them." Here's a good example of how a picture or even a movie in this case would be BETTER than words. In my mind these giant squid are 30-40 feet long and are ravaging the shipping industries of the coastal Oregonian cities. In reality, these may be no larger than 2 foot calamari, how would I know though they neglected to add any visual evidence of THE GIANT SQUID! There should be some sort of requirement when it comes to these thing for Christ's Sake!

For instance, the link on the Register-Guard Newspaper website says, "Jumbo squid hit Oregon Beaches," and take a gander at it...not a single picture. I'll just have to assume the following artist rendering depicts these "jumbo" squid well enough...


Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Day 23: Snoop Doggy Blog


Since when did it become okay to bring your dog everywhere you go? I didn't realize that Barneys and Nordstrom's appreciated your tiny disease infested custom Dieseldoggie wearing mutt walking through its marble floors. In southern California dogs appear to run people's lives, they can't leave home without them. Why not just have another kid? Why do you have to bring your stupid dog into the restaurant, or better yet why in the hell is your damn dog in a baby stroller in a goddamned restaurant? Give me a break, learn some manners and leave the mutt in the kennel where it belongs.

Wow, I can't even begin to fathom the absolute ridiculousness that goes through someone's head with these damn things. These little mangy dogs have basically replaced, or at least certainly now compliment, Louis Vuitton and Coach purses as the number one accessory MUST HAVE accessory. Fuck you and your dog.

So I'm looking for a picture of a douchey guy or girl with a douchey little dog to put up here and google for "Douche with a dog..." and guess what comes up, this:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081023155938AATTPtF

That is so wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to begin. If that's something that you're so concerned with that you need to post it onto Yahoo! questions you need to find a FUCKING HOBBY! Then again, their hobby is most likely shopping for the latest "doggy outfits" that go with the fall seasons...

Friday, September 18, 2009

Day 22: The Gamblog


Its probably fairly well documented in my circle of friends that I'll put a $10 wager on most things I feel I'm right about. Well in honor of resurrecting this blog after a 2 week hiatus, I have decided to put a couple $10 bets down to spice up the weekend. Both of these bets are pertaining to football, one to NCAA and the other to the NFL, and I have to say these are both extreme longshot bets; HOWEVER, I'm confident its winning time.


Now, since its Friday I'm not going to post much, but I will definitely update this on Monday to let you all know just how "rich" I became over the weekend. Feel free to dispute the validity of these bets, but know by Monday I'll be rich and you'll wonder why you didn't get in on the ACTION!

Also, as a side note, I will be having a guest blogger for a day next week, the day is yet to be determined, but keep your eyes peeled for that.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Day 21: It's Been a Blog Time Coming - Part 4 (Conclusion)

So as you know by now San Francisco was the destination of choice for stripping the last vestiges of manhood from my being...and also where I chose to pop the question.

One Day Before
Having acquired the ring earlier in the week, gotten it sized, and paid for it, all that was left to do was to give it to her...unfortunately its never that easy. As I said yesterday the ballsier version of myself would have given it to her in a 99 cent margarita, and been hitched and the little white chapel down on Las Vegas boulevard...but that just won't fly.

My original plan was to secretly pack her bags, get them in the car, and then have her buy clothes or whatever I forgot while we were up in San Francisco, that would have kept element of surprise completely in tact; however, after scanning the closet and the seeing the shoe collection it quickly dawned on me that this was not as simple as I planned. So then I thought of the old bait and switch, tell her we're going somewhere, but then not really go there and go to San Francisco instead--and I did just that.

I told her Santa Barbara, why? Well its north of LA and right on the water so I figured when I told her to bring a coat and long sleeves because it was "cold" there it wouldn't be out of the ordinary. I told her that it was going to be highs in the 60s-70s with lows in the 50s (San Francisco's weather report), and she thought it was strange for a moment, but then me reiterating that it was indeed "right on the water" caused her to drop her protest.

That night I packed the bags, finished the laundry, and snuck the ring into my carry-on--didn't want to risk the lost luggage if I had checked it.

Judgement Day
The next morning while getting ready for the "work day" I was packing my toiletries into my suitcase when I asked, "How many ounces of liquids can we bring on the plane again?" As soon as I said it I realized that I had just let the cat out of the bag.

"Why? We're taking the train, remember?" she replied, confused.

"OH yeah thats right," I played it off like I was just too tired to think. Luckily she dropped it and the surprise wasn't spoiled.

So I then loaded the bags into the car and we were off to "IHOP" for breakfast. While driving I went over the mental checklist of things to remember, everything seemed to check out. As we were getting closer to the airport I decided to spill the beans on our secret plans. She was freaking out once she heard, and somehow couldn't understand how I didn't immediately tell her about this trip upon booking it. Apparently discretion and women is a bit like oil and water...or so I'm told.

A few hours later we arrived at our hotel and were starving, so we went off to what the internet had told me was the best greasy spoon breakfast in the city, done and done. While the breakfast was pretty amazing, it took far too long and now we were running behind schedule. We were going to have to make up the time elsewhere. After breakfast we ended up going back to the room to nap, for far too long and now we were even further behind the scheduled times.

I had arranged a fairly strict itinerary that we needed to follow in order to end up at the Golden Gate bridge to watch the sunset and the go to the nearby Palace of Fine Arts. Right now we were at least an hour behind.

We left our hotel room and headed off into Union Square area, I had alotted quite a bit of time for this area, so I figured this would be where I could make it up. We walked around, window shopped a little bit, took a look through an outdoor art show, and then Alyssa was ready to move on. So I easily made up my time here, that is until we found an art museum that she was dying to see--so naturally we went there. There were two main exhibits, one was a joint collection of Ansel Adams and Georgia O'Keefe and the other was Richard Avedon photogallery. Both were pretty interesting, and worth the stop-by; however, today was just a bad day to be dilly-dallying.

After the museum we headed further north towards the Embarcadero. We made up a little time somehow doing this and ended up jumping on a trolley heading west towards Pier 34. At this point I'm sweating balls. I've been wearing these heavy jeans all day because you know its San Francisco, you assume its going to be cold. But of course it was "unseasonably warm" and I was wearing jeans, brilliant. So while we're sitting on the damn trolley I'm sweating, also I have an incredibly uncomfortable platinum ring in my pocket that is impossible to arrange in such a way that it DOESN'T nearly puncture my leg.

Anyway we finally get to the pier and we're now officially an hour ahead of schedule. Its only about 5 pm, the sun doesn't set until 7, so I had to kill at least an hour before we could head to the Palace of Fine arts. Luckily I had planned on us going to the Buena Vista Cafe to grab some food and drink some Irish Coffees. This place claims to be the originator of the Irish Coffee so being that I tend to like Jameson in my coffee upon occasion, this seemed excellent.

So as we are walking towards the restaurant, I broach the subject with Alyssa. She seems less than interested. Great...so now I had an extra hour to kill because SHE didnt want to go to drink Irish coffee....excellent. Just what I wanted. SO to kill the extra time, I decided that we're going to walk to the Palace of Fine Arts. I check my Google Maps, its only like 2 miles--not a big deal. Well as it would happen, the cliche about San Francisco being very hilly is true. Long story, long, we end up at the Palace of Fine Arts AFTER she complains and says," I'm not having any fun". Well guess what, had you wanted an Irish Coffee then we'd have cabbed it the whole way there, but NOOOO you wanted to pass.

Long story over. We got engaged, that's that.

Slacking of blogging will no longer be tolerated. Apologies for the hiatus.




Thursday, September 3, 2009

Day 20: It's Been a Blog Time Coming - Part 3




So the past two days have been dedicated to reiterating what I believed my fiance's part of the engagement story entailed. I'm sure this is at least a litte, or quite a bit, off base; but just go with it.

So now you've heard her "side of the story", so now its time for mine.

My Perspective

Three Weeks Before San Francisco
My side of the story starts a bit earlier than where we picked up with her story, three weeks earlier in fact. We had been ring shopping or browsing a lot lately, and she finally figured out what she wanted. I had already put the veto on a $28k ring so basically anything she found would have to be better than that.

The day we found it we went to lunch shortly afterwards. and I had to sneak away to "use the restroom" and call the jewelers to tell them to reserve the ring. The reason I was so eager to lock up the ring as soon as possible was because the searching process had taken an INCREDIBLY long time since I happened to date one of the more "picky" people I've ever met when it comes to these sort of things.

Two Weeks Before San Francisco
At this point I knew that at some point soon I wanted to pop the question, but I was struggling to figure out how I wanted to go about doing so. I had done quite a bit of research online and had narrowed the venue city down to Las Vegas, Cabo San Lucas or San Francisco. There were obvious pluses and minuses to each of these options.

Cabo San Lucas
This wasn't really much of a contender given the unfamiliarity with it, the fact that it is the heart of hurricane season, and that there was at least the off-chance that she could get captured and sold into any number of "trades", none of which end well. Though I did some research on this and the prices were reasonable, I decided that the risk of becoming a potential organ farm for the Mexican mafia was not all that appealing...

As a side-note turns out it was a good thing I did due to the fact that there was a CATEGORY 4 hurricane that hit Cabo San Lucas during the time that we would have potentially been there...Intuition is a hell of a thing...

Las Vegas
Las Vegas had some special meaning to us in the fact that our first vacation outside of Minnesota took place there. Granted we stayed at the Gold Coast and had literally no money to gamble with AND we spent five days there. Turns out five days is a long time to be in Las Vegas and NOT gamble, not only that most of our drinks came from the hotel gift shop and were concocted in the room.

Anyway so there was the sentimental value to a trip to Las Vegas, but really that seemed a little on the hokey side so it really needed more than that to be the winner. What it was really going to boil down to was where I could pull off the proposal. That was all that REALLY mattered. After some research there were a few options that weren't awful:

-Bellagio restaurant overlooking the fountain show
The first option had a major drawback in that it was very public. Although people do it all the time on TV and in movies, I can't actually imagine that a public proposal goes over very well. I'm basically completely basing this off of a guy I saw get rejected when he proposed to his potential fiance at a Kansas City Royals game--the proposal ended in her laughing and leaving a hand shaped rosy print across his face as she stormed away. So I didn't really want that, which brings me to the next.

-The top of a hotel overlooking the strip (Hangover style)

I had read that you can get a few of the hotels on the strip to allow you to go up to the roof top where you can arrange for them to have a table, a bottle of Cris, and some caviar or whatever else you want up there. That sounded like a pretty good option, but it was still Vegas and there was something about Las Vegas that maybe was best left "corrupted". Not to mention I didn't really want my engagement to take place in a city perhaps most notably associated with what I'll simply call "non-monogamous" behavior....

However, had I opted for this option, and she said no...well, the buildings in Las Vegas are pretty, prettay tall and I've heard it CAN get very windy up there...I'm just sayin' that's what I've HEARD...

-The "I've Got Balls" method

Right. Then there was old reliable, which if I had any balls at all (and no self-respect or respect for my potential fiance) I would have pulled. Every time we've been to Vegas we've made it a point to go to Bill's Gambling Hall (formerly the Barbary Coast) and get a 99 cent margarita from their miniscule bar. In the alternate universe where this plan is executed I drop the ring in one of the margaritas, wait till she finishes the frosty beverage and spots the ring, then drop the bomb on her. "So we gettin' married er what?" God it would be awesome though...

San Francisco
I'll skip the formalities and the reasoning behind this city, since if you've been reading this blog (which we both know you haven't been) you'll know that this was the winner. I'll just mention that we had always wanted to go there, living in California (especially Orange County) there weren't many actual "cities" so it was like a little taste of New York on the west coast. Plus to a lot of people San Francisco is the epicenter of "those damn liberals", so naturally this seemed like the logical choice.

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Okay given that now I've rambled for onwards of nearly 1,000 words without even getting to Judgement Day I'll have to leave the concluding "chapter" of this story for tomorrow.


Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Day 19: It's Been a Blog Time Coming - Part 2



So when I left off yesterday we were just arriving at the airport, I was still telling the story from her perspective (or at least how I perceived it to be).

So they took off that morning from John Wayne Airport and arrived a little over an hour later. After hailing a cab and checking into their hotel they grabbed some breakfast at one of the best hole-in-the-wall diners in the city. They knew it had to be good because as they walked up to the small 500 sq. ft restaurant, there was a line of 20 people out the door spilling onto the street. The 45 minute wait was well worth it though, especially since they were SUPPOSED to get breakfast at IHOP over three hours ago at this point.

They spent the day walking around and enjoying the city. Her boyfriend seemingly had no plan for the day, and she was willing to go along with his apathetic itinerary. They went to a museum, walked around, grabbed some lunch, spent a little time walking through Fisherman's Wharf/Pier 39. It was an unseasonably warm day, her boyfriend wore pants, but he seemed fine.

They spent what she thought was an exorbitant amount of time in the Russian Hill area, around Ghirardelli square. The day was wearing on her, they had now been walking for several hours, the pedometer on her phone told her they had actually walked nearly 9 miles. By this point it was nearly five in the afternoon, she was ready for a little dinner and a drink. Her boyfriend just KEPT walking though, "WHY do we have to KEEP walking, WHERE the hell are we going?!" she thought. The area they were in now was very hilly, they stopped to rest at a park. She saw a sign that said Russian Hill Park.

A short time later, her boyfriend decided that, yes, it was time to CONTINUE walking. He kept mentioning that he wanted to find a good view of the Golden Gate bridge, so naturally he lead them further up a hill hoping to find a clear view of the iconic landmark. They continued their way up Hyde Street which was the steepest city street she had ever seen, let alone walked up. When they reached the top of the hill she realized that they were on that very narrow winding street she had seen somewhere before (Lombard & Hyde).
They took another break there to watch a few of the cars drive down the zig-zagging street. As they waited a street car pulled up, she had hoped that maybe they would take that somewhere, it didn't matter where it went as long as she didn't have to walk anymore.

"Well you ready?" her boyfriend asked, "we've gotta be getting close to somewhere with a clear view." He headed west down Lombard away from where they were. They walked down an equally steep road into a residential area. They were no longer anywhere near the tourist attractions they left behind them at Ghiradelli Square and Russian Hill, in fact they were now entering what appeared to be a bit more of a rough area. She was dying of thirst now and needed to "freshen up", so she urged that they stop at the Chevron that was coming up on the right. Before she went into the gas station she decided that she had had enough.

"Okay, what are we doing? I'm not having fun anymore, my feet hurt, I'm thirsty and hungry, maybe we should get a cab and head back to the room," she blurted, clearly frustrated.

He could tell she was annoyed, so he chose his words carefully, "Okay, that's fine lets get you some water and then we'll get a cab. I'll ask the guy in the Chevron where we can go to see the bridge, and then we'll take a cab back to the room and get showered and grab some dinner."

She felt a little more reassured as she conceded and headed into the Chevron. A few moments later she exited the restroom to see her boyfriend with a bottle of water, some tissues for her suddenly runny nose, saying he had gotten directions to somewhere with a good view from the gas station cashier.

"All we need to do is flag down a cab, the guy said we're close," her boyfriend said. It took ten or so minutes before they could flag down a cab with his light off, she could tell he was starting to get annoyed by now.

"Can you please take us to the Palace of Fine Arts," he said as they both got into the cab. It just felt great to finally sit. They had probably walked off their extremely hearty breakfast by this point and she was cranky. This damn bridge had better be worth all this god damned trouble.

"The clerk at that Chevron back there said the Palace of Fine Arts had a pretty good view of the bridge," her boyfriend spouted trying to start conversation with the cabbie.

"Oh yeah definitely it does, its from the 20's very art deco. Was built for the World's Fair, there used to be a bunch of buildings resembling it around the city but they tore them all down aside from this one," the cabbie said as he pulled up to a red light.

As they sat there an overtly attractive, low cut shirt wearing female walk across the street in front of them. Slowly trailing that woman was a very conservatively dressed girl texting as she crossed the street. The cabbie had his eyes locked on the attractive woman as he called his passengers attention to them.

"Check that out, two completely opposite girls. I bet that chick gets guys all over her, but you probably know all about that," he said motioning to Alyssa in the backseat. "But she probably doesn't get nice guys, she probably attracts the kind of guys who might want to rape you, you know?"

She couldn't decide if that was rhetorical or if he was waiting for an answer, so she uncomfortably laughed, fortunately that seemed to appease the driver because he dropped the conversation. Her boyfriend was staring out the window, as if he was looking for something. The cab turned right and drove for a few more blocks and suddenly they were there. They paid the cab driver and walked towards the palace.
It was an incredibly ornate Greco-Roman towering building. They walked through the colossal arches beneath the incredibly decorated dome. The central structure was straddled on two sides by equally tall and impressive columns. A pond filled with ducks and swans partially surrounded the palace and intensified the building's innate beauty.

Her boyfriend continued to urge her forward, saying they can come back and check out the palace once the sun had set. They continued through the columnated walkway, through the back entrance of the park area, and crossed a street to an area known as Crissy Field. This was a pretty incredible beach area that had an amazing view of the Golden Gate bridge. They had FINALLY found somewhere with a view of this damned bridge! She knew she didn't have to walk anymore! The park was filled with people swimming in the frigid water of the bay, a three legged dog trying to pick up a football with its mouth, and others playing catch with their soaking wet dogs. She stood with her boyfriend and watched the sunset over the golden gate bridge for twenty minutes or so.
Once the sun had set, they went back across the street to the Palace of Fine Arts. The building was illuminated by ground lighting now. The lighting drew the eyes to the incredibly details on the building and somehow even further enhanced the aesthetic of the structure.

They were standing at the edge of the pond near a small group of ducks. She pulled a SoyJoy bar from her purse and pulled off pieces of it and threw them to the ducks. The ducks quickly obliged to greet her and her soy-laden feast.

They stood and admired the building with the nearly full moon rising over the arches. Suddenly her boyfriend took her hand, spun her around, held her close, told her that he loved her, and then asked her to be his wife. She was taken aback, although she secretly knew it had to be coming, but she was incredibly happy. Her boyfriend took the ring from his pocket, that he'd been carrying all day, and waited for her to answer. Though this day HAD to be coming sometime soon, she was still surprised, and incredibly happy. She answered him, "Not a chance," smacked him and then dove into the pond....okay that didn't happen. She said yes, and he slipped the ring onto her finger and hugged him now fiance for the first time in her life.

They kissed and admired the area for a little while longer before heading off to grab a cab and FINALLY head back to their hotel to celebrate.

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That concludes MY interpretation of her side of the story. I will be telling MY side of the story tomorrow, I apologize for the length of the entry but the details are necessary this time.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Day 18: It's Been a Blog Time Coming - Part 1

As I mentioned yesterday, I wasn't able to update the blog over the weekend and left all you avid readers (all zero of you), with a cliffhanger to grit your teeth over for what must have felt like eons...ooooor you probably didn't really notice it and if I'm lucky you might read this, or not...either way, whatever.

So as I was saying, this past weekend something fairly major happened. You might have noticed over the past 18 days that I've referred to my LONG TIME girlfriend multiple times throughout a few different stories in this blog. Well this past weekend, I am officially no longer with dating this LONG TIME girlfriend, I am now officially ENGAGED to my short time fiance. I figure since its a fairly worthwhile story, since its kind of a life-changing event, I should probably tell it here.

I'm going to try and tell the story first from her perspective, and then from mine.

Her Perspective

She came home from work on Thursday after going into work anywhere between 5 and 6 am every day that week. Her 9-year anniversary had just come and passed, and she had only briefly discussed making any plans to celebrate. They typically went somewhere for their yearly anniversary, but no formal plans had been planned as of yet. They had planned on probably doing something in October since they knew they were heading out of town the next weekend, it being Labor Day and all.

They just had some of their friends from back home visit, and were fairly worn out from the very active and late-night filled weekend, so she was exhausted when she came home from work that night. Her boyfriend had come home from work, a little later than usual that night, but nothing out of the ordinary. Neither of them felt like cooking dinner that night so they decided to go get a salad from the nearby grocery store. While eating their salads, her boyfriend posed the question, "Where should we go for our anniversary?"

They discussed a few different options: going to San Diego, heading up to LA for the weekend, Vegas (old reliable), and Santa Barbara. They couldn't decide, they all sounded fun but none of them sounded too spectacular.

Her boyfriend then chimed in, "Let's go to Santa Barbara tomorrow, we've never really been there for any amount of time. It'll be fun we can just go for a night, or maybe play hookie and go all weekend."

She hesitated, sort of underwhelmed by the prospects of spending her anniversary there, but then sort of warmed to the idea. It was a fairly unexplored city for them and she'd heard there was a lot of cool restaurants and shops as well as college bars, meaning fun. She knew she had some previous engagements on Saturday, but decided to go for it anyway.

"Sure it'll be fun, maybe we can stay all weekend. I have Carolyn's dress fitting on Saturday, but I've already been fitted, I think I can skip it."

They discussed and then planned on taking the train straight up to Santa Barbara after work, they would carpool and only leave one car at the station. It worked perfectly because there was a 511 pm train and they'd arrive in Santa Barbara by 730 pm that night, just in time for dinner and drinks. Out of convenience, and since he had to be to work extra early in the morning, her boyfriend proposed going to grab some breakfast at 5 am. Since they were carpooling, they could grab some breakfast, he could drop her off at work, work through the day, pick her up at 430 or so from work, and then head to the train station.

So that was that, they packed their bags that night in preparation for the morning and went to bed early, since they had to be up by 4 am in order to get ready and head to the IHOP for breakfast. He kissed her goodnight saying that he had to finish folding the laundry and then he she fell asleep.

BEEPEEPEEP!!! BEEPEEPEEP!!! BEEPEEPEEP

The alarm sounded the next morning. She awoke to find that the laundry had all been folded and their suitcase was packed for the weekend. Her boyfriend was, seemingly, awake and ready to go. He carried the suitcase down to the car, threw it in the backseat. The starting of the car engine broke the silence of the early morning. He turned on the wipers erasing the morning dew, flipped on the headlights and backed out of their covered parking spot and then headed off into the night to get their pancake breakfast.

She could tell they were both tired, since they weren't really talking much that morning. They didn't have far to go to get breakfast, maybe once they both got some coffee and some pancakes in them they'd chipper up. They were nearly to the restaurant and suddenly her boyfriend spoke up, "I have a surprise for you."

Taken aback a little bit, she spoke, "You do?"

"Yep, so...we're not going to Santa Barbara tonight."

"What! Where are we going then?" she asked excitedly.

"We're going to San Francisco, our flight leaves in an hour and a half," he said as he turned his blinker on and pulled into the turn lane leading into John Wayne Airport. She looked to her right, completely surprised. Out of the passenger side window she could see the blue illuminated block lettering of the IHOP restaurant, as the car into the airport she no longer cared about the pancakes, she was going to San Francisco.

"I can't believe you did this, how did you do this without telling me?!"

Her boyfriend didn't say much other than about how happy that she was surprised, afraid that somehow she knew or that someone had let the cat out of the bag about this surprise trip.

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I will leave the end of this story for the Wednesday and Thursday entries. I hope you end up reading these entries and the conclusion, and if not well whatever...you probably suck anyway.