Ryan's Journal

The inaugural meeting of the Brother-Sister Club last night ended up being a surprisingly fun night out. Despite a lost car, shuffleboard addictions, wayward disco ball reflections, and confusion over the actual identity of the man/woman known only as “Lindsay”, I’m very much looking forward to the next meeting. There isn’t much else of note going on — I broke down and applied for a job a few weeks ago, but luckily the position was apparently filled before they got my resume. There may be a short road trip in the future, although the possibility of facing July 4th traffic leads me to believe it won’t start until at least the 5th.

By way of Matt, some really amazing photos from Africa.

Occasionally an image from the site or a link to the site shows up in an odd place. Here’s this month’s winner of the “how did it end up there?” award.

Hint: scroll 3/4 of the way down the page and look for a picture with “©2004 W. Ryan Holliday” in the bottom right corner.

It’s raining today, as it has done at least once during nearly every week going back to October. Until this year I can’t recall ever seeing rain in California except between October and April; I sort of assumed that the man upstairs just kind of turned a shut-off valve somewhere and made it so that you never had to think about what to do this weekend in case of rain or where to hold the event in case of rain. It sort of became like an instinct, and now that the weather instinct is failing I’m finding myself glued to the window, looking at the astounding sight of water falling out of the sky and thinking “this is just weird.”

One can only wonder if some of the other California-isms that I’ve taken as gospel might be disproved. Perhaps I’ll someday be able to afford real-estate, people will come pouring out of Jamba Juice and demand some Dunkin’ Donuts, and in the next election the current politicians will be tossed out in favor of a bunch of old, white, religious Republicans who ride to power on a platform of stomping out medical marijuana and gay marriage…

Went to the Giants game with Aaron and seven other folks and watched the Indians trounce the home team, including a five run outburst in the ninth inning, all with two outs. Afterwards, on the long walk from the stadium to Sam Wo’s, we passed a homeless guy holding up a cardboard sign:

“Family kidnapped by ninjas. Need $$$ for karate lessons.”

Also worth remembering was Miner’s rant about the guy sitting in his seat (which went on for at least a half hour and scared several people out of the stadium bathroom), Nish’s infatuation with the smell of laundry, the waitress at Sam Wo’s refusing to take orders until she’d gotten a round of high-five’s, the round-trippers, and Kenny’s baffling inability to operate the BART entry gate. A classic evening.

The fifth annual Meat Massacre is now in the books. Cows should slowly begin coming out of hiding during the next few weeks, and the world’s remaining chicken population can breath a collective sigh of relief. This year’s innovation, which can only be expressed in technical terms as “marinate longer”, seems to have been a big hit and will definitely be incorporated in future events.