This last week, because of the DNC and the fact that roads were to be closed close to our delivery routes for work, “we” decided to change our hours from a happy 9-5 to a hellish 7-3. Now, I’ve worked some funky hours in my time, in Turkey I used to get up before the ass-crack of dawn, a good 4:30am and see the sun rise over the mountains every day, it was pretty sweet, it’d be already about 85 degrees. But there is something about changing hours in office jobs that doesn’t work for my lil’ biological clock.

Anyways, I took Thursday off, obsteniently to check out the DNC but it turned into a personal day full of “Nate Time”. So the moral is that I never really read the memo about what days were affected and so I got there at 7am with no one else there.
Ha, it was a pretty clutch manuever, score one for the little (stupid) guy!

One of the best things about flying in those wee little planes, I think they are 19 seaters, is that no one bitches at you to keep your seat up and you can take pictures the whole time. Here are two of my favorites. The window tint messed with the images, I have to figure out how to balance that out…

I’m starting to get ideas for wacky camera tricks. These are my first two attempts at some visual trickery!
Number 1:


Number 2:


They look best from a little distance, I moved the camera between shots because I thought the autopanorama could fix it up, that’s why the perspective is fucked

Just to reiterate, to all the teenage girls out there, there is still (sadly) just one of me…

I gave some of my blood today, what the tech there call a P4, a full batch of platlets and then a pint of blood, just for good measure. One of the reasons that no one goes through with this proccedure is that it literally takes hours. The actual needle-in-arm time was a freaky 111 minutes. The mad-scientitstesque blood sucking machine, with it’s nest of piping, has a sweet monitor that shows exactly how long it should take, based on a number of factors.
Do they enter your stats in there, like pulse, blood pressure, etc. and then it sets the pumps accordingly. The nasty part is this wacky citrus stuff they pump in when the repump your colder blood back in after straining out the platelets. The taste of orange is particulary strange when it comes from your bloodstream, weird.
The oddest part of the experience was those sheets they give you after you feel everything out. They are supposed to be anonymous barcodes, you choose either use my blood or do not use my blood. I’m not the smartest guy around, but even I can tell that the barcodes are very different and easy to spot from some distance. One has two dark lines in the begining, the other has just one. I poked around in the trash and found some of the other discarded forms, you can see plainly that some people said yes and some no. The tech handling the forms and drawing the blood should be able to tell just by glancing, weird.

I have this little cell phone that I got with my plan, which is nice and simple. He’s a tough lil’ guy but nothing special, none of those fancy extras hawked through so many giant billboards. The Samsung SPH-N240 has been with me through countless awkward conversations and drunken tele-epiphanies…
Anyways, I think my phone was among the first generation of cell phones without any ringtones that sound anything like a real telephone. I don’t want to sound like Grandpa here, but it took me a while to get used to having only goofy ringtones. Like “Chicken Parade” and “Ring 5″, yeah there are some really shitty rings in there.
Anyways, my point is that now I’m hearing these rings on other phones that sound sort of like mine but then they break it down, hardcore. Like it’ll be “Chicken Parade – Reggae Dance Hall Remix” or “Ring 5 (Quadraphonic Mix)” I think Samsung must have some full-time ring-tone composers that obviously can only produce what the phones can handle. So, when they have access to the four types of beeps my can make, “Chicken Parade” is the best they can do, throw them the new Samsung SPxx 5000, though and prepare to have your pants knocked off.
That’s such a great thought Nate.

John was nice enough to set me up with the means to pimp out my blog, make it feel a little more natural. So I went with this new style, based of my beloved pup Chewie. I think the pink/Rottweiler mix is pretty saucy, so I’m going to let it stay for a while.

So, I signed up for this web-photo-sharing-site called pbase.com which seems to be pretty cool. I checked out fotoki but was unimpressed. I have my first gallery of photos on there, yes friends is all pictures of flowers, how about that?
My Pbase Galleries

I may have the fancy college vocabulary and the metrosexual jeans, but I was actually born on a farm in rustic Lewisburg, PA. Let me tell you, you had no choice in that place — you grew up quickly. The garden needed to be weeded & while mommy was busy, someone needs to play with all the baby ducklings or the kitties and sometimes baby bunnies. Yeah, those were the days!
One day when I was still quite young, around 4 – 5, I was out haying the fields, driving our 1957 John Deere with the triple blade cutter (with the safety guards removed) and sipping on a cool Yuengling (we drank that insead of milk, milk is for girls). This was probably my 4th or 5th of the morning, it being hotter than the Devil’s titty. There had been reports of a pack of escaped grizzlies in the area, but I needed to get this field do before the man from the bank came back to take our house.

Actually that’s not entirely true, (continue reading…)

I’m a big fan of this emerging online lit journal, no small part because they published a short nonfiction piece of my, Roswell, NM. Anyways, thievesjargon.com looks to have some grand potential, each week there’s t least something that gives me a chuckle or pause for thought. Check it!

I recently lost my toothbrush while out of town visiting friends. Luckily, I have a back-up toothbrush just in case this very senario were to unfold. The only problem is that my back-up brush was purchased shortly after I got my wisdom teeth removed, so it’s actually the Pooh Bear Limited Edition Toddler Brush. It was really hard to brush my teeth between the searing pain and the sloppy enthropy of the percocets. The nice lady at my oral surgeon’s office reccomended I buy a little toothbrush.
As far as construction and craftsmanship go, this is a top-notch brush, it’s just really tiny. So, brushing with it takes about 3x as long, you basically have to go tooth to tooth, which is pretty intense. At the same time, I kinda think I get a better brush out of it. Sure, it’s smaller, less surface area and stubby handle, maybe better suited for a 5 year old, but it makes you focus, it makes you respect each tooth individually & get them clean. I’ll probably get a new tooth brush when I hit up Super Stop & Shop later this week, but I think Pooh has taught me a valuable lesson: Good things do come in small packages.
Actually, one other thing I’d ask Pooh is,
“How the fuck do you have any teeth left when all you do is eat honey all day?”