NJ Tour Update

Since I last posted my Geocaching update I've nearly finished the tour of 21 counties.

5/27/2007 - Essex has fallen! (South Mountain Reservation)
5/29/2007 - Union is no more thanks to the Wachung Reservation.
6/03/2007 - Passaic has been conquered. (High Mountain)
6/10/2007 - Cumberland has been assimilated. (Union Lake)
6/10/2007 - Gloucester has fallen into The Blue Hole.

This week I'll be finishing off Ocean County and visiting the house we're trying to buy in Jackson all in one fell swoop.

Here's the official link to my Tour De Cache log page so you can follow along with all the exciting action!

After this I'm going to to for all 50 states, then every country, then every continent! Ok, maybe not. What I'll probably do is take a long vacation... one that doesn't have me driving all over the state in holiday/weekend traffic. :-)

Ocean Country here I Come!

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Orignal From: NJ Tour Update

You can bank on it. . .

Can we buy a house? Maybe. We set yesterday, June 8th as the day for the seller's bank to provide feedback regarding the short sale (yes, no, or stage of process). The bank showed some progress in making up their minds, but no decision has been made yet. The seller's attorney had all kinds of problems zeroing in on the correct person to talk to at the bank but with that mission accomplished things started moving a little. An appraisal has been ordered and all the bank needs now is a gob of paperwork and documents from the seller. This could be a problem if the necessary documents are/were in the house and therefore scattered to the seven winds. The bank was requiring work history, pay stubs, tax records, etc. Considering the house was in foreclosure... well, draw your own conclusions on that status of financial records. I'm hoping a lack of paperwork stands on it's own as proof that the bank should sell to us. Of course, lack of paperwork might just look like incomplete paperwork and more delays. *sigh* As of this time we agreed to a two week extension. I'll post more as I learn more.

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Orignal From: You can bank on it. . .

My name is mud mask

My wife just attacked me with a mud mask. Here I sat ready to type out a blog about human nature and mountains when she slides up and starts smearing "warming" mud on my cheek. Then my chin. Next thing I know it's EVERYWHERE and she says it's detoxifying and I say it's smelly.

What have I become.

I just had a look at myself in the mirror and I feel a little better. It just looks like I'm smeared over with vasoline. Not that being covered in vasoline makes me feel more masculine, but at least I don't look like I'm supposed to be in a spa commercial. Yaurgh. I'd rather have coins on my eyes than cucumbers.

Ok, so anyway... as I've been Geocaching all over the state the past few weeks a pattern emerged that I had been noticing subconsciously my entire life....

Every time I crested a hill and found a nice high place with a view... I also found a fire ring. At first I wondered about the paleolithic remnant of our brains that insists that mountains need fire. Then I realized that even Mountain Men like to enjoy the view now and again, but male bonding isn't possible without Beer or Fire or - better yet - Beer AND Fire. Then I reflected on the Mountain Boys who had been up here recently and had the same problem but instead of two guys toting a faggot of firewood up the hill, these two boys carried spray paint and wrote "faggot" on the rocks. I can only assume this was in brash defiance of the feeling that "if my friend's hand brushes mine one more time I'm going to grab it and if he doesn't pull away I'll squeeze his hand tight in mine for the rest of my life"...

My mind tends to wonder while I wander.

Of course the truth of the fire-rings has nothing to do with human nature.

That is where the space ships land. Obviously.

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Orignal From: My name is mud mask

Almost The End of an Era

If you don't touch your website on Geocities for a few ages they disable the account. I hadn't touched My Original Website since the late 90s and it (finally) went disabled! Fortunately I somehow managed to remember my username and password and re-activated the site.

I realize now that I was really bummed about the site going down. At the time I was quite proud of my creation. I self-taught myself HTML before there were guides online or books in the stores. I created all of my own graphics from scratch pixel by pixel. More importantly, it was Mine. The worst part is that I realized I don't have the site archived anywhere, Google doesn't have it Cached any more and even the Wayback Machine doesn't have a working copy. I thought it had really vanished for good this time.

Well, web historians needn't worry because this scare has set me right. I'll be archiving the site on the Ego Surfing page and my personal hard drive ASAP so that future generations shan't be deprived of the worst website in the history of the World Wide Web!

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Orignal From: Almost The End of an Era

Survived another... can I say Christmas on the internet?

It's funny how everyone was just dancing around saying "Merry Christmas" this year. I signed many of my year-end-greeting-cards "Have a very merry" before I realized it had become a hip saying this year. That personally offended me as the kinda person who really hates trendy sayings. Next year I'm writing Merry Christmas. As if anyone would REALLY be offended, Jew, Hindu, Agnostic or Cthulhu Dude by your wishing them a happy 359th day of the year, no matter what it's called. Here's what I say: Call it Federal December Holiday! You see, "Christmas" is defined by our government as the 25th day of December and labeled an official national holiday meaning there is no mail & all government offices happen to be closed. It's the only one we get in December & they tried pretty hard to give us one day off per month back when they started handing out holidays. So it's a technical term to say "Happy Federal December Holiday!" Just like "Obese" is just a technical way to say Fatty and NOBODY gets upset by that word. Think old Kris Kringle, ole Donder Thighs himself would take umbrage? Nuh-uh! So I waggle my mouse as I type out a blight wishing a Joyous FeDecHol to y'all & to all a good night!

What time is it?

So I woke up this morning having set (most of) the clocks back an hour for the switch back to Daylight Standard Time (IE, the time the rest of the world has been using since the first person noticed that the sun comes and goes on a kind of a pattern). The first thing I noticed was that the two alarm clocks in the bedroom (His/Hers) read 7:10 & 6:10 respectively. These two clocks claim to be Atomic Clock Radio Signal Receiving Clocks that never need setting as they glean the magic of time from radio signals and set themselves. That's great except (as we learned last year) hers, when resetting to DST also resets the timezone to the default central time zone, so it was actually 7:10 not 6:10 and she was an hour late. To complicate matters, Verizon Wireless in it's infinite wisdom, hadn't yet changed back so they said 8:10 making her an hour early. Heather acknowledges that I've taken over the clock setting/maintaining job in the household. I pride myself on be punctual. This is an unrealistic self-image though as I'm only actually punctual about half the time even though I have a clock (or two or three) in every room to make certain I know what time it is. At one time I even made a study of how far people set their clocks ahead. It was called The Dalton Difference. So you can guess that it's extremely frustrating that I DON'T KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS! Adding to the fun, there is the "Energy Policy Act of 2005" that extends Daylight Saving Time by two weeks. OMG! Does that go into effect this year? Was the news lady on the radio wrong and only Verizon correct? To set matters straight I did what any red blooded American would do. I hit the internet and checked both CNN & FoxNews. If THEY agree then it must be true. I learned that we did "Fall Back" an hour at 2 AM this morning and it is indeed 7:10. Besides Heather being late for her class (yeah, on a Sunday. That's continuing education for ya.) it was crucial that I knew just what time it was because if I turned on the TV this afternoon and found out that I missed an hour of Football, I'd have to be quite upset. Now, to go and finish setting all of the clocks:

Kitchen Clock - Atomic. Sets itself (and is used as the reference point for all other clocks in the household)
Rice Cooker clock - for setting the timer.
Microwave clock - for knowing how long your forgotten quiche has been sitting in there.
Stereo clock - It has a display so they felt the need to add a clock.
VCR clock - For timed recordings. It doesn't even display, but it's in there!
DVD player clock - Again for timed recordings, but this one does display.
Luxury Bathroom clock - So Heather knows how early she is in the morning.
Utility Bathroom clock - So Eric knows how late he is in the morning.
Nightstand 1 clock - Heather's with the broken time zone.
Nightstand 2 clock - Eric's with the "atomic" featured turned off so to be correctly in sync with other atomic clocks.
Wrist watch clock - *NIU, needs batteries.
Four PC clocks - Set themselves back an hour automatically based on this being the last Sunday in October. What will happen NEXT year?
Den clock - Tells me it's friggin' late and I need to get off of the computer and go to bed.
Lock Haven University Mantle clock - Sits in the den under my diploma and chimes on the hour.
Poptarts Gag Alarm clock - Don't send in your box tops for this clock. The hour hand doesn't spin so I really don't know what time it is!
Aquarium Timer - Turns the fishlight on/off at appropriate times.
My Car clock - Which I have to look up in the owners manual to figure out how to change twice a year. So sad.
Heather's Car clock - Which will be correct again if we just wait until March.
Embedded clocks - these are the more annoying ones because you might not remember to get them all until months go by and you're really tempted to just wait until the next switch when they'll be right again. These include, but are not limited to: My MP3 Player, iPod, Digital Camera, Heather's Not -digital Camera, Video Camera, Cable Modem, Router, Printer, Portable-Stereo, Portable-CD Player, Walkman, Stop Watch, Handheld Games, Calculator, Organizer, Spell-checker and both Pedometers.

That's it. I'm going back to bed and not setting an alarm because I don't think the clock knows what time it is either.

Obligatory Links:
Explanation from the US Government concerning Daylight Saving Time
Ok, so what time is it?
A less US-Centric What-time-is-it link
And finally, the current time:

How I coped with getting married...

When some grooms would be running around getting doing last minute stuff or being social butterflies to cover the stomach butterflies I spent much of my free time the week before the big pig-roast wedding reception sitting in front of my computer pouring through my music catalogues, downloading & editing stuff I didn't have & compiling playlists. The end result was three full CDs split up into Music for to Mingle, Slow Beats for Eats, and Dance Dance Reception. There was also a fourth CD with special songs that we could whip out on request like the Electric Slide or Hokey-Pokey. I threw on a few extra dance songs in case the party ran over (I not so secretly hoped it would). I timed the songs to coincide with when we wanted to have our ceremony, when the food would be served etc & nearly everything cue went off without a hitch. Beauty!

Some back story on our wedding song: Several months ago when Heather & I decided to get married we knew we would need a song & when nothing immediately sprang to mind I queued up all of the songs in my musical collection, hit the Random button and let it play. With over 14 Thousand tracks to choose from the computer, in its infinite wisdom chose... "Stairway to Heaven". We wouldn't be the first to use it in a wedding, but... no thanks. We ended up choosing"Road to Nowhere" by the Talking Heads not so much for the lyrics (see below), but for the bouncy fun of it all. This road that we are on is going nowhere, but we're on the road and we are going t enjoy the scenery, the ups, the downs & most off all, the bumperstickers along the way. I'm feelin' Ok this morning & you know, we're on a road to paradise, here we go... here we go.

To be honest , my favorite part of the editing process was going through all of the songs that didn't make the cut, were really inappropriate for a wedding or are just to cheesy to actually use... and splicing them into one long montage of musical mayhem. Just for fun, I added extra cow-bell to several of the songs and overlaid the famous "Mawidge!" audio from the Princess Bride. Wanna guess what song I chose to mix with the movie audio? Why, Stairway to Heaven of course! Take a listen... without fear of lawsuit, I now brazenly post several seconds of a dozen or so songs mixed together with fun sound bytes. Enjoy!

Click to listen to or download Eric & Heather's Rejected Wedding Songs Medley!

"Road to Nowhere" - Talking Heads - From their 1987 Album "Little Creatures" (We used the version from their greatest hits album "Sand in the Vasoline")

WELL WE KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOIN' BUT WE DON'T KNOW WHERE WE'VE BEEN AND WE KNOW WHAT WE'RE KNOWIN' BUT WE CAN'T SAY WHAT WE'VE SEEN AND WE'RE NOT LITTLE CHILDREN AND WE KNOW WHAT WE WANT AND THE FUTURE IS CERTAIN GIVE US TIME TO WORK IT OUT We're on a road to nowhere Come on inside Takin' that ride to nowhere We'll take that ride I'm feelin' okay this mornin' And you know, We're on the road to paradise Here we go, here we go. We're on a ride to nowhere Come on inside. Takin' that ride to nowhere We'll take that ride. Maybe you wonder where you are I don't care Here is where time is on our side Take you there...take you there. We're on a road to nowhere (Heh! Ha!) We're on a road to nowhere (Ha! Ha!) We're on a road to nowhere (Ha! Hah! Wooo!) There's a city in my mind Come along and take that ride and it's all right, baby, it's all right. And it's very far away But it's growing day by day And it's all right, baby, it's all right.

Would you like to come along To help me sing this song And it's all right, baby, it's all right. They can tell you what to do

But they'll make a fool of you And it's all right, baby, it's all right. [repeat last 4 stanzas, with feeling] We're on a road to nowhere (Hey!) We're on a road to nowhere (Heeeaaaah!) We're on a road to nowhere (HAAAAH! HAAAAAAH!)

We're on a road to nowhere....