A study...part 3

Well the wait was worth it...I passed my test! I have been studying during my free time for the greater part of the last two months, and everything else has been shelved as a secondary need. Now I am left with a filthy apartment, a pile of dishes, a dusty gym bag, and no clean socks. I was so stressed out that I even impacted my bowels! Too much information?...well here's some more. The test was wednesday, and by thursday (even after I knew I passed) I started to get intense abdominal pain. So much so that I couldn't sleep and was convinced I had internal bleeding from some unmemorable accident. I went into the doctor Saturday morning and the doctor originally considered sending me straight to the emergency room. She asked when my last poop was. Thinking about it, I would say about a week. She then said "well I'm going to need to put my finger up your butt". Yep I got to know my general practitioner REAL well in the next five minutes. Two fleet enemas later (oh yes...self administered...which I will never unlearn) and I am hopefully out of the danger zone. I don't know what was more embarrassing...giving myself that second enema or possibly having "death by poop" on my tombstone.

Okay enough with the personal stuff...wanna hear about interesting characters at the library? A few weeks ago, I observed the guy with a metal hook for a hand. Well a few weekends later, my table mate was a man with an eye patch. I considered telling him about hooky hand so that they could start up a kick ass pirate crew.

An old man who looked like Santa Claus sat a table away. He had the full white beard, rosy cheeks and bowl-full-of-jelly belly. He looked like St. Nick in every way...except for the cross tattooed to his forehead. Clearly he was a December man...just a bit confused.

A man across the reading room was either crazy or reading the greatest page turner ever. I say that because each time he turned the page, he would exclaim "aaahhhh" like it was a great surprise.

A family of three sat on my other side (one mother and her two teenage children). They were the champion distractors. The son was playing video games on his laptop (with the sound on). The daughter was talking on her cell phone. And the mother was asleep...snoring AND drooling. I wasn't mad since the study material was so dry and they certainly were entertaining. Eventually the librarian came over and asked them to please grab a magazine or book to "at least pretend they were at a library". Well played sir, well played.

Gay Trivia

Tuesday night, I joined Jewed Law and some other friends for trivia night hosted at a local gay bar. In all honesty, the guys didn't come to the bar for trivia...they came to flirt with their gay boyfriend. Don't worry, I am dating a straight man...he just openly flirts with the bartender. This all started when him and Ky (a married male half of our couple friend) started going to this bar every Monday for football. This gay bar is the only sports bar in the neighborhood, so it was more of a default instead of a choice. Their weekly visits turned them into "regulars" with even saved seats at the bar like Norm and Cliff. I think deep down the boys liked the attention since we girls rarely fawn all over them.
Anyway, when Monday night football ended, the boys switched to Tuesday Trivia (again just any excuse to hang with their gay boyfriend). Our team yesterday included Jewed Law & myself, the husband and wife duo of Ky & Lu, and Jewed Law's work buddies. Call us dorks, but we had just the right combination of random people to cover a pretty good spread of useless knowledge. The first task was selecting a team name. We mulled over the usual suspects of "garage sale vibrators", "heat seeking penis", or "I'm a fucking professional" before settling on the always classy "I cum rainbows". To back up, cumming rainbows is homage to a conversation we had with the gay boyfriend about how slutty he was. He said he would likely blow a guy if he claimed to cum rainbows.
So to our surprise, we dominated the competition with correct guesses on the ph of water, the year Nintendo was invented, and the length in feet of the average small intestine. It did give me pleasure every time the announcer had to say "and on top...I cum rainbows". Being that the game was being held in a bar...a gay bar, drunken responses were yelled out more frequently as the night went on. My favorite response was "Sarah Jessica Parker" to the question "what do you call an adult female horse". Ah ha ha ha

A study...part 2

So each week, my neighborhood never fails to provide quality people watching. I again camped out at Starbucks for several hours this Sunday to study...for a test...and the people.

I took a few practice quizzes to test my retention of the material. Well the textbook explanation for one of my missed answers specifically said "we question your competence and integrity as a project manager if you picked anything but the correct answer". Whoops!

Okay back to people watching. Yeah I've been told I am way too judgmental...but that isn't stopping me. So at the next table, a "gangsta thug" looking man (okay yes, he was black...a menacing looking black man) was watching a movie on his laptop. What movie do you ask...TWILIGHT! Ah ha ha ha. I almost leaned over to give a condescending shake of the head...or maybe to ask if he was team Jacob.

A study...

I have been quite absent in my writing, but I have good reason. I am currently studying for this test to improve my career (or at least give me some more letters after my name). Studying hasn't been easy since I am easily distracted. That is why I have forced myself to get out of my apartment and find camping grounds to bunker down and concentrate. Of course (since it is me and everything) my study spaces are not devoid of unusual activity. Here is what I observed this weekend.
Saturday was quality time at the library. I stationed myself in the children's section of the small Uptown library for several hours. You ask what I am doing in the children's section...well yes I totally looked like a pedophile but it was much better than sharing a table with homeless people. Seriously the library is just chock full of homeless people (or at least the one in Uptown). The children's section had a few signs stating "children only...no adults allowed" that I conveniently ignored. Thankfully the staff let me be since I was quiet, clearly studying, and kept my hands out of my pants.
Sunday the library is closed, so I had to settle for the Starbucks in my hood. It is a "Magic Johnson" Starbucks so you know it is ghetto. Still I was able to study for several hours at one of their library/communal tables (seats six). The downside of being at a communal is having to deal with other table mates. One man poured HALF the sugar canister into his coffee. It was like that moment in A League of Their Own were Tom Hanks pees for four minutes. I couldn't believe it and kept thinking "he must be done now...okay now...uh now?" I wanted to lean over and peak into his cup to see what it looked like. Well at least he didn't "drink" his coffee with a spoon.
Another table-mate was a girl and guy duo. He was loudly tutoring her in quantum mechanics (not kidding). I kept thinking it was part of a hidden camera show because he sounded like a Russian physicist and she looked like Jersey Shore community college.
My favorite neighbor was the old man with a HOOK for a hand! Yeah I couldn't believe it either. He had the look of a homeless guy, so I bet he had a bad ass street name like "One hand Sam" or "Hooky Lou" or "Bill the Pirate". I have to admit, he was very distracting...I mean the hook was distracting enough...his "reading" style didn't help any. The guy had a couple of paperback books that he was systematically marking up with a pen (underlining words, crossing off sections, etc.) as well as tearing out pages. The fun part was that he was tearing out pages with his HOOK! Made me wonder if he was doing it on purpose or if it was one of hazards of having a hook hand.

South America Adventures - Part 4 (Inca Trail)

We woke up several hours before dawn (this will be a common theme through our hiking trip) and set out for the starting gate of the Inca trail. We were doing the most common hike, which is four days hiking with three days camping out. I’ve run into all sorts of people (mostly my parent’s generation) who all claim to have hiked to Machu Picchu. Well they are all liars. Many take the train to a bus that will drop them off at the doorstep ofMachu Picchu. This hike was a real challenge with 6-10 miles each day combined with high altitudes (some people even had to break out the oxygen tanks…although that was an extreme case with a pair of smokers). Youcould tell when you get to Machu Picchu who did the hiking and who took the train (well you could smell the difference between sweat/exhaustion and someone who actually has showered in the last three days).
Due to conservation efforts, you have to get a permit in order to hike the Incatrail,and they only sell a limited numberof permits each season. This isactually why we did the trip this particular year instead of the previous year (they sold out of permits so we had to wait a YEAR!). After a group picture, we stamped our permit at a guardhouse on one side of the river and crossed over a bridge to the trailhead (whoo hoo, off we go!).
There were many Inca trails all over Peru…kind of their road system. This particular Inca trail ran between Cusco (the capital) and Machu Picchu (a religious retreat area). When the Spaniards came, the Incas started to rip up the roads to A) slow down the enemy, and B) hide/protect their temples & cities. The trail at this part was rough. Many of the stones were missing, and those still in were allskewed so you had to watch your step in order to avoid a sprained ankle.
Another obstacle was the pack of donkeys sharing the trail with us. An Inca site about a ½days hike in (Ilactapata) was under restoration construction, and the donkeys were the only way to transport in supplies like cement mix and lumber. We spent the greater part of the first day looking down in order to avoid twisting an ankle or stepping in various animal shit piles. We joked about people asking us how the Inca trail was only to answer, “I don’t know, I was too busy watching out for donkey poop!”

Thanks to this experience, I can confidently distinguish between horse,donkey, and llama poop (big pile, hamburger patties, and pellets respectively).

The few times I did look up, the view was SPECTACULAR! Mountains and rivers…cliffs and waterfalls…even a few ruins. We took a rest break next to this narrow (narrow is an understatement…more like a sliver of a path) offshoot path that lead up to a cliff overhanging a river. The path

was the raised ridge with shear drop offs on either side. You had

just enough space to walk one foot in front of the other like tightrope walking. At first only a handful of the extra bold hikers climbed up to take in the view and get one-of-a-kind photo opportunities. I am extremely afraid of heights, but I eventually decided to venture up since I likely would never be here again (Dana called it suicidal). I looked over the edge

and it made my heart skip a beat seeing the raging river about 500ft below our small rock outcropping/cliff. Some of the uber bold guys stood on a lower small (foot width) ledge that would prop their heads just above the side. We staged the pictures that looked like they were hanging over the edge of the cliff. Yeah it looked cool but it still made me pee a little.

After a few hours in, it was clear the group of 14 would split into two paces of slow and slower. I considered myself in shape, but the altitude and uphill climbing kicked my ass. Thankfully I was part of the faster group (granted I was the slowest person in that group), and the guide proposed taking this slightly longer but more scenic route to the first campsite. He reasoned that we would get to the campsite at the same time as the slower group since we were taking the long route. Well it became obvious later the guide seldom takes this route because we got lost. At one point we needed to cross this stream (about 10ft wide). The bridge was a clumped grouping of branches and twigs thrown over a tree trunk and a hearty bush. We crossed one at a time, and each crossing would result in the sound of a few branches snapping. It was the second time that day that

I almost peed myself. Thankfully everyone made it across (although there was one big snap and the Puerto Rican quickly crawled across on his belly where we pulled him over when he got within arm’s reach).

We ended up in some farmer’s field. Of course he had freshly manured his field so all my efforts to avoid animal shit that day were wasted.

When we passed his house (or hut), his wife was outside hanging laundry. She saw the group of us and started yelling out (in Quechua) to her husband something that we took to be “get your ass out of our fields…honey there are people on our property”. We high tailed it out of there since there were ample places to hide a body or two (there was zero civilization out there).

After climbing over a few fences, we finally hit the campsite…two hours

after the slower group. I was exhausted and wanted to pass out right there even though it was just past four o’clock. As an effort to pack light, everyone basically carried one set of clothes and wore another with enough changes in underwear to get us through 4 days. Once we were in the camp, everyone stripped off their sweaty clothes (or in my case sweaty shirt since I only brought the one pair of hiking pants) and strung them on makeshift clotheslines strung inside our tents. Everyone then just collapsed and caught up on personal stuff while we waited the hour before dinner. Dana was reading a book and suddenly declared, “its easier for me to read laying down”. I couldn’t help but add, “its easier for me to sleep laying down” which got a few exhausted chuckles.

The hour passed and we were ushered into the “group tent” which had just enough space to fit the 14 of us along with tiny little camping chairs and table.

For being in the middle of nowhere with humans physically trafficking in our food, we sure ate well. Yes most of

the meals were soup based since it was easy

to carry packets of ramen spices, some rice, and a big pot that you could just fill it up with water found in some stream. Okay it was the same pot they used to sterilize the drinking water and bathing water (I use the term bathing liberally since you basically dipped a washcloth in a tub of ice cold water and gave your armpits a onceover).

During dinner, our guide gave us some pointers for our first night. He told us all to relieve ourselves (i.e. pee) while it was still light out since we are in the middle of the wilderness and a nighttime wandering could result in us disrupting a snake, varmit, or worse a puma on the prowl. He also instructed us to stay calm if we heard “noises” (yes he even said it with the quotation marks…made me wonder what was out there). The last gem of advice he gave us was to ALWAYS keep our tents zipped up because many animals like to find nice dry, warm (well when we are in there) place to crawl into. All of our jaws dropped because every tent was open in order to help dry off our sweaty clothes. We begged the porters to go check the tents for critters for us... thankfully Dana & my tent was empty but another pairing had two tarantula spiders escorted out of their tent.

Speaking of the porters, we got to meet all of them. They ranged in age from mid 20’s up to 60’s. They aged beyond their years as everyone looked double their actual age (the 31 year old looked no younger than 50). Many wore rubber tire sandals and carried up to 60kg of gear on their backs (some with the tied

blanket method). Over half of the group spoke only Quechua, an indigenous language similar to what was spoken by the Incans. Not only did they carry practically all of our gear, food, and lodging, but they would practically sprint on the trail in order to beat us to the next camp. Granted most of the men hail from nearby mountain villages, so they were familiar with high altitudes and mountain terrain hiking (but man we were majorly schooled each day).

Okay now here comes my favorite story of the entire trip. I am so excited to write about this that I am sure a few too many exclamation points will populate the paragraph (yay!!!). Our camp was on a few stepped terraces on the side of a mountain. Each terrace level was stepped about 5ft down from the next, and we were able to fit four two-man tents along the length of a terrace level. During the middle of the night, I heard these heavy footsteps of some wild beast roaming around outside. At one point the THING fell off one terrace level onto another. It sounded HUGE! It came over and started to rip fistfuls of sod out of the ground RIGHT NEXT TO OUR TENT! The whole time it was deeply breathing these heavy breaths out its nose…it sounded like a dragon. As you could imagine, I was practically shitting myself. However out of courtesy I tried to be absolutely silent as to not wake Dana. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Dana was doing her damnedest to be still and quiet as well. I was convinced it was a puma…until it relieved itself on the other side of our tent. Yes, when it peed, it let out a bray of relief and I realized we had been terrorized the last 20minutes by a DONKEY. The rouge donkey stumbled around the rest of the camp waking up

everyone else (yet everyone was quiet as our tents were practically on top of each other). At one point, we heard the still of the night disturbed by the sound of canvas ripping and a man going “ah ah AAAAAAHHHHH!”. The entire camp burst out laughing. Apparently the donkey tripped on one of the tent guide wires and fell into the occupied tent. Simon (British guy) was fast asleep and the next thing he knew, a giant hairy body was coming towards him. Yeah I would scream too.

The night molestation wasn’t over yet. I was woken up (again) by some scratching right NEXT TO MY HEAD! It sounded like something was burying something under my head. Thankfully it sounded small so it was more of an annoyance instead of a fear for my life. The critter must have woken up the girl in the next tent over because she attempted to shoo it off. Unfortunately it was a skunk and it let out a little stink in its flight.
The next morning we were greeted with piles of donkey poop (hamburger patties…I should know) all over the camp! We found the culprit donkey about 100ft up on the trail. There may be a few pictures of us making obscene hand gestures to it out of spite.

Check out these kids who played around our campsite during lunch. The great debate is if kid knew what was really on his hat.

Another humorous story...we saw this horse up on the side of the mountain. We asked a local how the horse got up there. The local replied in all seriousness, "It walked". Ah ha ha ha

The Christmas message

Time once again with the annual family Christmas letter. I've take over writing this tradition a few years ago after another wildly incorrect letter from Mom. She would write "Lindsay won a marathon", when the actual statement was "Lindsay run a marathon". Anyway, the letter has to be somewhat toned down as the relatives don't have the same appreciation for curse words that I do. Admittingly this is not my best work (I wish it was funny laugh-out-loud instead of just funny ha-ha). Oh and it has been censored to protect identities and future politicians.

Merry Christmas from the [insert surname here]. Actually it should say Happy New Years instead as we have yet again procrastinated.
We are dubbing this year “the year of the baby” as we added TWO to the family. Angela & Brad welcomed a son, Bennett, on August 1st. He is a good baby and smiles with his toothless mouth all the time. Bennett is constantly amusing his parents by showing off how far he can urinate. One time the stream hit him right in the head, and we’ll remind him of that experience when he turns into an awful teenager. The couple remains avid fans of the Omaha Storm Chasers baseball team (I attribute it to the tight pants the players wear).
About a month later, Tiffany& Aaron welcomed their second daughter, Hadley, in early September. Yes Angela and Tiffany were both pregnant at the same time (battle of the belly). Hadley was born a few days after Ava celebrated her 3rd birthday. Ava just learned the word “No” and is putting it to use everywhere. It is hard not to laugh at her when she tries to be so angry. Hadley is, well a baby, so she mostly just stares out at the world and launches projectile spit-ups (okay spit-ups is the nice way of saying baby vomit). Aaron’s Christmas light home display hit a new obsession level as he doubled the quantity of strands for this year’s newspaper making display (giving Clark Griswald a run for his money).
Lindsay continues to live and work in Chicago. She was rewarded for her hard work by being honored nationally as one of the top 40 consulting engineers under the age of 40. Mom attended the awards banquet with her and commented, “whoa, engineers are sure boring”. At least they gave out a plaque for making us sit through the droning speeches. Lindsay’s annual abroad vacation this year took her back to Greece. Unfortunately she had terrible timing and arrived right when the country attempted to declare bankruptcy. Nothing says relaxing vacation like protests, riots, and a transportation strike (which lead to a very exciting yet slightly illegal trip to the airport).
Mom retired in June after 31 years of teaching. It couldn’t come soon enough as she claims the 8th graders get worse each year. She is a full time Grandma now and spends most of her time visiting the kids, oh and substitute teaching every once and while (only when the babies are not available). She also has turned her free time to organizing the bins of memorabilia from the kids and grandbabies. Man, six was a terrible year for us in hand turkeys and coloring.
Dad still enjoys the retired life. His day is a rotation of eating, napping, and watching educational television. He excels at making the grand kids smile and laugh (they really get him) and he is the favorite lap for Ava when she wants to “read” to someone.
We hope all of our friends and family are well this holiday season, and earnestly preparing to break their New Year’s resolutions.

Bennett & Hadley duking it out

Ava as Dorothy for Halloween

Bennett's game day gear

Ava loves her little sister

The three grandkids at Thanksgiving

The three regular kids in August (Tiff is 9 months pregnant)

Who wears short shorts...

I’ve said it before, but Halloween is my favorite holiday. Yes I realize it is mid December and I am writing about October…ah happy memories of warmer times.
Last year I was invited to two fabulous parties. One had us playing charades, which may sound dull but was actually quite fun if you get a bunch of drunk adults together. The game gets even more interesting when you have to act out “whale penis” or “cell phone picture of brett farve’s junk”. Jewed Law made the game interactive by writing up slips involving another guest. Thanks to him, one guy got a lap dance and I ended up sticking my finger in a very perplexed guy’s mouth. The funny thing is that this relative stranger let me put my finger in his mouth once and almost let me stick it in a second time.
The second part was a “mash-up” theme. This means you take two ideas or characters and mash them together. I was dressed as a giant banana with a hammock draped around my shoulders…get it, a banana hammock (or a giant banana hammock because if I was a dude, I would require a big one…oh yeah). Some other good ones were lady ga-ga-zilla, pee-wee Herman Munster, sonic youth the hedgehog, carrot top chef, poison ivy (poison being the rock band), Salvador dolly, finding captain nemo, and my favorite Jiffy Pope. How awesome is Jiffy Pope! His cape was aluminum foil, his scepter cane thing (forgive me I am not catholic, so I don’t know the formal name for everything) instead of a scroll was a stovetop jiffy pop package, and the best part was that his hat (miter I think) was filled with POPCORN! Okay this is sacrilegious, but he would bless people and feed them pieces of popcorn like communion.
The mash up theme party was such as hit, that it was copied for a Halloween party this year. With all the great costumes last year, I had to think a bit to come up with something totally balling. A quick trip to the local thrift store on ½ price day (yes I do know when my thrift store has ½ price days…hey don’t judge, it is a sweet deal and the people watching is awesome) and for about $7 I picked up my entire costume. I purchased a size 50 men’s khaki pants. Holding them up, I had a weight watchers moment…you know when they can fit into one leg of the giant pair of pants. Anyway, I needed the huge pants in order to create motorcycle pants like what George Patton favored. Yep I was going as Patton…Dolly Patton (a mix of Dolly Parton and General Patton). I cut in a waist and leg below the knee to make it fit perfectly. One thing I realized was that men wearing size 50 pants have HUGE asses! The crotch extended down to my knees! Don’t believe me, go wander around the big and tall section in Montgomery Ward. Sewing I can handle, but the hard part was incorporating gigantic balloons into my chest. They were so big I couldn’t see my toes or grasp my hands in front of me. I guess she has gotten used to them over time.
Jewed Law’s costume was much simpler to create. During our paint the condo weekend, he was wearing a really tight pair of jeans. We spent the weekend trading jibes about his tight jeans and how he should audition for the Thunder Down Under male review. Anyway, I wanted to work these jeans into his outfit. The only thing I could come up with was making hot pant a la Daisy Duke. Surprisingly he was down with this (not gay I swear). The first cut I made was about boxer length…then he let me go a little (or a lot) higher. The end result cracks me up even thinking about it. The other part of his costume was some cardboard guns, a cigar, and a red tank top for….Duke Nukem. Finished product = Daisy Duke Nukem.
I don’t know if it was his milky thighs or my riding crop (made from a coat hanger and some electrical tape…I am Mac-fucking-Gyver), but our costumes were a hit. Other witty combos were a zom-bee (half zombie and half bee), the wicked witch of the Northwestern, Jew-do (judo), and a unicorn-on-the-cob (ah ha ha ha…the horn was actually an ear of corn).