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This past weekend at Oak Island, NC was extremely fun. My sister got married, I got to catch up with family and friends, and I got to bask in the beauty of the ocean and great weather. It was very depressing to leave. The beach house we stayed in was surprisingly nice. The game room had a large poker table and there was an enormous hot tub. If you think sitting in a hot tub looking out on the ocean is cool, you’d be right. The wedding itself took place right on the beach. The background was punctuated by the odd pelican plunging into the surf, shooting up large sprays of water.
I think that Memories of the Sun would be a fitting name for a Pittsburgh blog. When I was younger, I loved dark, cloudy weather. I’ve never been a fan of the steel gray overcast that doesn’t change, but it didn’t bother me much. After experiencing it nearly nonstop for the past few months, it gets to you a bit. I didn’t fully realize that until I was standing outside today, in the park, with the sun out, and the sky deep blue beside swiftly moving cumulus clouds. I missed the sun.
My favorite Pittsburgh weather comes at the beginning of autumn, when the temperature begins to drop and the leaves are changing. It doesn’t seem to rain quite as much then and it can be quite beautiful.
I’ll be travelling south this week, to Oak Island, NC for my sister’s wedding. The North Kakalakee beach in early summer (which begins in April in the South) should be nice and refreshing. And just as summer begins there early, spring gets started late here. It has been less than 60 degrees out for most of the past week.
Suffice it to say, probably no blogging for the next week.
Figured I’d post this promo video the GWAP group did. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to participate in the filming of it since I was visiting my dad and family in Ohio for the first time after many years. So unfortunate in that I missed the filming, but the alternative was worth it. Johnny Lee had a not insignificant role in the making of the video, I believe. Check out his stuff if you haven’t, he’s doing some pretty amazing things with Wii remotes.
We went to a Pittsburgh Pirates game tonight. They got their asses handed to them by the Phillies. It was so sad. Donna’s brother and his wife were visiting and their husky has separation anxiety. In the 7th inning, we got a call from our neighbor that an old woman came around complaining and saying she was going to call the cops. Our dogs are normally pretty quiet, but the husky was in a new situation and away from her owners, so poor thing was going nuts.
Got a pic of the parrot mascot at the game. Proof that I occasionally watch sports.
Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday. He touched many lives through his writing and his ideas had an impact on me at an early age with short stories like “The Nine Billion Names of God” and movies based on his books like 2010 (which I saw in the theater) and later 2001 (which I saw as a young man). His novel Rendezvous with Rama is being made into a movie and IMDB is quoting 2009 as the release date. I thought it was interesting to find out he had been living in Sri Lanka for some time.
I visited my family in Ohio this past weekend and my uncle made a few interesting points. He’s an old-school spring engineer, meaning he learned coming up through the trade rather than by going to school, and he supervises a number of employees at a relatively small spring company. My grandfather used to own a spring company called, shockingly enough, Adams & Sons Spring Co. That was later bought out and a number of the employees were moved to a different plant, including my dad and uncle. So anyhow, my uncle was telling me a story, which I won’t go into, but the heart of it is that you should not wait for people to hand you “what you deserve.” If you are a leader, regardless of your job title, then lead. If you see someone who needs help, don’t wait for them to ask you. Help. Show that you have the initiative. That’s probably fairly obvious, I mean we’ve all heard it before, but it came at a particularly important time for me.
I’ve been on twitter for a while now, though I don’t update it super-regularly like some people. It’s fun and I hope more of my friends start using it, but I’ve noticed an interesting trend. Just about anything is open to potential spam. Friendster is sick with it. MySpace is abominable. LinkedIn seems fairly immune and I’ve gotten very few spam friend requests from Facebook. Twitter has so far been very good about it, but there is a new trend that I’ve found interesting. You can follow people and people can follow you on twitter. So your status updates are public and potentially seen by thousands of people. How do you increase the number of people who follow you? Follow them, of course! I’m having random people follow me left and right. It only helps me, since I don’t follow them back, but it’s interesting to note.
While at my mom’s house in Greenville, South Carolina, I played a little frisbee with Willow (my australian shepherd) in the back yard. I took some video where I was throwing the frisbee, then switched over to my mom throwing it. However, insanely, when my mom started throwing I put the cap on and failed to notice for like 10 minutes!! Thereby losing all the good footage and left with only my crappy warmup footage. I was so pissed at myself. Bad noob cameraman!
The soundtrack is Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16 by Edvard Grieg and is in the public domain.
So still in York on the Thanksgiving holiday, doing stuff with Donna’s family. Today we ate dinner with her cousin Connie and son Dillon. They are cousins, but were really close growing up, so are more like sisters. So to Dillon we are Aunt Donna and Uncle Jason. He is crazy cute and strong like Bam-Bam. He’s also extremely durable. I’ve never seen a kid who gets a bigger kick out of falling down, being thrown in the air, and being tossed (from short distances) onto cushions.
As I mentioned before, I spent last weekend with my wife’s family in Dover, Pennsylvania (which is right outside of York). We had a cookout and went to the fair. Rather than posting a horde of pictures, I made this little montage. The highlight of the fair was seeing an American buffalo calf being fed (row 2, column 4). The thing was incredibly rambunctious — the farmer clearly had a hard time keeping it settled for the dozens of hyper kids to come up and pet. There were also some alpacas, sheep, goats, and — of course — pigs.
Over Christmas while visiting family in Greenville, SC, I bought a stack of books at my favorite old haunt: Barnes & Noble. Among those books was Stardust
Returning from this digression, I actually finished reading Stardust just prior to said vacation, but it had taken me several months to do so. Really that’s a shame when you consider how short the book is. Just before I finished reading it, I saw a preview on TV that looked extremely familiar: an air ship, a fallen star, a unicorn, and Wall. I love when a movie comes out that really gets me excited. When Stargate
I deliberated reviewing the movie here with spoilers, but decided in the end to avoid that. I highly recommend reading the book. One of the things I like about Neil Gaiman is that he takes old ideas, like fairy tales, and makes them new. If you haven’t read his short story “Snow, Glass, Apples” (off of Smoke and Mirrors
As I mentioned in a previous post, I visited my family in Ohio this past weekend. The Perseid meteor shower peaked Sunday night/Monday morning, but the shower was going fairly strong Saturday night/Sunday morning. For the first time since the early 90’s I got a chance to sit out beneath the stars in perfect weather with no moon to watch a meteor shower.
