Pictures!!!!

I've been slacking on my writing... but hey, a picture is worth a thousand words and I've got plenty of pictures to make plenty of stories. I'll skip my normal dragged out style of writing and just make comments every few pictures:

Haircut Donation Pictures (Before and After)

William Before Hair Cut (I was going for the Homeless Guy Look - Success!)

William After Hair Cut

Surfing

Although there was a recent death of a tri-athlete who got bit (and promptly died) by a great white shark in San Diego, everyone's still hitting the beaches. I got a chance to use my new (to me) surfboard and wetsuit. Hey, I know that some might consider it gross to buy a used wetsuit, but think about it this way: "It automatically gets washed everytime anyone uses it!"

Surfing uses a lot of muscles that I normally don't use so I'm trying to build up my 'spring up' ability by doing some pushups everyday. I normally do about 3 sets of 25 pushups. Despite the training, I have yet to stand on the board for more than a second. Thankfully Adrienne didn't get any pictures of me going under or getting smacked by my board after a nasty and unexpected second wave.

Rock Climbing

This is one of the older set of pictures lying around. Adrienne and I haven't gone rock climbing in a couple months and I'm really looking forward to the next time. I'm actually terrified of heights, but love scaling walls. (Climbing down is another issue) There's a great feeling when making a great dyno or figuring out a difficult problem. Here's Adrienne doing the beginning traverse and me playing around the padded bouldering section at Vertical Hold.

Memorial Day Weekend

For Memorial Day weekend Adrienne and I decided to visit my parents up North in my hometown of Reedley. It's easily a 300+ mile drive one way from San Diego to Reedley. To break up the monotony, we visited a few friends along the way. We visited some of my college friends and even one of the our Peace Corps Trainers from the Kingdom of Tonga, who just happened to be in Long Beach!

It's always great to see my family too! :)

Scooter

Gas prices are up, world food prices have increased dramatically ever since we started doing all this research for alternative fuel, and our environmental issues now include this giant plastic clusterfuck that's somewhere in the Pacific. Sure there's growing demand in India and China that's causing food shortages, but we're also to blame for creating this demand. Why?

Ignorance; we just don't think about the global welfare (just in case people didn't get the clue when we invaded another country for their oil under the false pretense of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism). Anyways I disgress. We don't think anything past the number at the gas pump. We don't think about the food riots happening across the world when families cannot afford the doubled price of $.57 for the pasta that's necessary to feed their families. Our gas guzzlers are creating this shortage of grain and people are buying gas because they simply can. I wish people would try to find an alternative means of transportation, EVEN IF THEY CAN AFFORD THE INCREASED GAS PRICES! Try public transportation, try carpooling, try... scooters?

Today I bought a Buddy 125cc scooter. It gets 90+ miles per gallon and it's orange. What's there not to like?

125 cc Genuine Scooter Buddy

Yum, beer!

When Adrienne and I backpacked through Europe, we tried as many different, local beers as possible. There's no point in traveling without experiencing the rich culture that each country has to offer (and by culture I mean especially their beer).

Now there's so many beers out there and so little time to try and rate each one according to categories from best stout, pilsner, etc. I wanted to keep my rating system simple. I rated them all on a 1 to 10 scale based on one factor "After I have this beer, would I want another?". This is a quick breakdown of the scale and my findings based on my limited time traveling:

1: Do not ever drink this again...
1.5: Drink Listerine for the alcohol% instead
2-3:Coronas, Budweisers, etc. (American Beer)
4-5: French Beer
7: German Beer
7: Guinness
8-10: Belgian Beer

Now Belgian beer won hands down. The sad part is... I wrote all the beer names in my little black book and I somehow misplaced this precious information! I forgot exactly what great beer it was that I had in Bruges, Belgium!!!

That's why when we went to a Belgian Beer Tasting this weekend, I was hoping that I could be reacquainted with the mysterious beer whose name has escaped me. Sadly, we did not find it, but still had a great time. Thanks to Adrienne for suggesting this! I <3 her so much :)

Offices Wars!

So I inadvertently started an office prank war. It all started with April Fool's Day when two of my coworkers stepped away from the office.

I took a PrintScreen (PrtSc button) of their desktops. I opened up Microsoft Paint, pasted the picture, saved it, and set it as their desktop picture. I then hid all their desktop icons into a temporary folder. This way, they see a picture of their desktop, but the icons aren't actually clickable.

When they came back and started clicking on the desktop icons, they noticed that something was wrong. Another coworker and I played ignorance, but I'm so bad at lying. I ended up laughing and they finally caught on.

They fought back. They retaliated with blue tape. Let me explain; I share an office with one of the coworkers that I played the first prank on (technically, she's my immediate boss). As a joke, she used blue tape to separate the room between 'my office' and 'her office'. I slowly moved the tape inch by inch and 'my office' slowly grew larger.

It got to the point where our Executive Director, who was more than happy to abide by our 'office rules', finally pointed out that my office was much larger than my boss'. I confessed to moving the tape little by little.

I came to work on Monday and the tape on my side barely covered my desk. I didn't even have room for my chair. In fact, my chair was gone too. My boss hid my chair and in its place, there was a piece of blue tape with black text that said "STAND HERE". I laughed a hearty laugh while my mind raced with revenge schemes!

The pranks have gone on from taping the light to always on, a pretend Earthquake, taping a laser mouse so it won't move, and a lot of emails with fake complaints using an automatic complaint generator using http://www.pakin.org/complaint

On the latest prank I called in to the newest hire and told her I was sick. It also happened to be the day that we pulled in all our agency administrators so I could train them. I said she had to cover for me. She's really nervous about public speaking so she panicked. I walked in a couple minutes later. She was not happy.

The new and old Executive Director is on their side as well; they've been changing my seat height and unplugging my computer. I need to watch my back... and make allies fast... because this is WAR!!!

P.S. I have a secret weapon: They all drink coffee and I drink tea... someday, if push comes to shove, the coffee maker will be held ransom!!!!