huh

i just realized i haven't blogged in a while, would you look at that.

fall in bemidji

i love the fall, we get to go to bemidji and winterize the "ponderosa" - one of my favorite things!

surreal

october? 80's? humid? DUST STORM??? wtf?!?!?! where are we, mars?

jeebus...

huh, ludwig works too

i'm at work and struggling with logging, regular expressions, and exception handling in java programs. i thought of jumpstarting my brain by listening to some beethoven (i've always been a bigger fan of him over amadeus) and am amazed at how everything seems to makes so much more sense!

true, it may be due in part to draining out my co-workers to aid in focusing but, instead, i'm going to sing the praises of beethoven.

freude, schoener goetterfunken!

RIP

RIP steve, thanks for all you did.

pocket play

got a pocket-sized copy of the US constitution from the ACLU in the mail today... i wonder what neo-con GOP friend(s) i should lend it to?

oh hell, who am i kidding... they don't need a copy, they all have it memorized already.

my favorite text of the day

Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
Happy anniversary to you both--
Happy birthday to just you!

friday ramblings

- pumpkin pie pop tarts kick serious ass.  the pastry actually tastes and flakes like pie crust; the filling is the taste and consistency of pumpkin pie filling; and the super-cute fall-inspired-and-colored frosting and sprinkles are reminiscent of whipped cream... i'm in love (sorry my love)

- speaking of fall-inspired, HAPPY FALL!  finally, i'm a step closer to my favorite season: snow

- my birthday is in two days, i'll be the same age jesus was when he kicked-it.  i've unofficially decided not to celebrate this year because every year i find i care less about birthdays and more about the fancy dinners i get to have on them w/ my hubbie (there, i made it up to you, hun)

- i'm considering an "i lived longer than jesus" party, though, when easter comes along.  not to rub it into jesus' face or anything but, let's face it, chances are definitely in my favor that i'll be living longer than he did

- http://www.drawastickman.com/

early rainbow

no, your eyes aren't messing with you... that is a rainbow in downtown saint paul at SEVEN O'CLOCK in the morning! the sun wasn't even over the horizon yet! i felt quite lucky to have caught it, it didn't last long =) a good way to start today.

oh... you're one of them

i just got pulled into a discussion at work that ended in the imfamous "oh, you live in an APARTMENT" line.

i guess there's still a stigma around 30-somethings who choose to save their money and decrease their carbon footprint by living urban.

i guess i shouldn't be surprised tho, these are the same people who occasionally still ask when john and i are going to have kids. when will they learn that we're never going to fit into their moulds???

[almost] ICE!

the temp was a mere 38 this morning on my walk into work and tomorrow should be around the same.  i am LOVING this mid-september chill and can't wait till next week when i can, once again, celebrate the return of the fall and my favorite half of the year - the LAST half!  HOLLA!

bring on mabon, fools!

fortune cookie

they other day my fortune cookie said, "the secret to a happy life is not doing what you love but loving what you do."

i couldn't disagree more.

"doing what you love" puts you in the center of your domain of control, giving you the ability to decide what you are doing based off of what you love.  to do what you love means you've taken an active role in your life by admitting that you are the only person who controls what you do (mental stability assumed) and therefore you'll do what you like, dammit.

"loving what you do" puts you in a passive and, thusly, inactive role in your life.  to say you "love what you do" makes it sound like you happened to wake up one morning and conveniently decide that what you're doing is satisfactory for your life.  

true... loving what you do will occur naturally if you do what you love but it can't be said in the reverse... you won't necessarily love what you do if you're not doing what you love.  this cookie is disturbing me on several levels.

fall

fall is finally on the way... while dropping the hubbie off at the airport for a business trip i couldn't help but notice that the leaves are starting to turn and are already starting to fall - FINALLY!  it's been a long summer with too much sun and too much heat (e.g., it's 90+ right now... WTF!?!?!).

do you think if i were to start picking leaves off of the trees they'd get the hint and start dropping them on their own???

sneaky little bastards

so the sneaky little bastards at work did an update to our instant messaging software over night so it no longer allows people to create/import their own custom emoticons.  true, they've gotten a little out of hand (belly dancers, hula-hoopers, tea bags, dancing hippos, a box of summer's eve (reserved for douche bags)) but really??? 

oh company-who-doesn't-like-to-be-named-in-social-media... you've done it again. 

*snapping on the handcuffs*

who are YOU???

i'm a grain belt, menards, costco, target, dunn bros kind of guy... now where's that broken lamp?

http://bit.ly/qYA3Ng

the highlight of my day

today's highlight: roseanne barr calling me a "hookr" =)

twitter

for more frequent updates, i dare you to follow me on twitter @Nakachunkoff.

holla!

quote

another amazing quote found on CNN.com in the comments on an article about a man who converted from christianity to islam:

"Atheism/Humansim is not a religion... It is a personal relationship with reality."

dancing in the precipitation

woke up this morning to rain, dark, and a chill in the air - a day made for me!  it's days like this that i'm glad i live AND work downtown because i get to walk to work in the rain with my umbrella; that rarely-used accessory that adds an element of romanticism and fun to any person's day.  there's nothing i love more than rainy days because no matter how i'm feeling when i wake up or seconds before i walk out the door, it never fails that the moment i see the rain i feel like a new person with an energy level that matches that of any crazy person who loves the sunshine in the middle of summer (crazy people).  i mean, seriously, what's more warm, cozy, and full of childlike fun than a good rain!?!?!?

the only bad thing is the new work shoes i bought (to keep my feet dry because the others weren't so successful at that) did indeed leak this morning so my precipitation-happy-dance was clouded-over by a wet sock on my right foot.  oh well, something i can take through my day as a reminder of my walk in  = )

RIP don quixote

last saturday afternoon i mourned the passing of a dear friend i had been intimately close with for 982 pages.  while i found myself wishing for his swifter demise around page 500 i was more than just surprised when i chocked-up while reading his last words and the words of his closest friends/family on page 980.  i found the writing style of cervantes to be more than a simple rumination on the life of this most famous knight errant, it was more like an ongoing newspaper column than that of a large novel; thusly, on his unexpected passing, i felt like i had lost what had become one of my favorite pastimes: catching up on don quixote and sancho's crazy goings-on.

may you rest in peace alonso quixano - i look forward to the future when i pick up your crazy antics again and relive our [almost 1000 pages of incredibly fun and thought provoking] adventures.

what should stay in vegas?

there's a fine line between "what happens in vegas stays in vegas" and "what the hell should stay in vegas?"

i can't hide that i bought a tiny 2.5g gold bar from the gold-to-go ATM at the golden nugget.

i can't hide that i spend WAY too much time shopping and buying impulse items.

i can't hide that i caved and bought not one but TWO fabergé imperial egg ornaments.

i can't hide that we went to a kick-ASS show on the last evening ("diva's las vegas" - i'd recommend it to everyone, the BEST drag show you'll see in a long time if not ever)

i guess i could try to hide the fact that we visited all SIX fat tuesday's slushy bars (and the seventh "unofficial" one in new york new york).

i guess i could try to hide the fact that we visited a couple fat tuesday's more than once.

i guess i could hide that we went rented a car and had a fantastic day at hoover dam, lake mead national recreational area, and valley of fire state park.

and i guess i could fail to mention the details of that day... hmmm... maybe i will leave that day in vegas  = )

spilled coffee

i used to think nothing good could come out of spilling coffee at my desk at work until i just did it two minutes ago and realized that, 1) my desk will now smell like fresh-brewed coffee for the rest of the day and 2) the DMZ between my keyboard and monitor finally got dusted.

i should spill coffee more often.

frustrating

the mcdonald's mcskillet burrito i got this morning for breakfast only had eggs and sausage in it.  i thought it seemed odd that the breakfast burrito that was supposed to have everything was so sparse.  i went to the big m's site and confirmed it was supposed to have "fluffy scrambled eggs, yummy potato-vegetable blend, savory sausage, two types of cheese and our delicious Salsa Roja made with fire-roasted tomatoes. All the things you want, wrapped in a tortilla."  i thought about going down to complain but i had already finished the burrito and proving my point would have required up-chucking my breakfast.  considering it wasn't that fantastic going down i figured it wouldn't be any more fantastic coming back up.

oh well, i guess that's what i get when i order breakfast from a chain restaurant, on a national holiday, the day after a snowstorm dropped 15" on us, in a downtown area that STILL hasn't been plowed.

new favorite quote

from the t-shirt of a san francisco prop 8 protester:

"if your marriage needs protecting you need a therapist, not an amendment"

too deep for a friday morning

lately, i've become increasingly disillusioned by random acts of kindness by focusing more on being skeptical of the person's altruism rather than the kindness itself.  

if you would have asked me ten years ago i would have said i believed in the inherent goodness of mankind, but at age 32, with 120 years of life experience, my hopes for the future of humanity are swiftly decreasing to mere piles of dust.  

if on my walk into work i almost get run over by two cars that are too impatient to let a pedestrian cross the street [legally, on a walk signal], how am i to feel when a random stranger wants to open a door for me?  i look into the stranger's eyes and don't see kindness but, rather, see a desire to be acknowledged and praised for their generosity.

i think i'd rather not hold open a door for a stranger than open it for them and risk my motives not being true and i think i'd rather be looked at as not being kind (by others) than know that i'm being insincere (by myself).

WHAT!?!?!?!?

people of securian, hear my words and heed my knowledge: noise-cancelling ear buds are also PEOPLE-cancelling ear buds.  

if you see ear buds delicately snuggled in my ears, please don't talk to me until you have first received my fullest of attention.  if this does not occur first, i WILL turn around and very slowly remove said ear buds and patronizingly ask you to repeat yourself in order to teach you a valuable-but-most-likely-not-to-be-retained lesson.

yes, i know i can be a real ass sometimes.

finally catching up...

last night john and i started to finally catch up with the rest of the world as we started watching glee.  getting sick of everyone telling us how wonderful it was and not being able to carry on conversations with friends and co-workers, we asked for it for xmas and lo, jesus claus tipped his soft white bunny ear our way and blessed us with the first season on DVD.

last night signalled the beginning of a new era and aptly so, we entered it in fits of giggles over sue, gushed with junior high lust over will and puck, and gleamed through every single musical number.  

i may never be on facebook, but i'll at least be full of glee  = )

conflicting messages and burned-in memories

my father told me once that he believed that all people should have the right to live their lives as they see fit, regardless of whether it conflicts with his conservative beliefs.

less than a minute later in the conversation he said that given his previous statement, if he was given the ability to vote on certain hot-button issues he wouldn't skip a beat to vote against same-sex couples being able to marry or to make abortion illegal.

i [believe it or not, respectfully] questioned him, saying that his messages conflicted; if he truly believed that people should have the right to live their lives as they see fit then he wouldn't vote in favor of forcing those same people to conform to his beliefs.

i remember this next part very clearly - it is burned in my mind forever.

my father's response was completely opposite of the tone of the conversation up to that point.  in the middle of this for-the-most-part-civil conversation, my father shot back a response with vehement anger and defense as he said, "don't you DARE you ask me to do something [vote] against what i know to be right!" 

it wasn't much later in the conversation that my father blew up again and stomped away from the table we were sitting at in the middle of a restaurant in omaha.

i'll never forget that night.  as angry as i was at the end of the evening, i cant help but feel sorry for my father - it mustn't be a terribly happy life if one is constantly living with conflicting beliefs that divide one between their invisible best friend with a 2,000 year old user's guide and your flesh-and-blood who is, for all intents and purposes, sitting in front of you living a successful, happy, fulfilling, and ethical life, void of any visible divine retribution from his supposed "sin."

rant #2

i'm tired of people saying that people who drink decaf coffee aren't drinking "real" coffee or that they aren't "real" coffee drinkers.

 

i beg to differ.  as a matter of fact, i think decaf drinkers are the most sincere and wholly-dedicated of all coffee drinkers!  think about it for a sec: how many people do you know refere to coffee as their "caffeine fix" or their "pick me up?"  NOW... how many decaf drinkers say that... uh, NONE.  why?  because they drink coffee for something other than the caffeine or the rush, they drink it because they enjoy the flavor.

 

now, can you say that about every single "regular" coffee drinker?

 

yeah... gotcha thinking, huh?

 

thus ends the second rant.  you may be seated.

thursday rant #1

food days at work are meant to be times of celebration for a person's achievements and/or ability to push through life/work yet one more year.  BUT, if the intended celebrant isn't able to be around to celebrate (e.g., they're teaching) or if 1/2 the team isn't going to eat because they're "going to be good and not eat snacks" then what's the point???

thus ends today's first rant.

quote of the day

the quote of the day comes from the comments section in a startribune editorial on reducing the deficit:

"I have finally (after 67 years) come to the realization that the only difference between the Republicans and Democrats is that the Democrats "tax and spend" while the Republicans "just spend"."

the adventures of baron nechodomu

whew, i'm finally back to semi-normalcy after being away from work (i.e., reality) for over two weeks.  the first week was spent on our xmas cruise (costa maya, mexico; belize city, belize; cozumel, mexico; georgetown, grand cayman) and the second week in the everglades, key largo, and at home veggin' and cleanin' (the cleaning was john's idea, not mine).

what a wonderful time, though, to be far FAR away from family on one of the most family-oriented of holidays!  no offense to my family, but they're CRAZY and nothing was more of a welcome paradigm shift than to wake up on xmas eve morning on a ship in the middle of the caribbean with breakfast in bed w/ bloodies & mimosas, scrambled eggs w/ smoked salmon and caviar, and cinnamon french toast.  later in the day we shopped on grand cayman and then had a beautiful formal dinner in the main dining room of the ship (see pics).  xmas day we gorged for breakfast and then laid on the top deck of the ship in full-sun 80 degree weather.  it was our first time, ever, that either john or i had spent xmas away from the midwest... a bit of an adjustment but one i think we could probably handle again in the future  = )  (btw, i DID bring along a string of lights with which to decorate our room = ).

and now back at work being a productive member of society.  lol, like i'll ever be that...

here are our PICS!!!