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Nopocalypse blogventure
(07 Feb 2010 at 00:46) |
Most of the Northeast is drowning in flurricane right now. I am missing it, stuck in a Hotel (California)* because all of the flights to Pittsburgh were canceled. I'm sad about this because huge ass snowpocalypses are one of my favorite weather events; I just love when the sky is like STFU noobs! and everything shuts down and becomes intensely quiet and all regulations (e.g. traffic ones) are deactivated. Not that I'd rather be flying; several of my friends are or were trapped in motels by the airport, taxis on the highway, layovers, etc. I just want a coldtastrophe while I'm already in the city and in my apartment. Also, would prefer that my replacement flight was not during the Superbowl.
*This is one of my least favorite songs, no question. Other songs that might be my least favorite are: "I Will Survive", mainly because of pervasive karaokacophonies, but also especially the Cake version, which is weird because I like or don't mind most real Cake music "Jack & Diane", because of the combination of pure insipidness and unavoidability, though here I'm pretty sure there are no J.C. Mellencamp songs that don't make me want to shoot myself. I thought maybe the more mild idea to just set off firecrackers near my ears to make myself deaf, but then there's the possibility that the song would be stuck in my head for eternity with no way to replace it. Oddly, the annoying "life goes on" refrain appears to be cribbed from the unusually infuriating Beatles song "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da."
I basically have nothing to do so I went for a long run, as I am prone. Usually in the Bay area (meaning outside of realsville) what's immediately accessible to you is just strip malls, the incessant possibility of being run over, and suburbia. But there's some great stuff both on the Bay itself and in the mountains, if you can handle a 20-mileish round trip. Today I went to the Stevens Creek reservoir in Cupertino, where I had never been before. The reservoir itself is nothing to blog home about, but the trail system and surrounding terrain is pretty great, especially on a misty/drizzly day like today was. There's a quarry right next door so a periodic explosion to wonder about what it is until you see the signs indicating quarry. What made this a blogventure (which is the phrase that Mike and Cortney and I used to use when they lived in Pittsburgh I mean to describe an adventure whose purpose was to generate a story to write about on the blogs, which by the way I am still saying "blog" in every occasion in this post, including inside the word "blogventure" (doubly so), ironically) was when I came upon this crazy scrap metal collection in the woods. There's piles of weird stuff there, like old grills and mechanisms and Your Tax Dollars At Work signs that have been plinked full of bullet holes, piles of old lockers:  Such discoveries are kind of the point of exploratory running, so I'm used to it. But I see an ammunition box among the refuse and for some reason I check what's inside, and it's a hidden geocache! Geocaching is kind of like cross between World of Warcraft for hiking. People take weatherproof boxes and fill them up with one man's treasure, then hide them in weird places and post the coordinates (sometimes there's a puzzle or something involved) online. People usually find them because they went to the spot with the coordinates and started looking. Maybe it's not that strange that I'd find it by accident, since first of all I guess I am kind of a nerd so maybe I look in the same kinds of places, and second there are apparently 1,000,00000000000 geocaches in the Bay area because of all the other nerds. But it was not what I was expecting. Spoiler alert:  (If you're feeling like my World of Warcraft jab is maybe not called for, let me just point out that the thing in the upper-left is a licensed Harry Potter fan accessory.) I did think it was neat to find this cache, so maybe I should be leaving surprises around as part of my Pittsburgh running. I know lots of weird spots.
After running I played through a game called VVVVVV all in one sitting. It is excellent. Really its only problem is that it should be 2–3 times longer than it is. (For a similar game that does not have that problem and that you should have already played by now, enjoy Cave Story (P.S. now available on your Ti-83 graphing calculator??)) |  |
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| Flying United? (Seems possible given that there is a direct SFO-PIT.) They have this thing called "channel 9" which is really just a channel on the entertainment service where you can listen to the cockpit communications LIVE. I was flying back from New Orleans to LA at the same time as the 2005 Superbowl (Eagles vs. Patriots). On Channel 9 the air traffic controllers were giving score updates on a periodic basis, which was pretty cool. Although, who knows... enough airlines have live TV these days that maybe you can just watch it. |
| Yeah, United. It's the second best Channel 9 out there. But the real fun of the Superbowl is the friends, not the scores. |
I am sad you did not tell me you were in town!
If you are not leaving until after the superbowl, you should swing by the Rose and Crown in Palo Alto. They're having special beer on tap from Firestone Walker. |
| Saintspocalypse |
| The Juliana Hatfield song "Swan Song" includes the lyrics "Dear Jack, I hate you, Love Diane". |
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