Specifications? Directives? Regulations?

I know I said at the beginning that this would be quite a free-form blog with little inherent structure mixed with some unpredictability. As with any human endeavor, however, it needs at least a little stability to stay alive. (“Human endeavor?” I’ve got delusions of grandeur!) As such, I have a few things to say about the operation of this blog. Call them technical points, suggestions, rules of the road, or “they’re more like guidelines, anyway.”

1) At the bottom of each post are three things you can click & check: Like, More of this, and Less of this. The latter two came out of a desire inherent in this blog’s creation to keep up my writing skills, especially after a full semester of visual journalism. If you think I should write like I did in the applicable post more often, you can check “More of this.” If you don’t (because I skipped a logical step, because I used the wrong word, because I was too formal/informal, I’m using too many parentheses), you can check “Less of this” and tell me in a comment or e-mail what you think should change. I’m putting myself out on a limb here, so if you decide to do this, I’ll greatly appreciate constructive criticism but go :p- pbbbbbbbbbt if you’re just annoying.

As for the first check box: it came from here. A commenter (that sounds so formal!) wanted a button like they have on Facebook, and I thought it was a good idea.

Feel free to use or not use them. It’s a good informal feedback mechanism (keyword: informal).

2) If you want to leave a comment, but you don’t have a Google or similar account, you can comment as Anonymous and leave your name at the end of the note so I know who it’s from. If you REALLY want to remain anonymous, though, then I guess you can. ::rolls eyes:: You can always comment on the Facebook link, of course.

3) I like having conversations in the comments on each post. I won’t start them (outside of writing the post), but if you do, I’ll probably respond fairly quickly. (Almost certainly within the day, and sometimes within the hour if I’m watching closely enough.) Unfortunately, I haven’t found if Blogger can do the notifications thing that Facebook does, so some of the conversations may turn into dead ends. I’m okay with that. I don’t expect people to follow my blog as much as I do. They have more to their lives than that. ...Right? ;D

4) The content remains random. I could post something that just happened, a memory from tons of years ago, some newspaper articles, a short observation on life, a book, a joke, a song, a photo, or anything (ANYTHING) that comes up in my head. Eventually I might form a pattern where a day of the week corresponds to a theme, but it will only come out of what has already been established naturally. I won’t try to force it.

...Given that, I might start a series. This blog is officially called, “Wandering Eyes (with a FREE wandering brain)” in reference to my interest in photography and in homage to Billy Mays. (“Call now, and you’ll get another tube of Mighty Putty ABSOLUTELY FREE.” Rest in peace, Billy, rest in peace.) The URL, though, is iseewhatshesaidthere.blogspot.com. It combines an acknowledgement of a joke that’s a bit clever, but not universally LOL-worthy, with the injection (mostly unintentional) of innuendo into a conversation. So, to acknowledge that URL, I’ll end some/most/all posts with either a clever quip (it could be funny, or it could be a case of trying too hard) or an innocent-turned-dirty quote (it could be funny, or it could be a case of trying too hard).

The first one, of the latter kind (so you've been forewarned), is self-referential. I didn't mean to type it as a "that's what she said," but when I read it over I made the connection:

I made it to the top again. Dead tired, but on top. And probably faster than last time.

Automatically making crude connections. This is what you learn in college... along with important life skills. Apologies if that was a bit much.

Not what I asked for...

When I was figuring out how fast I could theoretically run down Tower Hill, I forgot some of the formulas I had to use. I hadn’t done that type of problem since my junior year of high school, so I needed a little refresher. Not wanting to find my Physics notebook in my room because 1) it might not be up there and 2) I was lazy, I googled “velocity formulas.” This came up.

I should have searched for “velocity formulae.”

The Sand Makes It Taller: Part 3

(This is the What NOT to Do part.)

...I made it to the top again. Dead tired, but on top. And probably faster than last time.

After taking the nifty panoramas, it was time to go back down. My brother told me it’s best not to run, but to stride, taking big steps each time and letting gravity work. He then showed me by striding down to the bottom. It looked like a good idea. (He’s the runner, of course.)

I also thought something else was a good idea: taking photos while I strode down the dune. I steadied the camera (Nikon D80 with a 17-55mm Nikkor lens on it) vertically in both hands, took the first big step, and let gravity work its magic while I snapped blurry picture after blurry picture. (With some crisp ones!)

Just for fun, let’s figure out how fast I was going. The figures are estimates, of course (I didn’t record EVERYTHING about the experience, and it’s by no means a frictionless descent), but it still should give a good idea of how fast I would be going by the time I got to the bottom:

[You can click on it to make it bigger.]

Take the sine, divide by 5.86, multiply by 32.2, ignore resistance due to sand because I’m not that good, and...

What??! 901 miles an hour?! That can’t be right! I must have done something wrong... Oh, right! I can’t use t=d/v to find the amount of time it took to get to the bottom. It’s not a constant velocity! Duh!

Okay, try again.



There! That’s more realistic, given that I ignored air and sand resistance. I would have been going 124.3 ft/s, or 85 mph, at the bottom of the hill.

Notice the verb tense, though: “would have been going.” Conditional perfect progressive tense. Conditional on the assumptions that 1) I am superhuman and 2) I made it to the bottom without stopping.

Those, of course, are flawed assumptions. ...There’s still doubt on the first one, but the second one is definitely false. Let me tell you why.

As I continued down the dune, I got steadier and more confident in my ability to not fall or drop my camera. So, I took my left hand off the camera and started to do the “swimming” motion you could do to help maximize your effort in going downhill. I didn’t have my other arm to match with it, though, so it started out like the normal pumping that runners do in flat-ground running.

My brother, looking up from the bottom, later said it looked like I was a frickin’ madman (especially the swimming part), and I have to admit, it felt like that at first. Eventually, though, I got it to look less ridiculous, and before I knew it I had my left arm doing the swimming motion normally. I kept my right hand (with the camera) in front of me, still taking shots of the ever-nearing shore, and I started to envision, nay dream deliriously of my triumphant run past my brother and through the beach and onto (not in, onto!) the water.

But that’s just like a wide receiver seeing the touchdown before he drops the catch in the end zone. Three-quarters of the way down, the most nefarious property of sand reared its ugly head: the aforementioned “Your feet also get buried a little bit” Tripping Property.

The front of my right foot dug in a bit too deep at the end of a stride. My left foot carried forward, but when my right foot tried to do the same thing the dune said, “Not today!” The swimming motion turned back into a flailing motion, and in the next instant I fell face-first into the sand.

Fortunately, sand also has the property of giving, so in a great act of charity it didn’t act like asphalt when I fell face-first. Unfortunately, I didn’t really fall face-first. I fell camera-first.

Lens-first, really.


::slight breeze as I open my eyes and look out at the desolation::

I spat out some of the sand in my mouth, saw the camera with the buried lens attached lying down in front of me, and immediately thought, “Before I get up, let’s take a picture. I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s just so I can remember the humiliation and maybe not do it again.” I aimed it towards me, and to my everlasting joy it took, so the photo served as an affirmative test of whether the camera still worked.

I heard my brother in the distance. He was laughing, of course. I realized for the first time that the whole charade probably looked hilarious. After I pictured it in my head, I started laughing, too. Through the sand, of course.

I spent the rest of the day spitting sand out of my mouth, shaking sand out of my hair, emptying sand out of my pockets, and hoping that I didn’t have to drop too much money out of my account to pay for repairs. Fortunately, sand only got into the zoom mechanism of the lens, making it harder to zoom in & out but still enabling me to take pictures. There was no sand in the body or in the actual lens, and the fall didn’t cause any damage.

I sent in the lens last Tuesday to be cleaned for $78.50. It should be good as new soon. Until then, I promise never to run downhill uncontrollably while taking pictures. And I’ll never (NEVER!) again underestimate the downhill of Tower Hill.

Or, you know, the uphill. There’s no shame in walking it.

P.S.: Please, someone check my math on that speed problem. Challenge my assumptions, redo the calculations, or even add in air & sand resistance if you want. (It’s been three semesters since Calculus II and three YEARS since Physics. I’m a bit rusty.) If you can be the first to find a realistic answer, I’ll give you a cookie. Seriously.

The Sand Makes It Taller: Part 2

I last visited Warren Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan when I was 11 years old or thereabouts. I remember it, not for the huge freshwater lake next to it (the beach doesn’t even figure into my memory), but for the mountains of sand behind the beach. ...To me, at least, they were mountains. When you’re that young, even the living room ceiling seems ungodly tall.

Despite the difficulty in walking up 240 feet of sand at a 25-degree incline when you’re 11, I climbed all the way to the top. I climbed it slowly, but I made it. I regard it as one of the greatest achievements of my young life, right behind earning the Eagle Scout award and appearing on the Brain Game. Near the top, I played around with extended family, and I got buried in the sand along with my brother and cousin.

After nine years I took another family trip up there, this time with my mom, dad, and brother. It was three days after I had returned from London, and it was the last leg of my Michigan vacation before I had to return to my stateside job. We drove to the park in the typical family minivan (Chrysler Town & Country, first bought when I was in seventh grade, full of picnic food, lawn chairs, and a Frisbee), and I saw the beach first. I said to myself, “That’s weird. I know I’ve been here, but I don’t remember any of—aha! There we go,” as I turned to see my old nemesis, Tower Hill. It (He? For indeed, I had personified it) was different than I remembered. Yes, there was still a lot of trees at the top, which gave the impression of a mountain capped with green snow, but two essential things were different:

1) The weather was brilliant! No overcast or drizzle today; the sun shone brighter, the clouds were puffier, and the sky burned bluer than any other time I’d been to a beach.

2) Tower Hill was... smaller. Of course, it wasn’t really smaller, at least not significantly. (When something’s made of sand, it’s bound to lose a few particles at the top.) However, I had grown significantly taller. It was like the feeling that the drinking fountains at your old elementary school had shrunk since you were last there. Once a seventh of its height seemed chopped off due to my own growth, it didn’t seem so intimidating.

After parking the car, we got out and set up the lawn chairs. Mom & Dad sat on the beach while my brother & I threw the Frisbee around. Eventually we got tired of that and decided to ::dramatic head turn & close-up:: climb Tower Hill. ::ba-ba-BUUUUUUUUUM::

[runninghistory]My brother runs cross-country in college. He’s been in organized running since fourth grade and knows how to run up hills. I haven’t “run for fun” since the fall semester of my senior year of high school. The last hill I climbed was on a bike three months ago.[/runninghistory]

When we got to the foot of Tower Hill, I looked up and thought, “This won’t be too hard.” With camera in hand to take killer panoramas at the top, I started to run up the hill. My brother started to walk.

About a quarter of the way up I looked back and saw that I had climbed up double what my brother had climbed. I felt pretty good about myself: [madden]”Here’s a guy who doesn’t let his tendinitis get in the way of beating his brother in something!”[/madden]. I kept climbing without stopping...

...until I felt the tendinitis. And the heat. And the heavy breathing. I started running more slowly to make sure I could reach the top without stopping. Eventually the slow running turned into walking, which turned into stepping, which turned into just a small break, I’ll start back up in two seconds, okay here we go for another fifteen-second climb, oh hey Kenny go ahead and pass me, now for another two-second break, OH GOD let’s just stand here and enjoy the scenery from two-thirds of the way up.

In my decision to run up the dune, I forgot that it was a DUNE. It’s made of sand. Sand gives way when you step on it. When you push off it to make the next step, your foot slides back a little and you lose some of the progress you made. Your feet also get buried a little bit, which only adds to the redundant work you have to do. I swear, taking two steps up Tower Hill is like taking five steps on land or three steps in water. To me, at least. You might figure that differently.

But I made it to the top again. Dead tired, but on top. And probably faster than last time.

Part 3 on Tuesday.

The Sand Makes It Taller

[or What NOT to Do Once You're Atop Tower Hill]

I typed out this whole story, and it got to about 2,000 words. I can't stand blog posts that long. (Only one post in my London blog was that long, and that's because it was about a trip with a lot of family significance.) I'm sure you can't stand long posts, either, especially from me. So, this story will come in three parts.

Part 1: Facts & Figures

My height at age 11: 4’ 11” OR 59”

My height now: 5’ 10” OR 70”

Height of Tower Hill in Warren Dunes: 240’ OR 2,880”

Angle of elevation: about 25°

Ratio of 11-year-old height to Tower Hill: 1:49

Ratio of current height to Tower Hill: 1:41

Acceleration due to gravity: -32.2 ft/s²

Starting speed running down Tower Hill: 4 mph OR 5.87 f/s

I'll let you chew on that a bit. I'm going camping this weekend, so the next part will come on Sunday.

I Felt Old and Young at the Same Time

So, my brother had locked the shed keys in the shed on Monday, and we had called over a neighbor to cut the lock on the door so I could trim the weeds in the backyard basin. The neighbor brought a kid with him. His name was Joel, he was two years old, I'm guessing he was the neighbor's nephew, and he was one of the cutest kids ever. Curly blond hair, with the start-stop walking of a toddler and maybe the most perfect cheeks when he smiled.

Moving away from the cuteness...

While the door lock fought with the neighbor's saw (the lock was so strong, he had to get a new saw bit!), Joel & I started talking. Of course, it was a short conversation, because most of his words weren't fully formed, but it was also short because he saw our playground. I encouraged him to climb on it, remembering how big it felt to me when I started playing on it in kindergarten. (And he was two!) I brought him over to the drawbridge, showed him how to climb the ladder, and put him on one of the swings.

The swings proved to be the harsh separation between my childhood and my adulthood. I had never noticed before that the plastic coverings around the swing chains had holes, exposing the rusted links. I did now. So, when he started to swing, my first thought was not, "I wish I were that short again so I could enjoy this swing as much as he is." Instead it was, "Tetanus."

When he continued climbing on the playground, my first thought was, "Splinters."

When he wanted to slide down the slide, my first thought was, "Bird poop all over it."

Fortunately, my second thought in each instance was, "Shut up! He's fine." Also fortunately, that second thought came very quickly, and I was able to throw the first thought out just as quickly. (Well, not the first thought on the slide. I wouldn't want him to have bird-poop stains on his pants. That's just gross.)

Those first thoughts scared me, though, no matter how fast I disregarded them. For the first time, I thought as a worried father would. Or at least, what I imagine a worried father would. I wouldn't know for sure outside of depictions on TV, because my father was all for me playing on the playground. (He BUILT the playground!) Because of that worry, I thought in those above moments, "If I had to act like a worried father in a snap, I could." Of course, I don't have that chance right now (no "brown chicken brown cow"), but if I had to, I could. I wouldn't want to (because I'd take out the "worried" part), but I could.

Eventually the neighbor sawed off the lock (after partly wearing down the second fiberglass bit) and left, bringing Joel back home with him. I said, "'Bye, Joel!" knowing that I had taken another step away from my younger days. That step is part of a long journey to full adulthood, and that journey is a lot of fun (and not just some of the time), but every now and then I wish, and maybe you wish, too, that a backyard playground seemed like Mt. Everest. (Or that the mulch around it was actually hot molten lava. I've entertained that thought recently on the paint lines of a parking lot.)

Bits of the Media, by a Future Bit Part of the Media

[Well, hopefully I'll be more than a bit part at some point. Hopefully.]

In keeping with John Owen’s request to not read the same stuff you read before you came to London, I’ve started to read news coverage outside of my "comfort zone" of Time and The New York Times. That means more international stories, more international sources, and more understanding of the major issues in the world (which means little to no celebrity coverage). Now, I started this a bit late (I started yesterday, in fact ::darts eyes::), but at least I started, and I’ve found a few articles that stick out.

1. From Britain’s Guardian daily comes news that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warns of the collapse of the ruling elite if they don’t respond in the right way to the protests over the election. He said this, according to the article, in response to three reformers’ (Mohammad Katami, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Hashemi Rafsanjani) public comments criticizing the government’s actions. The article (and others elsewhere) also said that Khamenei is not viewed as above the fray anymore, but rather someone that can be challenged in public. Near the end of the article, this appeared:

Khatami's political organisation, the Association of Combatant Clerics, issued a statement on its website saying that a referendum should not be overseen by "bodies and centres that manipulated" the 12 June vote, a reference to the Guardian Council, a body that oversees elections and endorsed the official election result.

It is highly unlikely that either Khamenei or the Guardian Council would agree to such a referendum. It appeared to designed principally to open a new avenue of attack on the conservative establishment.

I added the “[be],” so ignore the lack of grammatical sense in that original sentence. I want to focus, however, on the semantic sense, what that sentence is saying. It’s saying (at least in my reading of it) that the current government establishment in Iran is staying too much in the past, and the Iranian reformists are out to bring radical change to the power structure. I’ve read that in other places, too, and I have to admit, it plays into a fault of international reporting, or at least of how we in the West see international issues. I think The Observer’s Peter Beaumont said it best:

In the case of Iran, what has been visible in the west has been two competing versions of the country, coloured by political imagination and appropriated by the two rival - and confrontational - camps that have dominated our debate on foreign affairs since 11 September and the invasion of Iraq. Parties to a new cold war of ideas, their narrow and mutually antagonistic positions have reinterpreted each emerging international crisis to suit their own agenda and in defiance of the other's.

[…]

The two tendencies, however, do mirror each other in one crucial aspect: the way in which they tend to describe a more homogenous Iran than exists - either more universally desperate for change or more supportive of Ahmadinejad.

I wish I had brought that up in class in London, but alas I didn’t do so. So, I bring it up here: This is not a right v. left battle with easy-to-draw lines. Whether you see the liberal side as keeping out of the Iranian issue, or you see it as advocating the reformist position, you have something wrong. Mousavi and the reformists’ side “is far less radical than (international supporters) assume;” in fact, the reformists have described themselves as “fundamentalist reformist.” They still support the idea of the Islamic Republic and defend the Revolution; they just don’t think it has maintained itself very well.

Whatever side you’re on in that issue, keep that in mind. Never assume you have all the facts, and don't simplify anything too much. Please.

[To my relative surprise, CNN did a pretty good job on this front. And The New York Times ran an article labeling a protesting candidate a conservative. Maybe I'm too late in my criticism.]

2. From The Jerusalem Post comes an editorial that scared my logical side to pieces.

Admittedly, it’s an editorial, so there’s no hard international news in there. I read it because I was getting a feel for the differences between the JP and its cross-town counterpart, Haaretz. Again, like I implied up top, you can’t simplify people’s or organizations’ positions, but after a bit of opinion reading, I think I have a rough feel for how each paper thinks.

I’ll let you come to your own conclusion regarding that (if you’re interesting in reading those papers), but I do ask you to read the above-linked column. Look for the sensational language, the weasel words, and the feeling of doomsday. I’m not saying it’s all false; I’m just saying that as they’re presented, the ideas in that article don’t seem… um… oh, let’s say credible. I’ll leave it at that. And promise me you won’t ever write like that.

3. This is by no means international, and the only segue from #2 to this is the Jewish element. An Indianapolis researcher compiled a database of all the people buried in the city’s old Jewish cemeteries, and the Star’s story on it is pretty good, not least because it’s a good story by itself. It ran on the front page, with a good photo attached to it, but the choice of headline was a bit… unfortunate. The first thing I thought of was not finding your ancestors, but The Legend of Zelda. See it here.

That’s a wrap of what I’ve read on the Internet recently. Enjoy your own reading.

Forty Years Ago, Some Guys named Armstrong and Aldrin Landed on the Moon

And now, NASA is allowing me and anyone else to relive it. They are broadcasting the Houston-to-Apollo radio transmissions in real time. (They entered lunar orbit about an hour ago.) They have the mission report. They have onboard audio files with transcripts. Basically, they have everything I need to act like I'm back in 1969, except that I'm "in the know" and following everything possible.

You have no idea how excited I was when I found all this. I was honestly shaking.

Here's a timeline of the mission. If you want to know when to listen to the radio transmissions, this will help. (There's a lot of dead noise between events, and even for me static can be boring.) If you don't want to listen, the timeline will at least humor what interest you have in the mission. There should be at least some interest somewhere inside you, because seriously, it's THE FREAKIN' MOON, and WE WERE THERE.

[Photo courtesy of NASA]

Added 2009.07.20: Actually, visit We Choose the Moon. It can stream in Firefox on a Mac (!), and it's a lot more interactive than the NASA site. You can even follow updates from the lunar module Eagle, the Apollo 11 spacecraft as a whole, and CAPCOM in Houston on Twitter. Whoa!

I'm following this at work all day. (In the background, of course. I'll still be working.)

This Should Get You Thinking

Forget everything you've thought concerning the health care debate (or keep them in mind and be aware of them) and read this article by bioethicist Peter Singer in The New York Times Magazine. It's five Web pages long, so give it some brain space. You'll be glad you did, whatever conclusion you come to. Once you finish, you're welcome to provide reactions or comments under "Tangents."

Let the reasoned debate / mudslinging begin. (Please err on the side of reasoned debate.)

I Want to Write Like This

Sure, it's more than a month and a half old, but I just read this SI cover story by Joe Posnanski this weekend. I like to think I approximate the way he writes, or at least that I soon will. This guy is good, and although this is the only piece of his that I've read so far, I want his writing style.

(Given that Indianapolis is, by most accounts, better than Cleveland, I won't have to write a story quite like this one. Hopefully.)

I'm a Lyricist!...

Okay, it's a rip-off of a Billy Joel song, so I can't claim complete credit. It's a little bit of a wrap-up of my time across the Atlantic, with one story featured in particular that everyone knows. (It's not my story.) This is my attempt at musical poetry.

Who Approved This?

I don't know if this has been showing for a while or it just started when I came back, but freecreditreport.com has a new commercial. I'm somewhat a fan of some of their previous ones, but I've always had a beef against their lack of lip-syncing. I've looked over it before, but I can't now; I don't think they were even trying with this one. (especially around 20 seconds in)

Already Settling In

I am now home, both physically and mentally. I’ve returned to a comfort zone, and I go into tomorrow knowing what it will bring. I’ve restarted a job I’ve had for the last three summers. I’m back into a familiar routine.

Crap.

Seriously, that’s not supposed to happen yet. If I learned one thing in London, it’s that I’m at my best when faced with uncertainty or pressure. (I certainly learned that in every turn-it-in-at-midnight journalism assignment!) A routine, or at least my traditional mindless variety, doesn’t provide any uncertainty or pressure.

See, I’ve historically been a creature of habit. While other kids kept up with the latest movies and music, I tried to memorize Apollo 13 (success!) and listened to the Beatles anthology (at least part two) once a week. I always did my homework first thing (well, that got relaxed a bit in the latter years of high school), I always watched NBC Nightly News and Thursday night’s Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and I started every lazy day at home with three hours or more of Civilization III on the computer.

I’ve kept some of that today: I start every visit to the Internet with Time.com, IU e-mail, Yahoo e-mail and Facebook, and I often watch the same videos over and over on YouTube. When that automatic progression through things moves from Web usage to the daily passage of time (and regrettably, that happens a lot), I miss the small gems and large opportunities of life. Worst of all, when that happens I don’t have to think. When things seem so familiar, there’s no need to regain your bearings or find a different (and often better) way to do something.

Barbara Tuchman drills this point home in her book The March of Folly. Through the example of the Renaissance popes provoking the Protestant secession, Britain’s disastrous handling of the American colonies in the 18th century, and the U.S.’s 25-year involvement in Vietnam, she talks about people getting lost in what simply has been done before. Once the pattern was set at the beginning, nobody at the top levels of the hierarchy stepped aside and said, “Hey. This is messed up. We should do something different.” …Well, someone would, but the higher-ups wouldn’t listen. They would just do what they knew how to do (build up riches, tend their horses, or work the machines of bureaucracy, depending on the time period) and not reevaluate their path to folly.

I read this over this summer, mind you, so I had that lesson stuck in my head the whole time. I honestly think that made my time in London better; with a constant reminder to stay on my toes, I saw, experienced, and enjoyed more in the last eight weeks than I have in any of my 20 other summers. I don’t have enough of the reminder anymore, though, so the effect is fading away and I’m falling back into mindlessness.

…Okay, I’m selling myself short a bit. I’ve been more on my toes since I got to IU than I was before, right from the get-go. Without a frequent kick in the pants from myself, I wouldn’t have gotten out much or started all the things that have changed me for the better. I still, however, feel that there’s room for improvement.

So, is that what this blog is for? To keep me writing and on my toes, and maybe to pull back from my mind a bit and see my thoughts from the outside? I already do that in FreeWrites (more on that in a later post). Honestly, I’ve found that with my personal writing, setting a goal sets me up for failure. I have something to strive for, and anything that doesn’t reach that point loses value. Whereas if I don’t set a standard, then whatever will be will be.

I don’t expect anything specific out of this blog, then. Neither should you. (Whoever, and however many, you are.) I could write long-ish essay-like posts, super-short observations, photos, or (my favorite) stories with photos. I could do anything, so expect nothing and everything. Hence the name of the blog.

Oh, and beware of lame attempts at humor, or what would more commonly be known as “jokes.” Like this one, which my father has told me about 10,000 times (or thereabouts):

What do you do when your nose goes on strike?
You pick it.

Comment if you haven’t heard that one before. With the number of times I’ve heard it, I’m still surprised that there are people new to this joke.

Hey, Look, New Blog!

There's nothing here yet, but there will be. It's all in my head and in a notebook so far.

This does not mean that the London blog is dead. On the contrary, I'll add a few appendices to the experience, especially those mentioned near the end of the last post. Keep on the lookout, and follow this blog, if you feel so inclined.