Thursday, 23 March 2006

Long Time No Blog

I often find that if I take a couple of weeks off from blogging I come back to it with a renewed interest. As soon as I start feeling like it's a chore I take some time off, and I've always found myself coming back. Part of it is the self-reverential component, but it's also great to have a journal that I can look back on. When I go back and read my postings over the years, it brings up a lot of memories that I might otherwise have forgotten.

Fiona and I have decided to stay in San Francisco for a while. We're both really enjoying this city, and we've already made a lot of good friends. This place is so vibrant and full of cool stuff to do, it's hard to imagine wanting to live anywhere else right now. Last night I went to see a movie with my buddy Skylar that I don't think I could have caught anywhere else (except maybe NYC). It was a BBC-style documentary based from the assumption that the South won the civil war and slavery is still legal in America. Skylar's gets his think on over at his blog (if you look real hard there's a photo of Fiona and I on the right side of the page).

A few weeks ago we moved into a new apartment with college basketball superstar Joe Kirchofer:

Joe is an outstanding young man, who is very competitive and has a great court presence and attitude ... A natural shot blocker, a great rebounder and an excellent scorer ... Can face up and shoot the ball up to 17 feet ... He is also good with his back to the basket, and handles the ball well for a player his size ... But more importantly, Joe is a great young man ... One in a million.

We're also living with a guy named John, but he hasn't moved in yet so I don't have much to say about that. For what is worth this is where we live.

Slowly but surely we're accruing furniture. We've had a couple of big adventures at Carl's place that have resulted in a lot of goodies. He's given us a printer, a scanner, a desk, a bunch of deadly knives, and a Jack LaLanne Deluxe Juicer. Man, is that thing awesome. I've been juicing everything, and there's no sign of stopping. There are so many juiceable things in this world - I can't believe I've been living in the dark for so long.

The biggest score to date though is our amazing bed. Two weeks ago Fiona went down to work from Premal's house in Palo Alto on a Saturday, and while she was out I scored off craigslist. I got a queen-sized box spring, mattress, bed frame, brass headboard, down comforter, two sets of Pottery Barn sheets, a down mattress pad, a nice blanket and four big squishy pillows for 50 bucks!!.

I set it all up before she got home and she nearly crapped her pants when she walked into our bedroom. It was quite a change from the air mattress we'd been borrowing from Skylar.

So yeah, things are going well. We've got a bed, a juicer, work that's worth our time and a couple of cool new friends. You can't ask for much more than that.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 23, 2006 at 01:11 PM in Me | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, 02 March 2006

Professional Couch Surfer

Today is Thursday, and by my count I've slept in four different places this week. I started off the week at Chelsa's in The Mission, then I went to Catie and Greg's on Russian Hill for a night. Slept at Premal's in Palo Alto two nights ago, and last night I had a big adventure on Carl's couch involving a cat that kept trying to lick me.

Fiona's been staying with Catie and Greg for the past few nights, but I've been taking part in a code-a-thon with Matt and The Carl. Tonight I'll be staying at Skylar's pad in San Francisco, and I'm looking forward to seeing my wife again.

However, the good news is that we're renting a room! We'll be moving in on Saturday to a place in Bernal Heights. Matt says it's a great spot, and from what I've been reading on the internet it sounds pretty cool. I've also noticed that there's a 100% hit rate between "Bernal Heights" and "Lesbians". Every single article I've read about the area mentions a disproportionate number of lesbians. Why Bernal Heights? Maybe they have a great Home Depot or something. I look forward to finding out.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 2, 2006 at 02:51 PM in America, Me, Moving | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, 28 January 2006

San Francisco - America's Vaccination Destination

After waking up at 5AM and sitting on a plane for 8 hours, we hopped on the subway and headed into the middle of the city for the San Francisco Dept. of Public Health. As I mentioned earlier, the price of vaccinations here are about half the cost compared to Connecticut. And it's a damn good thing, because between Fiona and I we wound up dropping almost $1200 on shots yesterday.

The bad news, of course, was that it cost a shitload of money. The good news is that I have a much better chance of not dying of the following diseases:

• Meningococcal Disease - This one is some scary shit. The juice was precious at $110, but after I read this I was all sweaty and pretty much stopped worrying about money:
  

  Meningococcal disease is an acute bacterial disease characterized by sudden onset with fever; intense headache; nausea and often vomiting; stiff neck; and, frequently, a petechial rash with pink macules. Formerly, the case-fatality ratio exceeded 50%, but early diagnosis, modern therapy, and supportive measures have lowered the case-fatality ratio to about 10%.



• Polio - Maybe I'm naive or something, but I was under the impression this had been taken care of. I seem to remember hearing how through the "miracle of modern medicine" mankind had wiped out Polio. Apparently, this is not the case. Polio, it seems, has reached epic proportions in Africa. And that's fucked up because the shot only cost $44 and you know that includes the standard 500% markup on all pharmaceuticals sold in America.
• Tetanus/Diptheria - At the bargain basement price of $28, how could I say no?
• Hepatitis A & B - These vaccinations are actually administered over the course of six months. Luckily, Fiona talked me into starting the tract back when we were in Bangkok, so I got my third and final booster yesterday.
• Typhoid - This one comes in oral form, so I didn't need a shot for it, which was fine with me. Three in each arm was enough, thanks.
• Yellow Fever - This is the big bad mama jama of exotic tropical diseases. The one where they won't let you in to the country if you don't have the International Certificate of Vaccination for Yellow Fever.
• Rabies - I got the first of three rabies exposure shots yesterday, and at the price of $182 per shot I'd be lying if I said I didn't hesitate. I was on the fence - I mean, when's the last time you got bit by an animal - until the nurse started explaining the options. If you get bit after you've been vaccinated, then the treatment is two booster shots which are widely available even in third world countries. However, if you haven't been vaccinated then you need to get a different kind of injection made from human product which is not widely available and would require evacuation to South Africa. And what kind of psycho would inject himself with blood from THAT population? You'd probably be better of with the rabies.

Luckily, Fiona had already been vaccinated against most of the aforementioned stuff so we saved some money there. Apparently it's a "good idea" to get shots before you go to Southeast Asia. Not being one for "good ideas" I had to stock up yesterday. Fiona, on the other hand, had a different issue to deal with.

Five years ago she was in India and she started playing around with a monkey. To make a long story short, the thing bit her and (having had the pre-exposure) she went to a clinic to get the widely available booster. The Indian doctor was not, um, well-informed, so he gave her the wrong fucking shot. Not only did Fiona get a shot of human product in India which was neither effective, nor, shall we say, the best idea, but apparently the doctor also had trouble opening the vial and wound up shattering the glass before he drew it into the syringe.

Basically, Fiona allowed some Indian quack to inject her full of broken glass and third-world country juice. Which was pretty funny considering the grilling she gave the nurse in San Francisco about "how do you know the meningococcal vaccine is safe".

The effect of this episode was Fiona sitting in the Department of Public Health with a gaggle of nurses around trying to decide whether or not my wife has rabies. After a call to the guy who's currently rewriting the CDC guidelines for rabies, they decided that she should get the two booster shots ($182 each) just to be on the safe side.

And that's pretty much that. Right now my shoulders are sore as hell, but I'm told that will pass after a few days. Of course, for those of you out there who like to have things to worry about there's also a .001% chance I could die of Yellow Fever by next Thursday.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 28, 2006 at 12:58 PM in Africa, Little Stories, Me, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 27 January 2006

Off to San Francisco

We're all packed up and ready to go. Our flight leaves tomorrow at 7AM(!) so it's going to be a long day. We land in Oakland at 1PM and then we head straight for the SF Immunization clinic where we'll be getting all our shots for Africa. For some strange reason it's half the price in California as it is in Connecticut. I guess that's what you get for living in the richest state in the Union (in your FACE New Jersey).

I'm pretty excited to finally meet the people I've been corresponding with for so many months. I've been doing so much research and thinking about microfinancing, Kiva, and VEF that I don't know what it'll be like to actually meet people who've been doing the things I've been reading about. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous, too. I suppose I just have no idea what to expect, and that makes for some anxious daydreaming. I can see it now - we sit down with Matt, Jessica and Brian for the first time and they're like "Muhammad Yunus? Oh my God that guy's like the biggest douchebag ever!"

Anyway, I really wish I could write more, but it's late and as I said I have to be up early. I'll try to post regular updates while we're kicking it West Coast style but, as always, no promises.

PS - If you're extra-bored at work and you're hungry for a blast from the past, here are some old 2004 pics from a previous trip to San Francisco:

Posted by flow Frazao on January 27, 2006 at 12:31 AM in Me | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 26 January 2006

I've Been to Hell I Spell It, I Spell It D-M-V

I'm sitting here at the DMV waiting for Fiona to finish her driver's test (she's finally going for a US license), and I'm really enjoying the show. As I look around I see a very diverse group of people, and I would bet that these particular people will never be in the same room again. This is a shame - just imagine what spirited conversations could transpire between the obese Arab to my left and the mulletudinous meth-head to my right. Not that I'm going to invite them back to my house or anything. I'm just saying.

Fiona just finished her written test and she's in a state of disbelief as to how easy it was compared to its Australian counterpart. I tried explaining that while in Australia driving might be considered a privilege, here in the US it's a basic human right. Judging by her scoff, I can only assume she hates freedom. I'll be reporting her for reeducation when we get home.

Update: I'm pleased to report that Fiona passed her exam! She now sports a classy Connecticut driver's license with a sweeeeet hologram that you're all so jealous of. Yeah you wish you were from Connecticut, punk.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 26, 2006 at 06:03 PM in America, Little Stories, Me | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 25 January 2006

Dental Hell

I'm not sure if this is obvious to people, but if you're going to do any kind of traveling in the third world one of the most important things you can do is take care of your teeth. I've been very lucky, but I can tell you that I've heard some horror stories about people who've had to visit dentists in Central America, and I can only imagine what a tooth extraction would be like in, say, Cambodia.

I usually schedule a routine checkup and cleaning before I head out. I've been lucky in the past because I've always had dental insurance, but this time I'm one of the 45 million uninsured Americans who's got to pony up for his medical care. So I opened up the good ol yellow pages and let my fingers do the walking.

After a few phone calls, it became apparent that I was going to be spending at least $100 for a simple cleaning and a 10 minute consultation with a dentist. Being a cheap bastard, I figured I'd shop around to get the lowest possible price.

I think you probably know where this is going.

Eventually, I found a newspaper ad for a $99 cleaning, dentist consultation, and complete set of X-rays. Somehow, this seemed like a good idea at the time. Now that I'm thinking about it, I should have probably been alarmed when they told me they had a few open appointments that day and could take my pick. Alas, I am a fool.

I went in at 3:30 and filled out all the paperwork. I explained to the woman behind the desk that I was leaving for an extended trip to Africa and I just wanted to make sure I didn't have any nasty surprises. She was very understanding and when I gave her the 30 second schtick on Kiva she was really into it.

After a few minutes spent reading US Weekly (K-Fed is such a pussy), the dentist called me in and I followed her to one of the stations. With a thick Russian accent, the Humpty-Dumpty shaped dentist asked me about any pain I'd been having, if I smoked, etc. After an brief exchange of pleasantries, she instructed me to lean back and open my mouth.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her grab a pointy silver tool with a hook on the end. She took this utensil and began to stab me repeatedly in the mouth. Within seconds I could taste the blood.

My mouth was literally exploding with pain every time she jabbed me. As I sit here typing this, I can still feel my gums throbbing. The amazing thing is that I just sat there taking it. Isn't it ridiculous how you lull yourself into a false sense of security just by thinking "Well this person is a professional. She must know what she's doing." I find myself thinking the same thing in New York City taxis as they drive 90 down Broadway on the wrong side of the yellow line. But I digress.

So there she is, poking the shit out of my mouth and making these "Mmm hmm" sounds. Eventually she hands me a mirror and says, "I want you to see what I'm doing here."

Preparing for a scene out of Saw II, I slowly bring the mirror up to my face and I'm greeted with a mouthful of teeth that are redder than Bill Clinton at a cigar convention.

"See," she says as she drives the little sword in between two molars, "You bleed every time I poke you. I'm sorry to tell you this but you have gum disease."

"You stupid bitch," I said, "If I took out my Leatherman and stabbed you in the face you'd bleed like a stuck pig, but that doesn't mean you have face disease does it?"

Yeah right I said that. No, I just sat there and nodded, dumbfounded by a mixture of pain, disbelief, and shock at the fact that I'd just been diagnosed with a disease. I mean, I'm not saying I'm Dr. Teeth or anything, but I practice pretty good dental hygiene. I brush twice a day and floss maybe once a week (yeah, yeah, I know I should do it every day). My point, however, is that while my teeth may not be perfect it's not like they look like this.

Humpty-Dumpski DDS went on to tell me that her "professional diagnosis" was that I have middle stage periodontal disease. Her recommendation was that I come in for four separate treatments where they would do a periodontal scrape of a quarter of my mouth each time. Each visit would cost $210 for a grand total of $840 by the time she was done. Then she showed me my X-rays and told me some story about my jaw bone receding or something.

Of course, my immediate inclination was to go home and get on WebMD to find out exactly how full of shit this woman was. After spending about 20 minutes talking about various payment plans she offered I managed to politely extricate myself and my shredded gums from her office and we headed home to do some research.

Needless to say, I don't think I have periodontal disease. Maybe a little gingivitis, but nothing a little floss and some listerine won't fix. However, I have learned a valuable lesson from this experience, and that is this:

Posted by flow Frazao on January 25, 2006 at 09:28 PM in Little Stories, Me | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 12 January 2006

Problems vs. Solutions

"The heart of the matter, as I see it, is the stark fact that world poverty is primarily a problem of two million villages, and thus a problem of two thousand million villagers. The solution cannot be found in the cities of the poor countries. Unless the hinterland can be made tolerable, the problem of world poverty is intolerable, and inevitably will get worse."

-- E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful

If there's one thing I learned during my years of consulting, it's that too much knowledge is a terrible thing. I couldn't possibly begin to count the number of projects I was on that had worked themselves into a state of "analysis paralysis". That is, they'd spent so much time thinking about the question that their brains froze up whenever they tried to think of an answer.

Sometimes you have to jump in with both feet and just start slogging away. Granted, you fuck up left and right, but as long as you don't keep screwing up the same thing in the same way you inevitably work your way towards a solution. It's not always the most elegant one, and it's usually not the one that will win you any industry awards, but it gets the job done. In my experience, I've generally found that the best time to solve these problems is while the talkers are talking.

Of course, as I soon as I solved a problem for a client they would immediately switch from talking about how complicated the issue was to talking about how smart they were for having fixed it. Not that it made any difference to me - as a consultant I was already out the door. But it just goes to show that you don't need to know much about a problem to solve it. You just have to be willing to bang your head against a wall for a while and hope your brain is big enough to knock it down.

"There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there."

-- Indira Gandhi

Posted by flow Frazao on January 12, 2006 at 11:39 PM in Little Stories, Me, Microfinancing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 10 January 2006

First Day of Substitute Teaching

7:30 AM - Writing B102
Today is my first day of substitute teaching. I'm working at Hall High School, which is where I graduated from in 1994. It's pretty strange being back, mainly because it hasn't changed at all. There are still couples making out in the same dark corners, and still huge groups of kids congregating in front of the gym. The main difference is that now they all have iPods instead of Walkmen.

Another thing I notice as I look around is that every single student has a 16 ounce bottle of Poland Spring water. Is this standard issue now? I wonder if you get in trouble should you be caught without your water bottle. It's strange - when I was here you weren't allowed to drink anything in class. I seem to remember some kind of fear that kids would be swigging vodka or something.

Right now I'm sitting in my first class. It's an English class - Writing, I think. Following the script that was sitting on the teacher's desk, I told the kids that they're supposed to work on a thesis statement and have their introductions done by the end of the period. I don't have a clue what they're introducing, nor do I care. Pretty much the only other thing I said to them is that it's way too early for any of us to be awake (7:30 AM), so as long as they're quiet I not much else matters.

Amazingly, I haven't had to say a single word since class started. Every single one of these kids is working. Part of me wants to yell at them "Hey, you! Misbehave!! What do you think this is? Some kind of cubicle job?"

9:25 AM - English 10 (Standard)
This is my third period of the day. Second period was English 10 (Honors) and there's a big difference between honors and standard. The teacher left me the following note:

"Give students a brief talk about behaving properly and tell them that there will be punishment if you leave me a poor report."

The honors kids were quiet and well behaved, and the standard kids are loud and funny. I gave both groups the exact same directions and the honors class did exactly as they were told. The standard kids, however, got the directions, read through the handout and told me I had to assign each group a question from the list of five.

Naturally, I said "Does it really matter? Just pick one and do it." One girl quickly piped up and told me that in fact it DID matter because of something having to do with the way the class was being taught. So I assigned them each a question. No skin off my back.

Eventually, one of the kids asked my name. Without thinking, I responded "Jeremy". The girl laughed and said, "No, we can't call you Jeremy we have to call you Mr. Whatever." I told her my last name and then she asked me some question about Catcher In the Rye about Holden's relationship with Phoebe.

I told her that it had been a long time since I'd read that book and I had forgotten that Phoebe was a character, much less how she's different from Selma Thurner. Then I mentioned that the only thing I remembered was that aside from a revolver and a signed Double Fantasy album, a dog-eared copy of Catcher In the Rye was the only other thing Mark David Chapman was carrying when he shot John Lennon. Apparently, the teacher skipped over that little factoid.

Another interesting distinction between the honors class and the standard class is that almost all of the honors kids seemed to be members of the Cult of the White Earbuds. I would conservatively estimate that around 75% of the students in the advanced class had iPods. However, in the standard class it seemed like only a handful had them. There were significantly more CD Players than MP3 players, and it makes me wonder how much socioeconomic standing factors into academic placement. Quite a lot, I would guess.

Study Hall
They played hangman almost the whole time. But it was boring because the only thing they could think of were TV shows and movies. A few of the mystery words were:

• Baywatch


• The Brothers Grimm


• The Godfather

Posted by flow Frazao on January 10, 2006 at 11:56 PM in Little Stories, Me | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 02 January 2006

Techmology - Eez It Good?

Along with more frequent postings, another one of my goals is to become a much more efficient time-waster. I generally spend a few hours a day doing web research on microfinancing, keeping up with the news, checking out the Asian Babe of the Week, and so forth. However, I've decided that I'm just not wasting my time wisely enough.

After monitoring my behavior over the past week or so, I've come to the realization that I use a lot of bandwidth returning to sites to check if they've been updated. With the advent of RSS a few years ago, that kind of thing is no longer necessary. From now on I've vowed that I'll be running an RSS News Aggregator (NetNewsWire is my early preference) to keep me automatically alerted to any updates.

Currently, I'm using it to monitor all my favorite freedom-hater blogs, relevant news stories, and anything concerning Microfinancing. I've got the RSS feeds for Daily Kos, Eschaton, and a couple of other blogs. As for news, I'm continuously monitoring Google News for any articles published by any of the 4500 news sources about Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. Every time a new article is written, this magical application sucks it down off the net and regurgitates it directly into my brain like a well-read mama bird.

I figure it'll also come in handy when we're in Africa and internet connections aren't readily available. With a newsreader, I'll be able to plug in whenever I get a connection, fire up the application and hit "Update" to download all the recent postings. Then I'll be able to read everything offline at my leisure.

My only complaint is that the Asian Babe of the Month doesn't have an RSS feed. Oh well. I guess one can only expect so much from technology.

By the way, this site has been publishing an RSS feed for about two years. The link can by found by doing a page search for the words "Subscribe to this blog's feed" or by simply clicking here.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 2, 2006 at 03:14 PM in Cool Stuff, Me, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 18 November 2005

New Jobs!

For the first time in over a year, I'm proud to report that I'm now gainfully employed. I've got not one, but TWO jobs - both about five minutes walk from my parents' house.

Hopefully, Fiona and I will be able to make enough money over the next two months to pay for our time working in Africa.

I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to get a software development job, but realistically speaking it's just not possible to do much of anything in two months. Granted, I would have made more money, but after the past couple of months I'm really looking for something as low stress and as fun as possible. Besides, the way we have it figured as long as we make around $5,000 over the next couple of months we'll be good to go, and that shouldn't be any problem at all between Fiona and I.

So, without further ado, here are the two gigs I've landed (names changed for obvious reasons):

1. The Cheese Shop

   The Cheese Shop is a small gourmet shop that specializes in exotic cheeses. What, you may ask, do I know about cheese? Absolutely nothing. That's why I'm working there. Hopefully over the next few weeks I will become an accomplished fromager (sp?) and will be able to impress/bore my liberal, blue-state friends with my knowledge of the finest moldy food products.

   It's a crazy clientele that frequents these gourmet joints. On my first day (yesterday) a woman came in and bought over $30 of fancy goat cheese. She was going to use it to make macaroni and cheese for her kids. As far as I'm concerned, that's a clear sign that you've got far too much money.

2. Electronics Hut

   I haven't actually started yet, but yesterday I swung by the "Career Fair" to see what was up. It was actually quite remarkable. I expected to be sitting in a room with four or five pimply high school nerds, but that was not the case at all. There were at least 15 people there, and the majority of them were older than myself. A couple of them were gray-haired guys who looked to be in their 50s (at least). And we were all applying for floor jobs. Doesn't say a lot about Bush's so-called "economic recovery".

   It'll be interesting to see how it goes at The Hut. It's a commission-based job, and I've never been a salesman so I think it should be fun. Obviously, I know loads about all the crap they sell so I'm not to worried about it. If there's one thing I can do all day long it's talk about gadgets.

Just yesterday at The Cheese Shop I tried three different kinds of expensive, weird cheeses. I can't remember what the first was, but one was a goat cheese rolled in cumin, coriander and French Truffles. It was tasty, but it smelled like farts. The third was a cheese from Colchester, CT called "Hooligan" that's made from the milk of 36 cows:

Quite the bully, indeed. I don't know if I'd use quite the same words to describe it, but it was definitely pretty good. It'll be interesting to see if my palate gets used to appreciating this stuff.

So there you have it. I think it'll be fun to have a couple of low-key jobs that I can have a laugh at. The best part is that I'll be able to go hang out at these places, and then come home and spend some good family time over the holidays without being stressed out (at all) about work.

Posted by flow Frazao on November 18, 2005 at 08:57 PM in Me | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, 03 April 2005

Joke Of The Day

Descartes walks into a bar and the bartender says "Hey, Rene, you wanna drink?"

Descartes replies "I think not," and vanishes in a puff of logic.

Posted by flow Frazao on April 3, 2005 at 10:22 PM in Me | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 24 March 2005

A Lesson In Smoove-ology

1976: I am born at around 8:30 AM on August 9th, 1976. Other 20th century notable events recorded on this day:

• 1945 - An atomic bomb nicknamed "Fat Man", with an energy of 22,000 tons of TNT, is dropped on the city of Nagasaki, Japan at 11:02 AM (local time). An estimated 60,000-80,000 are killed and more than 60,000 are injured.

• 1963 - Whitney Houston is born.

• 1969 - Members of a cult led by Charles Manson murder five people.

• 1974 - Richard Nixon becomes the first President of the United States to resign from office.

• 1995 - Jerry Garcia dies.

1977: A year of growth and introspection.

1978: I learn to read.

1979: In the coed nursery school bathroom a girl walks up behind me and asks how come I can stand up when I pee. She tries it. Hilarity ensues.

1980: My brother is born. My parents ask me what his name should be and for some reason I say "Matthew". It sticks.

1981: I start Kindergarten and my teacher, Mrs. Vince, has a massive heart attack and dies right in front of me. Being five, I start laughing as soon as she hits the ground. I now recognize this as my introduction to the joys of schadenfreude.

1982: Michael Jackson moonwalks into my life. Everything else pales in comparison.

1983: I stop doing work in second grade. Instead I sit at my desk and space out for weeks. Ms. Pomeranz moves me into the corner and puts an enormous cardboard box around me, effectively making me The Dunce. Four years later the same thing happens to my brother.

1984: I am cast as the Mayor of the Munchkin City in the class play.

1985: Mrs. Blachinski tells me I need to get a haircut because I look like a girl. Michelle Fradette, who I have a massive crush on, overhears and I go home to cry from embarrassment.

1986: Legend of Zelda is the best game ever.

1987: Miraculously, Michelle Fradette becomes my girlfriend. We go on a date (with my parents and brother) to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Afterwards we go to Friendly’s for ice cream and I sing “Great Green Globs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts” to her as she scoops out the final spoonfuls of hot fudge. Michelle spends the next 10 minutes throwing up in the bushes outside while my Mom rubs her back. She goes home to cry from embarrassment.

1988: I go to middle school and become a geek.

1989: I grow a mullet and become a bigger geek.

1990: During the lunch period of my first day of high school, a senior “follies” me and makes me pick my nose and eat it in front of a table full of the most popular senior girls. I tell myself things can only get better from here.

1991: I get a signed permission slip from my Mom to participate in a walk-out in protest of the Gulf War.

1992: I get a real girlfriend and get laid. I also steal a universal remote control and get arrested.

1993: “Are you going to college?”
"I don’t know. I guess."
“You’re going to college.”
“OK.”

1994: I get accepted to Hofstra University in January and spend the rest of my high school career cutting class with one of the hottest girls in school. She shows me the bruises where her boyfriend hits her and I tell her she deserves better. She doesn’t believe me.

1995: The lost year.

1996: I wake up to find myself on triple probation with the University for a wide variety of offences. Surprisingly, I also discover that I am really good with computers. Somehow they just make sense to me. Philosophy remains my favourite subject, but I’m not fucked up enough to think I’ll be able to pay off a $20,000 loan with a philosophy degree. I declare a major in Computer Science and buy a bong.

1997: I party every night and pass every class. Life is great.

1998: Fuck New Jersey.

1999: I go to DC to work with a good friend who owns a software company. I learn the meaning of “right place, right time”.

2000: After earning almost $80,000 I pay my taxes to find less than $300 in my checking account. I wonder where all my money went, and then I look at my DVD collection: Independence Day and Dave Matthews Live? I decide to make some changes.

2001: I eat tuna out of the can every day for a year and quit my job. I go to Portugal for the first time with my family, walk across Spain, get molested by a Buddhist monk, and meet my future wife on a tropical island in Thailand. I am weightless.

2002: I return home after 10 months to learn my Mom has been diagnosed with MS. I get married and do 1000 push-ups in under an hour.

2003: I discover fresh garlic. I always used to use the jarred stuff or that powdered crap, but neither compares to the real deal. The only thing that’s kind of a drag is peeling the individual cloves. I make a mental note to design a garlic clove extraction contraption and win a Nobel Prize.

2004: After paying off my student loans, Fiona and I quit our shitty desk jobs and take off.

2005: In progress.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 24, 2005 at 10:07 PM in Me | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack