tacky LI XMas Love

OY! Some­times I forget about how tacky we Long­Is­landers can be. Or at least in my neck of the woods. Of course there is no better reminder of this than lawn dec­o­ra­tions at Christ­mas time. I don’t know why towns bother with street lights this time of year as every other lawn proudly dis­plays a bril­liant array of hol­i­day spirit. Per­haps the best one this year is a house just around the corner with a small manger scene flanked on either side by a giant inflat­i­ble Frosty and Santa. Next to the manger, guarded by the giant blow up hol­i­day icons is a small sign that reads “Keep Christ in Christmas.” How­ever, this by no means tops the gaud­i­est house that we’ve found in years past. On hol­i­day break, during my soph­more year of col­lege, a house was found that had 10 santas, 3 nativ­ity scenes (includ­ing one on the roof) and, just to play it safe, a menorah.

It’s times like these that I real­ize I need to get a dig­i­tal camera.

Happy hol­i­days from Amityville

The last days have been pretty hectic. I finally made it home to Long Island late on Sat­ur­day. As usual I was stuck in traf­fic for quite a while once I hit the NYC area. Which, coin­ci­den­tally, is usu­ally when really need to find a place to pull over to go to the bath­room. Def­i­nitely not a fun combination.

When I got home I found Mom suf­fer­ing through a ter­ri­ble cold. My broth­ers and I took over Christ­mas prepa­ra­tion from her so she could rest. They han­dled most of the baking, while I wor­ried about pre­ping and cook­ing Christ­mas dinner. By the 25 Mom was feel­ing a bit better and thank­fully could be there in the kitchen to answer any ques­tions that I had.

Yes­ter­day was spent catch­ing up with close friends. Hope­fully today I’ll be able to con­nect with some others I wanted to visit. Then tomor­row I head back to Rochester. There hasn’t been much rest in this vaca­tion, but it’s still been very enjoyable.

oh, as far as gifts, I did pretty well… a couple Johnny Cash CD’s I’ve wanted, a PS2 game, a book or two, and a George Fore­man Grill (which wasn’t on my list, but I’m pretty curi­ous about it). I think there might be one more gift that will be coming my way, but we shall see. I hope every­one is having a happy hol­i­day as well!

some­times there are no words

Yes­ter­day I found out that the son of a good friend died, unex­pect­edly, at the age of 19. I’ve known this family for almost ten years. No matter how many of these ter­ri­ble sur­prises we go through, each one affects us just as much as the one before. And there are no words; there is no sense I can make out of this. I wish there was. I know we all wish the same thing at time like these. If there was a way, we could better under­stand the stupid, sense­less things that happen around us. Today is the view­ing. After that I’ll be head­ing to Long Island to visit my family. But my thoughts will be here in Rochester, with others deal­ing with the pro­found loss at a time when they would nor­mally be cel­e­brat­ing together.

Have a safe and happy hol­i­days. And keep those you love close.

fin­ger­tips

These past two weeks have been mondo hectic and blog­ging has dropped into the back­ground for a bit. So today you get the sound­bites ver­sion of what’s new…

I hate UPS – with a pas­sion! I’m never home when they deliver and the pack­ages that Amazon ships require an in person sig­na­ture. So basi­cally I have to typ­i­cally wait until the third deliv­ery fails and then pick up the pack­ages at the UPS office. Bleh, they suck.

Aaron’s hick­ies – an apol­ogy goes out to Aaron and Jenny for the con­di­tion of his neck after his first rank Kung Fu test. He was my part­ner, I got to choke him, and not being a good date I left hick… I mean choke marks. Sorry about that. I’m sure you look fetch­ing in a turtleneck!

Hol­i­day Gifts – I am so behind on the hol­i­days. The entire grad school thing con­sumed most of my time for quite a while. So I haven’t ded­i­cated enough thought to get­ting really good gifts (unlike every­one who has been giving me soo-​per cool stuff). Worse yet what I did get is being held hostage by UPS. So, every­one, your gifts are one the way. But this year I’ll prob­a­bly cel­e­brat­ing the 12-day’s of Christ­mas this year; or at least hoping that I’ll get every­one his or her presents within 12 days of Christmas.

A new blog is born – my friend Heather has given in and started blog­ging. Wel­come to the cult, H!

reeval­u­a­tion

It’s been a strange week­end for me. Friday I was told (as men­tioned in the pre­vi­ous blog) that the HCI Pro­gram at CMU prob­a­bly would not be the right fit for me. After that I had a five-​hour car ride to think about that. And to think about how sure I had been that this was the right thing for me to do. How I’d begun to order the next months around the idea of leav­ing Rochester in the fall. Sud­denly, that had been changed and I felt like a rug had been pulled out from under me. Friday night I went out with Kodaker’s to see Tony DJ. I ended up leav­ing early as I was feel­ing exhausted and I had to be up early the next morning.

Sat­ur­day was better, for the most part at least. I helped run a mar­tial arts sem­i­nar and then got to see an old friend earn her black belt (Go Kath­leen!). After that a group went out for lunch at the Dinosaur BBQ (yum!). By the time I got back home Di had arrived from Pitts­burgh. Her semes­ter was up and she’s crash­ing at my place for the next few days and vis­it­ing friends before head­ing home. But the events of the day before were start­ing to creep in on me again and I was still feel­ing exhausted. That deep exhaus­tion, mixed with a hint of depres­sion, that sets in when some­thing that you worked hard on didn’t go the way you wanted. That pretty much hung over me for the rest of the day. (Sorry for seem­ing a little out of it when we talked Tina).

By Sunday I was feel­ing a bit better. I accepted that it’s ok to feel crappy about things like this and started to turn my energy towards more pos­i­tive action. For exam­ple, I began to inves­ti­gate the schools that the direc­tor of the CMU HCI pro­gram sug­gested I look at. I don’t know if I have enough time to apply to either of them, but any­thing is pos­si­ble. :-)

shattered…

…as in dreams. Well, that’s a little to melo­dra­matic. But basi­cally, I was very nicely told that the CMU HCI pro­gram prob­a­bly wouldn’t be the right thing for me. Basi­cally, my work expe­ri­ence has given me a lot of the mate­r­ial that they would be teach­ing. Ugg… I have no idea what I’m going to do. Thank­fully I have a 5 hour drive to think about it.

In Pittsburgh

I’m alive! Sorry to my oh so loyal read­ers for the lack of post­ings this week. Things have been pretty crazy here. I’m typing this blog from Di’s com­puter at CMU’s Grad­u­ate Inter­ac­tion Design Studio. In a little bit I’ll be off to talk with the head of the HCI Insti­tute here about my appli­ca­tion. After that it’s lunch and then I head back home for bea-​utiful rah-​cha-​cha and shakin’ my bootie at a super­duty DJ gig.

I had wanted to stay another night here but I need to be in town Sat­urda morn­ing and I have no desire to start dri­ving at 5.00am tomor­row to make it back in time. That’s all for now…

some­times you eat the bar, some­times the bar…

First of all I have no makeovers for today. So it that’s what you’re coming for, yer outta luck. So you can keep read­ing my ram­blings or check out some of the great blogs I link to in the side column. Ok now that that’s over with, on to today’s sub­ject: rela­tion­ship angst.

Actu­ally there’s not too much to write about. Just like my cur­rent love life. *rim shot* (Thank you, thank you very much, there’s tons more where that came from) Di and I are still on great terms, just not “seeing” each other. In fact, I’ll be crash­ing at her place next week when I go down to talk to the good folks at CMU’s HCI Insti­tute. Any hoo, last night I thought I’d take full advan­tage of my sin­gle­ness and hit the bar scene. Big mis­take. All I suc­ceeded in doing was remind­ing myself why I spend very little time in bars. I quickly made the deci­sion, that unlike the major­ity of guys out last night, get­ting blasted and pawing women who are clearly not inter­ested in you just isn’t for me. Plus you get the added ben­e­fit of smelling like smoke for no extra charge.

Part of my prob­lem is I have no desire to invest the time to get the most out of the bar scene. I can’t imag­ine spend­ing so much time in one that the bar­tenders and all the reg­u­lars know who you are. It just seem that there are better uses of time, money, and brain cells than sit­ting in a bar on a reg­u­lar basis, for hours at a time, paying $3.50 a beer. Guess I’m just not cut out for Cheers. Or I could just be get­ting older.

Any way, it’s been my expe­ri­ence that you really can’t “force” meet­ing people. It just hap­pens, when you least expect it. And the uni­verse has this obnox­ious habit of making sure it doesn’t happen if you are specif­i­cally intend­ing it to. Or maybe that only hap­pens in my case. Any way this blog can be summed up in one for­mula: Bar scene = bad (or at least for me)