Guinness Waterfall Wallpaper

3 comments (closed), posted on may 24, 2004, tags: photos

One of many photographs still to be gone through, organized and posted to this site, I present to you for your wallpapering pleasure: the Guinness Storehouse waterfall. Get it in your size and try it on today.

How I Almost Poked My Eye Out

11 comments (closed), posted on may 21, 2004, tags: me

The good news is, dear readers, as you can tell by the subject of this entry—I didn't actually poke my eye out. But I tried. Unfortunately, as with many other endeavors, I failed. It's still worth mentioning, however, that I stabbed myself in the eye with a flat-head screwdriver on Tuesday. I'm not saying that for effect or trying to make it sound worse than it was. I actually stabbed myself in the eye with a screwdriver.

They moved me to a new cubicle at work. That's not why I did it, but it's partially responsible in the long-run. My new desk had two trays attached to the under-side of each section of the L, and since I have long legs and prefer to keep my keyboard on the desktop and my pens in a drawer, I decided to remove the trays. The keyboard tray came off easily, but I was having real trouble with the other tray. It seems as though whoever put it in did so with a power tool and a fuck-this attitude. The screws were crooked and partially embedded in the metal surface of the tray's rails. I managed to get three of the four screws out, but the last one refused to budge past a certain spot.

It was the end of the day, I was annoyed, and I made a stupid mistake: I knelt and put myself at eye-level with the screw. Moments before the accident I paused and thought to myself, "You know, you might hit yourself in the face if you're not careful here." So, to avoid this possibility, I rotated the rail around so it was blocking the screw. This way, if my driver slipped, it would hit the rail and save me from injury. Oh, how I wish that had worked. Feeling safe and frustrated at this bastard screw who wouldn't budge from its spot, I put as much torque into it as I could. Things quickly went wrong.

The moment the screw became un-stuck, the rail twisted with it and moved out of the way. At the exact same time, the driver slipped from the screw and all of that torque was directed at my left eye. With an amazing amount of force, I hit myself in the face with the sharp side of the screwdriver. I hit myself so hard it felt like I had been punched. I saw a white flash, and I instantly realized I had hit myself in the eye. I dropped the screwdriver and immediately began touching my left eye, terrified that I would find blood on my hand. Luckily, I did not.

Embarrassed, I covered my eye and walked to the restroom. In the 500-foot walk, I realized that I didn't know how the eye behaved when injured. Did it bleed? I expected to look in the mirror and see that I had cut my eye in half. The only thing keeping me from truly believing that was the fact that I could still see out of it. It couldn't be that bad, I thought. And it wasn't.

I scratched up the conjunctiva (membrane covering the white of your eye) pretty badly on the right (my left) side and about 1mm of the cornea. The doctor at the hospital said that if I hadn't jumped in reaction like I did, and had scratched the cornea like I had scratched the side, I would be blind in that eye. She also had to remove some metal flakes from in and around the scratches. After dilating my pupils and checking the optic nerve, she told me I was extremely lucky and that in most cases like this, people actually stab through their eye.

It's only been a few days and already my eye looks much better. I'm still in shock at how much force my eyeball took without serious damage, and I'm damned lucky to not have blinded myself. Next time I hear a little voice tell me that I might hurt myself, I'm going to listen to it. And no—before you ask—I didn't have to wear a patch.

Born Tomorrow

3 comments (closed), posted on may 14, 2004, tags: me

Right—so tomorrow, May 15, is my 23rd birthday. As I mentioned last year, I share my this birthday with Jamie-Lynn DiScala (formerly Sigler) of HBO's The Sopranos fame. Once again, however, I will not be attending her birthday party. Either way, happy 23, Jamie (I know you're wishing me the same).

I'd just like to mention, while we're on the topic, that this year went by very fast. I feel like I'm still turning 21, and yet, here I am, two years older already. Time is flying by (which is not a good thing), and this year I plan to claw at anything to slow down the process and start doing some things I should have already done. Traveling to Europe was one goal, but the list is long.

In the mean time, feel free to purchase gifts for me.

A Dublin Story

3 comments (closed), posted on may 14, 2004, tags: vacation

On the last day of our vacation, we had to fly from Dublin back to London, then from London back to the US. The flight from Dublin was at 7AM, and we arrived at the airport at 6AM for check-in. We left the hotel at 5AM. We woke up at 4AM. We went to sleep the night before at 12AM. Needless to say, even though I just did—we were tired and it was early. Coffee and tea were a must.

Shortly after checking in, we ignored the voice on the PA system telling us—every two minutes—to proceed immediately to the gate after check-in and strolled upstairs to the cafe area. Katia went to find a table and I queued at Brewster's, a Starbucks-esque coffee & muffins kiosk.

The airport was teeming with people, even at this early hour, and the queue was long. Behind me stood a tired-looking man in his early 20s, headphones on and eyes nearly closed. In front of me, two women were chatting loudly. One of the two women was a midget. I say midget rather than dwarf because she didn't have disproportionate features. She was just very, very small. I'm about six feet tall. She, I would say, was about three and a half. Maybe less. The woman she was with was not a midget. They spoke with Irish accents and about some client of their company who did somethingorother.

When the first woman ordered, she requested a large coffee and a small mocha. She also ordered two muffins. The women then continued to talk. A few moments later, the waitress finished tapping the order into her computer and, while another waitress fulfilled the order, she if she could help the next customer. I took a half-step forward and said, "Can I have an English breakfast tea and—"

"Um, hello? I was next, you jerk!" the midget woman yelled from below me, cutting me off. "What, you ignoring me because I'm small?" It took a moment to register that she was talking to me. I thought she was yelling at someone else. The waitress didn't understand what was going on, because she couldn't see the midget woman due to the fact that the counter at the kiosk was four feet tall. I felt my face turn red.

"I'm not ignoring you, I thought—"
"You thought wrong. I'm next in line," she barked at me. I could feel everyone staring at me. Suddenly, I was the jerk who ignores midgets. Really, though, it was pretty obvious what happened. I assumed the woman in front of the midget had ordered for both of them (why else would she order for two?), and I responded to the waitress because she looked right at me. I obviously didn't ignore the midget. But in that moment, I felt like there was no way for me to get that across, so I didn't even try.

The midget ordered and I waited.

Vacation Complete

6 comments (closed), posted on may 10, 2004, tags: vacation

There's a lot to mention about the vacation, but it will require several posts and some time to decompress and think about the whole trip. Short version of it is that we had a really great time and we're glad to be home now. A few notes worth mentioning right off the bat since they're fresh in my mind:

• Contrary to what I've heard, the Underground (Tube) was great. It's like the NYC subway but cleaner and prettier.
• There were Cadbury Creme Egg vending machines in the Underground stations. 3 eggs for £1. Fantastic!
• Westminster Abbey was far more impressive than I thought it would be.
• Every person begging for money on the street in Dublin was under 25 (most seemed to be in their teens).
• The Guinness Storehouse was surprising. Glass, steel, waterfall—very modern and pretty inside. Plus the beer's good too (even though I think I officially like Murphy's better).
• Both the Pound and the Euro have prettier bills and coins than US Dollars. Significantly.
• The English love the word "mind." It's "mind the gap," and "mind the doors." I love it too now.
• The ham in Dublin is fantastic.

The weather in Dublin was jokingly bad. The first day we were there, it rained so hard we almost cried. It would rain very hard for about 45 minutes and then clear up completely for 20. Then, just when you started to enjoy a clear, blue sky, it would start pouring again. We got used to carrying our umbrellas wherever we went, no matter how nice it looked outside. Dubliners, however, could care less about the rain. Almost no one had an umbrella, and most just walked through the rain carefree. Those who didn't want to get drenched would simply step into a doorway or cafe or under an overhang until the rain calmed down. Then they'd go back to walking.

London, on the other hand, ended up having better weather than we were expecting. London was actually a lot like Seattle in the way that it would rain in the morning but clear up around lunch time. The rest of the day would be great. It didn't rain at all one of the four days we were there.

I took 915 pictures. 915. I remember having the camera in my hand all the time, but it seems strange to me that I shot that many. Even more interesting is the breakdown of photos by location: 458 photos taken in London, 457 taken in Dublin. I inadvertently took nearly the exact same number of photos in each location. Very weird.

The Belkin iPod Media Reader worked wonderfully. I have a single 256MB compactflash card and I took nearly 3 gigabytes of photos. Every 100 or so pictures I would take a moment and dump them to the iPod, then wipe the card. It was an extra step, and sometimes slow, but it worked perfectly and only cost me $99 (instead of approximately $430 for 3GB worth of compactflash cards—see these).

Let me also say that Xanax is overrated. It didn't really do anything, and I found that I like flying even less than I did the last time I flew (1998). On the long journey home from Dublin—which involved waking up at 4AM and taking a 7AM flight to Heathrow, wherefrom taking a flight three hours later back to JFK—I took two 0.25mg pills and still felt like shit every time we hit turbulence. The next time I fly, I will be asking my doctor for a prescription of unconsciousness with a side of 200mg kick-to-the-face pills for good measure.

I also need to thank everyone for their suggestions as to what we should see. We tried to do everything suggested, and I think we pretty much did. I want to especially thank Buzz Anderson for his recommendation to take the Jack the Ripper walk. We wouldn't have done it if he hadn't suggested it, and it was completely worth it. Rumbelow was great and we really enjoyed the tour. Oh, and on a side note—it's a coincidence that on our first night in Dublin, we walked a few blocks from our hotel and chose to eat at Gallagher's Boxty House, without even realizing that it had been on the recommendations list from everyone. It was excellent! Thanks again for all your suggestions.

More to come, including crap-loads of pictures once I get a chance to go through all of them.