Heather and I stayed up all night the night before we left. Neither of us really prepared for the trip. We had made grand plans of learning some passable Spanish and learning a little about the culture so that we wouldn’t go in deaf and dumb but it didn’t happen. Truthfully, the months before our trip were horrible as far as having free time went. I spent all my time at work or working on Randy’s record and had no time for thinking about Mexico and Heather was buried in clients and dog-sitting. We spent the night packing, putting together music for the trip, and loosely putting together a list of things we wanted to do while we were there. We emailed the rough itinerary to family members with copies of our passports just in case. Needless to say, by the time we got to the airport we were already exhausted and irritable. Both of us had the expectation that the sun and the warmth would make everything better.The entire day was pretty uneventful. I’ve traveled a lot for work over the last decade and it was the same generic fare with the notable exception that my hot wife was with me to suffer this time. I really dislike airports. I’ve been in too many of them and their associated generic American cities too be able to explain the sites and smells to someone who hasn’t I guess. I dislike them too much to relive it long enough to explain it. Our layover was in Dallas. The only thing noteworthy was that the men were more overweight and more clean cut than most Portland men. They all had on the same generic khaki or jean/dark brown leather jacket and/or goatee combo going on. It’s a style for people that don’t have time to have style or who have jobs who don’t allow anything more flashy. The women were also freakishly tall and similarly generically well put together. They all looked better than me; but I didn’t want to look like any of them, if that makes sense.

We eventually left the Dallas airport and flew to Cancun. Across the aisle from me was some dude who was packed for a week in the sun to partake in booze and boobs. The guy was dumber than a bag of hammers. He wore one of the smallpox airline blankets as a veil for the bulk of the flight. Occasionally I could hear short one-syllable-word explanations of what he planned to do in Mexico all of which involved tequila and women… the only multiple-syllable words he knew. He was basically bragging about going to Cancun to a plane full of people flying to Cancun. Ol Bag-O-Hammers yammered for the entire flight, veiled and challenged. I’m not a violent person but to see him suffer would have made me happy. I think I was pretty tired but I know he was pretty dumb.

We landed in Cancun and I got my first stamp ever on my passport. The guy didn’t stamp it on the first page which irritated the part of me that appreciates order; however, the weather was perfect… perfect for selling shit apparently. If the only part of Mexico you ever saw was the airport, you would think that everyone there was there to sell you something you didn’t want. I stepped off the flight, got my passport stamped and then made a run for the bathroom. There was a bathroom attendant there that wanted money. I never carry cash so I stiffed him and felt bad until I noticed, while on my way home a week later, that there were no bathroom attendants in the airport once you passed security. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Cancun. The poverty is like nothing I’ve ever had to experience in my life and I am incredibly thankful for that; however, the sales environment sucks balls and never really goes away unless you can get away from the other tourists.

We had some problems with Budget not having any cars available despite the fact that we had reserved one. They moved us to Executive though and Executive gave us better rates and full insurance coverage for cheaper. We got a good deal on the car ($350USD for the entire week with full coverage) and gas is cheap in Mexico. I highly recommend renting a car there. It was fun and we could get to a lot of places that no one else even tried to.

We drove from the airport to our hotel in Cancun. Cancun kind of sucks. It has a mini Vegas feel too it and just feels kind of generic, lame, and artificial. We were really tired and hungry though so we drove to the hotel and parked and then walked to a place to get food. It was $30 for two of us for seafood that was entirely accurate in its description. It came from the sea and it was food. It was incredibly banal. The beer in the Caribbean saved it though.

It was the same way in Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in the Caribbean know how to use a fridge to make beer as cold as it can be without freezing. I don’t even like beer and I drank it with every meal in Mexico. We then went to bed on the hardest wettest beds we’d ever slept in at about 2am. We placed bets on what time we would wake up the next day. Heather bet one p.m., I said noon.

Well, I missed my opportunity to post on the first of the year.  Heather and I made it back from Mexico.  I hate US Airways; however, I imagine everyone hates the airline they flew on this Christmas.  No one has the right to wonder why airlines and American car companies keep filing bankruptcy though.  As a company, you can’t make dramatic cuts to budgets to appease the fickle whims of shareholders for a quarter and not ultimately cripple your company.  Anyway, I need to go to bed but expect some posts and pictures about Mexico in the coming days and then with whatever little bit of creative energy I have left I’ll fill you in on some fantastic drama in the extended family here.  Fun times for all!  In the meantime, please enjoy this performance from one of my favorite bands on the planet:

Heather and I are supposed to be getting ready for our trip to Mexico next week.  Instead I am sitting on the couch trying to find ways to distract myself and she is with her sister at a potluck at the adoption agency her sister is using to give up her child.  Randy Craig is in my basement working on vocals.  I would go assist with that but he seems to get better takes when I am not around.  Besides, it’s hard for me to sit in a room while he sings the same phrase 300 times.  I don’t know how he has the patience for it but the performance ends up sounding good so I don’t complain too much.

I have several solid 8 hours days of work to do on the 4 songs we want to have done before Christmas and I have to get those days in before December 15th when Heather and I leave.  Randy and I have been working on this record for over a year and we have 4 songs close to being done, 3 or so on deck, and probably 3 more in the incubator… yet to be inspired.  I would like to work on my own music, but I can’t seem to make the time.  We really need to get Randy’s new record done so I can move on to some other things.  I like working on Randy’s stuff but I am 28 and would like to get some of the ideas I have for songs down before I am 30.

I also have lots of work to do at my actual job.  I’ve become an asset to the company I suppose and I actually really like what I have been doing lately.  I have a sense of pride in my work, as corny as that sounds; however, it is exhausting at the end of the year when everyone wants everything done immediately and right now I just want to go on vacation.

I decided earlier this year that I wanted to learn a programming language.  Programming was directly responsible for the difficulty I had in college and I kind of want to kick its ass now that my mind is a little more agile.    I had originally wanted to learn Java; however, the syntax gets in the way and the whole process just seems kind of clunky.  I spent 3 weeks writing a very simple piece of code that logged into a remote Oracle database, grabbed some data and analyzed it, and then updated some tables in said database based on a csv file provided by another company.  I got it about 90% of the way done but that last 10% was a pain in the ass.  I figured I would try python because everyone rants and raves about it.  I literally did the same project, having no experience with python, in about 4 hours only it worked as a standalone app and was much more robust.  It just proved to me that my logic was good but the language was getting in my way.  I’ve always struggled with foreign languages and programming languages don’t seem to be an exception to that.  I’m not bagging on java.  It has its place in the world for sure; but it was actually fun to write python code and not have to look shit up constantly to be able to do it.  Now that I am done with it, I have all kinds of little parts I want to change; however, the project I wrote it for will be over at the end of next week and I’ll probably dump all the code.  Oh well, it was a good learning experience.  If I get bored I will finish the java version.

Anyway, I just started this page and I want to be able to post about the things that interest me.  It’s probably going to be strange mix of all the little things I like to do but it will be good for me to write down.  Sometime later I will put something up on why I think writing it down is important; however, for now I am going to do something a little more productive.  With that, I leave you with a picture of Scarlett Johansson because she’s hot as hell and I’m down with that.

I had a realization today of the moment when my childhood ended. There was actually a moment in time where prior to that exact moment I was a child and after that exact moment I was not. As a child I loved beavers. I am not making a joke; I genuinely did love the aquatic rodents that made their homes in rivers and could cut down trees with their teeth. They were my childhood fascination. I have no idea why I liked them so much, but to me they were the pinnacle of what an animal could be. They weren’t the toughest or the meanest or the fastest; however, they always seemed like a really resourceful creature to me and I really like them and identified with them.

Many years later I grew up a little bit and I worked on a ranch for my uncle. I had to clean out the irrigation ditch every morning. It was a few-mile-long irrigation ditch that was about 5 feet wide. I had to clean it out because beavers built dams in it and if the dams sat there for too long they would cause the water to overflow and ruin the canal. It would have been a huge waste of water in a place where water is very valuable. One particular beaver built a dam every day I worked there that summer. I tried to do things to discourage him but this creek was going to be his house. I finally got fed up with him after about a month and decided I would go take care of him once and for all. I grabbed my grandfather’s 410 shotgun and headed up the canal.

It was about 8:30 at night and just getting dark and he had come out to get his work done. I had brought 2 shells with me. I was a pretty good shot and I figured I would only need one shell but I brought an extra just to be safe. The beaver was just sitting in about 2 feet of water doing his thing. He wasn’t scared of me at all. I walked right up to him, pulled out the shotgun, took aim, and fired. He flinched a little bit, but otherwise he just sat there in the water and looked at me. I immediately felt terrible because I didn’t want to hurt him. I wanted him to die instantly, but he just sat there. I moved a little closer thinking maybe I didn’t get penetration because he was under a few inches of water. I fired again and he flinched again but still just sat there. I was out of shells and he wasn’t dead. Then he slowly started turning over in the water. I thought he was going to turn upside down and die, but every time he would get turned about halfway over he would right himself. He didn’t try to escape or get away, he just didn’t want to be belly up. He still didn’t seem scared of me and I just stood there watching him calmly struggle to stay upright in the water. I debated on trying to drown him because I didn’t want him to suffer; however, I was too much of a pussy to actually kill him with my hands. I can’t think of many times i felt as bad as I did in that moment. I apologized to him. I actually said sorry out loud to him while he looked at me and then I went home. I thought about him all night, wondering how long it took him to die or how much time passed before some coyote finished the job I was too ashamed to do.

The next morning I rode up the trail expecting to be pulling him out of the ditch. I got to where i had shot him and he was nowhere to be seen. There was however the biggest beaver dam that I ever had to pull out of of that ditch. It took me most of the afternoon to tear it apart. I have no idea what happened to the guy I shot. I don’t know if he died and was immediately replaced by a larger beaver or if he survived and worked all night to spite me. In any case, I never fired a gun at a living thing ever again. I don’t care if anyone else does it; I just know it’s not for me. I also never rode up that ditch again that summer without spending at least two hours pulling apart a dam at that exact spot. I really hope that it was the same beaver that I shot that was building those dams. And I hope that by the end of the summer he felt like we were even.