Just to show how I can never have any time off whatsoever, the fates have dealt me another business travel card. It’s international. It’s exotic. It’s CANADA! That’s right, I’m being shipped off the Canukistan for 5 days on an all expense paid trip to fabulous Ottawa (For 90% of Americans out there, Ottawa is Canada’s Capital…ahem.). I’ll be going with a fellow trainer to learn a new line of business for our Dell contract. More business means more job security, and that’s always a good thing. This news is bittersweet for me as I was planning on going on vacation (possibly Germany) in a few weeks. So my dreams of having some organized time off have been squashed like a bug on the fast moving grille of the Delta 88 of the Vacation Gods. I clearly have chosen the wrong religion when it comes to asking for time off.
Oh well. At least I’ll be able to enjoy some delicious Poutine.
At least I did get around a week of not training to enjoy some free time to myself over the holiday weekend. Got to take some snaps and play around with some post-processing techniques. I’ve always liked the high-contrast, over saturated, film-like quality when it comes to photographs. I think I may go back and re-processes some old favorites of mine, so stay tuned. Also, expect plenty of photos from my brief visit to Canadia.
So nine inch nails released another new album, this time for free. Unlike the last album, Ghosts, Trent Reznor lends his vocals to a majority of the tracks. Overall, I’m liking it. Hell, it’s free. As long as it’s not a bag full of bears or a kick in the pants, I’d take anything for free. So far, my favorite tracks are Disipline and Demon Seed, as they have the classic nin feel to them, if there is such a thing. I’m still trying to get a feel for the entire album. Its not as good as the previous release of Year Zero, but that was a damn good album with a great backstory. I think a few more listens and I’ll be able to understand where it sits with everything else.
Link: http://theslip.nin.com
It’s an interesting thing with new albums, as everyone always seems to associate different periods of their lives with music. I’m sure everyone has that one song that reminds you of the best summer you’ve had as a kid or perhaps the snippet of a tune that will always bring back memories of falling leaves on a wet sidewalk. It’s almost like every album marks a new chapter in the story of life. Every time I get my mitts on a new record (does the current generation even know what a record is anymore?) and listen, I wonder what will associate 
itself with this new-found music. Life is a funny thing for me because I never can see the moment until it’s passed. As hard as I try to capture the emotions, actions, and all the other stuff that makes a memory, I cannot see the entire picture until one day I seem to look back and *bam*…there it is…some sort of recollection of time passed. It’s like watching tv on the couch late at night only to fall asleep and wake up to a new show an hour later without any realization that a nap occurred.
Or maybe I’m just weird that way…
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Do yourself a favor. Go buy yourself some ghosts. 36 instrumental songs, and you don’t have to be a nine inch nails fan to enjoy it. Hint: if you are one, it doesn’t hurt.
My brief flirtation with working a night shift of 4p-1am is finally over, and it’s been difficult adjusting to the normal world. It’s strange having to wake up to an alarm clock again. To come home from work and have the world lit by this thing called “the sun” frightens and bewilders me. In a strange way, I miss the night schedule. In a more popular way, it’s nice being able to see people again.
I remember one night last week, coming home and not seeing one car going the direction I was going for the entire duration of my 30 miles commute at 1:30am. Odd, I thought, being as this is a somewhat well populated area. Made me think about all the dystopian sci-fi movies that feature a single character as being the last man on earth. Most people I’ve come across have always told me about all the lavish things that they would do in that scenario. Such things like stealing cars (would it be considered stealing anymore?) and driving them at reckless speeds, living in mansions, and other general kid-in-a-candystore type activities. I guess I never really saw it that way. I always imagined that there would be no one around to keep the basic utilities like electricity and water running. No gardeners would trim back the inevitable swallowing of mother nature. Cities would become dark jungles as food rotted away in vacant stores. Roads would degrade to rubble, cars would rust and their internals would decay rendering transportation useless. Essentialy I never saw that as a fantasy, but more of a camping adventure that lasted forever. Except, with this camping trip, there wasn’t a comfortable home that you could come to and take a warm shower while listening to the TV in the background.
Needless to say, most people stopped asking me what I’d do if I were the last man on earth.
My trip out to LA has been postponed until the 9th. Good because I now have some extra time to plan and get my agendas prepped for what I can imagine will be a packed 2 weeks of work. Bad because I will be missing (for the second year in a row) the 12 Hours of Sebring ALMS race. Between that race and Petit Le Mans up in Atlanta, those are the only times I’m able to really just drop it all and focus on something other than work/life. It’s a vacation in the truest sense of the term. Nothing like burned race gas, sun, campfire foods, and tons of alcohol to fuel what would be an ordinary weekend. It always seems as if I’ve got some sort of unplanned business travel that gets in the way of me and my need to watch racing, as last year’s Sebring was canceled due to my 2nd Mumbai trip. It is hard to be upset being as I am getting some free travel time out of this. At least I’ll get to watch the race on TV here in the states.
As of this writing, I am enjoying an excellent brew by the Weyerbacher brewery in PA called Insanity. I think it goes well with the past week I’ve had both in and out of work (although with the way things have been going, I’ve been spending more time at work than out). The beer is a cask aged barley wine that packs quite a punch. It has a very scotch-like taste to it with a weaker malt taste than I would imagine a barley wine to have. Either way, it’s darn tasty and it’s a good way to wrap up what has been quite an insane few days. I’ve had to juggle time between work, planning a bachelor party for a coworker, trying to gather more information about my LA trip, and other miscellanea. Woe is me, right?