Great reading for flight to/from SEA

(I'm totally stealing Huan's idea, so please don't credit me if you follow my advice.)

(Also, it would work for any cross country flight.)

As I was waiting for my flight out of RDU on Sunday I happened across a used bookstore. I think this is just a fantastic business to have in an airport... I really like the idea of having a cheap, diverse set of books available when you are a captive audience. There's no way this place lasts very long, but it's a great idea while it lasts.

Anyways, I bought a copy of The Great Gatsby ($2, steal of the century), which I haven't read since junior year in high school. I really disliked my English teacher that year, and so I largely wrote off most of the books that we read as crappy and unworthy of my time. Obviously only an idiot would think that, and hopefully I'm becoming less of an idiot with time. Anyways, I agree with the critics: The Great Gatsby is one of if not the greatest American novel. It's easily short enough to read on a cross-country flight, and I think it makes you look smart when compared to all the dopes reading DaVinci Code. Pick it up when you come visit, or take my copy when you head back East.

Tinged with homesickness

Good trip to and from the East Coast this past weekend. Bullets:

• Flights on Delta were mediocre. I actually got some sleep on the red eye on Thursday night, despite sitting next to a guy who generated heat all night. Got stuck in a middle seat from RDU-ATL, which is luckily a 45 minute flight. Note to airlines: make the investment in personal video screens. For the second time in a month I had to watch "The Holiday" because Lufthansa and Delta make everyone watch the same entertainment. Just a brutally bad movie.
• I miss nice people. Everyone in NC smiles and talks to you and is generally pleasant.
  
• I miss tan people, including myself. Now, as any responsible person I'm freaked about skin cancer, but I didn't realize how pasty I had become until I put on my new black golf shoes on Friday. I thought something was wrong with the lighting. Nope. I was just brutally pale, like everyone else in Seattle. People in NC had color. The girls all looked great.
• I miss the warmth. Obviously I won't be complaining in July when it is gorgeous here and awful back East, but high 70s, low 80s, sun, pleasant breezes... it couldn't have been better. Tough to get back on the plane.

Not much else to report from the weekend. Played great tee-to-green golf but couldn't buy a putt. Wedding was very nice, but I was sad I didn't have my wedding betting group because the combo of the Duke Chapel (long aisle) and a Greek ceremony would have led to some interesting bets. Also, a bridesmaid fainted (she recovered enough to get drunk at the reception), and I'm not putting that as a prop bet for all future weddings.

Likely blog silence

Unlike going to Germany I'm about to take a trip to where the InterWeb has a much lower penetration: North Carolina. So gird yourselves for several days without postings on this here blog. Hopefully between seeing the family, breathing in tons of pollen I'm unaccustomed to while playing golf, a Greek wedding in Duke chapel, temperatures above 65 degrees causing me to overheat, and completely full cross-country flights on an airline I have no status on there should be some good stories to share upon my return.

During my absence, my favorite YouTube video of 2006:

I'm not saying

Former company stock performance since my departure: -4.4%
Present company stock performance since my arrival: +51.8%

I'm just saying.

The sad thing is I actually own a lot more of the former than of the latter.

The elusive morel

So we went mushroom hunting on Saturday. Huan, Tyler H, Tyler's friend Cory, and I woke up quite early and we started driving west* in search of morels. Huan and Cory have both been morel hunting elsewhere and were excited at the prospects of finding tasty mushrooms that are $50+ per pound in grocery stores. Tyler and I were kind of excited about finding mushrooms, but also just happy to walk around in the woods on a nice day.

Huan did some research and we decided to look start our search in Cle Elum, WA, which is about 80 miles east of Seattle. What we didn't do a lot of research on is the climate of Cle Elum at this time of year. When we got there around 10:00 it was cold. As in just barely above freezing. We didn't even need our ground thermometer/meat thermometer to tell us that we wouldn't find any mushrooms there.

Anyways, we drove back through Snoqualmie Pass and found a forest service road that led us to some promising spots. The ground was damp, it wasn't cold... one would think perfect conditions for mushrooms. We spent about an hour looking around and found... nothing. While we were packing up an old Scandanavian dude stopped by and asked what we were doing. Huan explained that we were mushroom hunting (not those sorts of mushrooms), and he started laughing. A lot. He claims that while our instincts were good we wouldn't find morels in that area until July. Three months later. We were dismayed, but not cowed.

We continued west towards lower elevations. We stopped at a state park and looked around, again for naught. We decided to bag the mushroom hunt and take a hike, as we were close to some water falls. On our way back, less than 100 yards from the parking lot, we passed an Asian family carrying baskets. The two parents had a bunch of weird greens, but the daughter had something else. Something brown and wrinkly and beautiful.

She had morels.

When Cory pointed them out the mother clearly thought that her daughter was going to be attacked by a bunch of 30 year old dudes. Huan asked where she found them, and the mom said "Not here", which we translated as "Go to hell white devils, the mushrooms are ours!"

To seal the deal that we'd be frustrated about our trip Tyler H stepped in dog poo in the parking lot, and actually threw away his shoes rather than trying to clean it up. A disaster all around.

Here are pictures.

* When I saw "west" I really mean "east". To me the mountains are "west", but in fact, in Seattle, water is "west" and mountains are "east".

The dumb American

The one downside of my Saturday of Fun in Munich was this American kid who, frankly, was just awful. So bad that I started keeping a list of things he said that annoyed me. Amongst them:

1. I was talking with the Scottish family and I brought up my dream of playing golf at St. Andrews. Dorkboy hears me talking about golf and says "Ever played Pebble? That's the only course to play. That and Olympic Club. You know, where the '98 US Open was played?" I said I was familiar with both, and while I would love to play them, St. Andrews is where the game of golf was, you know, was invented. He continued to press the relative greatness of American courses while poo-pooing the history of the sport. Kind of like arguing that Safeco Field is better than Wrigley Field in baseball. I mean, it's newer and fancier, but it lacks, um, history. He then made sure to point out that he was a 4 handicap.
2. He mentioned no fewer than 5 times that he was traveling through Europe using the $5,000 signing bonus he got from PwC to be an accountant. This fact and figure amazed a couple folks on the tour, but it was pretentious and lame.
3. He bragged about helping his dad lie on his taxes for the past couple of years.
4. He mentioned no fewer than 3 times that he stayed at his hostel on Friday night rather than going out because he was out in Prague the night before until 5am. With a girl. He actually said it that way, with a period in between the "I was out until 5 in the morning. With a girl." This managed to impress exactly no one.
5. He got into an argument with a Kiwi about how many people lived in New Zealand. This was their exact argument: Kiwi: "There are less than 5 million people in New Zealand."
   American: "No, there are barely more than 3 million." Kiwi: "Yeah, like I said, less than 5 million people." They went at it for a few more minutes, but I was busy trying to poke my eyes out.
6. A couple of us were talking about Jaegermeister when Dorkboy announced: "Are you talking about Jaeger bombs? That was our drink in college." The emphasis was on "our", as in "We created that drink, how did you know about it?
7. Some of the folks on the tour were from Rio, and after they left I said "Man, I really need to go visit Rio." Dorkboy turned to me and said "What would anyone want to go to Rio?" I thought about finding a cellphone and calling Todd at that exact moment. Who can't think of a good reason to go to Rio? Um, the beach? Carnival? Did I mentioned Carnival? The party that makes Mardi Gras look quaint?

That's all I wrote down, but you can see how proud this guy made me of my country. He wasn't quite as bad as the kids who played drinking games at the beer garden in Salzburg, but he was close. Oh well...

Discover hates single people

For some reason Discover has decided to stop sending e-bills, so I have to log on and make sure I haven't accidentally used my card and owe them money. Apparently they've changed their security process, and I had to answer a bunch of security questions in addition to putting in a new password.

Most of the questions were typical: favorite hobby, name of pet, etc. But there was one set of questions that I found particularly offensive: nearly all of them asked something about a significant other. Specifically, the choices were:

• The name of your boyfriend/girlfriend?
• The name of the best man at your wedding?
• The city where you were married?
• Something else that I chose.

Seriously... why does my credit card company have to be putting the pressure on me to get married? I've got my parents for that. Plus, two of those questions are generally part of the public record, which make them really bad security questions.