Just got my kneecap scraped by a steady-handed surgeon here in Denver. This was done to correct issues lingering from my heroic knee-injury of nearly ten years past. I was put under general anesthetic (totally knocked out) then scraped, and awoken with a video of the procedure in hand. I have included that video below for those of you who want to see a shredded knee from the inside, and how it is shaved and cleaned up. I think it's pretty cool.
(Inner-space)
I recieved a present for my impending birthday last night: four pounds of Father's Bacon. Father's Bacon! Father's is the Roles Royce of the bacon underground. It's cured so perfectly, that no refridgeration is needed. It is considered by many the greatest bacon made. I have a long-standing discussion with Mandy's dad about my love for bacon and how I really want to smoke my own this summer (I have already bought the smoker), and how I should buy him a bacon-of-the-month subscription. It seems he and Sue beat me to the punch with this delivery. So, tomorrow, to celebrate my birthday, I will stay laid up on the couch and eat me some bacon.
(I call this "Knee Injury with Bacon, Cookies, Pain Medication, and Dog")
We are still planning to be back in Grand Rapids over the weekend of the 10th of May for the River Bank Run. Depending on how that knee heals and becomes stable, I am planning to do the walk. The Torpedo Monkey t-shirts have already arrived at Mandy's parent's house and are ready to be picked up. We'll be sending more out about what we're planning to do before and after the room, so keep checking the Torpedo Monkey blog for more info.
This editorial restores some of my faith in humanity. It's about a mother who (gasp!) let her 9-year-old child ride (gasp!) the subway by themselves. In... NEW YORK! (isn't that where the terrorists go?). And despite the raging horrors that lie in wait for every child who isn't tagged with a cell phone, bicycle helmet, or a private investigator trailing their every movement, the child actually made it home in one piece.
It's very refreshing to see this one example of a calm, reasoned response to the ridiculous amount misplaced fear inflicting our culture. The only thing that would be better is if this didn't illicit a blog response due to its extreme rarity. It wish it were a common thing that people take a second to consider the real difference between the percieved and actual threats lying in wait for them and their children.
While reading the news on the BBC website I ran across this article. It seems there is a new automated restaurant in Germany where customers order their food via a touch screen and then they receive their food from a machine which looks like a roller coaster.
I don't think this will take over all of our restaurants, but it is a really cool idea.
We made it back safe and sound. Well, safe at any rate. We're still decompressing from the flights and jet-lag. Mandy's back to the testing grind and I'm off to NASA for a couple days, so it's business as usual around here.
I am going to recount the trip in some kind of blog form as time permits. We have gigs and gigs of images to organize, name, and arrange in sets and collections. Our two traveling companions Dean and Erin also took gobs of pics that they have started to upload to Flickr. In fact, we used their TomTom GPS satellite navigation gadget to get us around the country, and there is a feature that should let Dean upload our driving routes to Google maps. We're also going to organize a top ten list of pics for those of you (like me) who don't want to rummage through 200 pages of pictures without any kind of context.
All of this should be coming within the next couple weeks as, again, time permits.
I think the twitter thing was pretty cool. I would've kept it more up-to-date as I traveled, but I had a horrible time getting my phone to work with the UK cell system and I am lazy. I'm going to try it again with this trip to NASA to see if I will be any better at it in the states. If not, I'm going to drop it from the right-hand nav. I only want to keep things there that I have an intention of keeping updated.
I've been listening to the new Gnarls Barkley CD. The first time I heard it, I wasn't impressed. I listened again, and was still not that impressed. But the third time... the third time is a charm. It also may have been the first time I listened to it, it was through a FM transmitter built into the GPS, playing out of the car stereo speakers while I drove around the UK, for the first time, on the wrong side of the road. The second time was through a pair of noise-canceling headphones, on a 747, floating over the middle of the Atlantic ocean, bonked out of my head on jet lag and stress. This morning I listened, uninterrupted, through my new reciever, and it totally changed my mind on it. Anyway, here's a video from it.
Remember, remember the Fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and Plot, I know of no reason Why Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot.
Last night in the UK. We're flying out on the BA0297 to Chicago with a quick two hour jump Denver and into the waiting paws of a slobbering doggy and two very pissed off cats. I can't wait. I've been out of the country for half a month now, and a week of that was spent working (fun though it was, it's still work).
The trip has been great fun. We saw a sizable chunk of the Greatest of Britians, but now it's time to return to ole' Stars and Stripes, home of the boogie-board sized steak and magical, ever-descending dollar.
