Ryan's Journal

For unknown reasons the sleep schedule has inverted lately, and for the past two nights things have gotten so ridiculous that I’ve been able to watch the sunrise prior to going to bed. It’s a bit like being in college again, only now I get to take naps in a futon rather than trying to get comfortable in the goofy chairs with tray tables that they used in the engineering classrooms.

Aaron is back in town, and calling upon his uncanny ability to gather large groups he pulled together a pack of seven for some bar hopping in Walnut Creek last night. Crogan’s was (thankfully) avoided, yet we still managed to discover a joint with a rubber-kneed techno DJ, a bar offering $2 Coronas, a Kenny-friendly establishment, and some place that served us an embarrassingly large and fruity bowl of cherries, rock candy, and alcohol.

I didn’t end up going to sleep until nearly 5:00 AM last night, and possibly as a result of sleep deprivation my dreams were all over the place. In one I was JFK, and not just some actor playing JFK, but the actual, bonafide JFK. And I knew that I was gonna invade Cuba and get assassinated and everything, but mostly I was just enjoying being President during the 60’s. How cool must that have been?

In another dream I was back in Los Angeles, and for some reason was working for Warner Brothers but my desk was in the gardens at the Getty Museum. Just as I was getting ready to go home for the day a female friend came by and asked me the truly evil question “Do you notice anything different about me?” (Note to women: don’t ever do that. Just tell us what you want us to notice and then we’ll compliment you on it). Following exactly how the scenario would play out in real life, I got absolutely reamed for failing to answer the question correctly.

The magic dream marathon ended abrubtly at 8:15 when the phone rang, so sadly I never got to send a man to the moon or find out what crazy scheme I would have concocted to get out of the doghouse with my LA friend. It’s a shame; it would have been pretty cool to meet Marilyn Monroe.

More than two-thirds of the photos from the 1999 Galapagos trip never got scanned in, so the project during the past couple of days has been getting those online. They’re now mostly all scanned in. In other news, Warner Brothers called and Godfather-like made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, so the retirement may be (briefly) ending sometime in the next couple of weeks.

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.

Greg and Thalia sent news that Fernandina volcano is erupting. Not surprisingly, Greg immediately set off to film it, and it is likely that he will again be proudly showing off footage of himself and others running from a lava flow during the Galapagos trip next May.

Not much to write about, so in lieu of something original that might require exerting the effort of thought, here’s a story I read a long while back that has stuck with me. I tried to find the original author (although not too hard) and failed miserably, so apologies if I’m stomping on someone’s copyright.

An American businessman was standing at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.

“How long did it take you to catch them?” the American asked.

“Only a little while.” the Mexican replied.

“Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American then asked.

“I have enough to support my family’s immediate needs.” the Mexican said.

“But,” the American persisted, “what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, and then stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, senor.”

The American scoffed, “But you could do so much more with your life! If you spent more time fishing then you would be able to buy a bigger boat.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “Why would I need a bigger boat, senor?”

The American continued, “Well, with a bigger boat you could catch more fish, and make a lot more money. Eventually you might even own a fleet of fishing boats.”

To which the Mexican replied, “But what then, senor?”

“Well, once you were catching enough fish you could form your own company and sell directly to consumers, instead of relying on a middleman. When the time is right you would be able to sell your company and reap millions of dollars in profits.”

“Millions, senor? Then what?”

The American said slowly, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos…”

For whatever reason insomnia strikes me nearly once each month, and this month’s installment is a particularly fun one. Last night I think I finally fell asleep around 4:00 AM, and the night before bedtime didn’t arrive until after the sun had started poking over the horizon. Since this has been going on for more than a week now I’ve finally given up on trying to sleep, and am searching out new and exciting activities that can be pursued in a diminished mental state. For me that’s saying a lot, considering that my normal mental state is much closer to “functional” than “intelligent”.

Thus far the attempts at finding suitable activities haven’t been good. On Wednesday I naively started trying to read Homer’s Odyssey at 1:30 AM; Green Eggs and Ham probably would have been a challenge, and Homer might as well have written in Swahili for all the progress I was making. Thursday night was spent attempting to fix up some code I’ve been writing, the result of which is that I now have lots of code with comments in it like “FIXME - this worked earlier, didn't it?“. Tonight my plan had been to partake of unhealthy quantities of alcohol in an effort to induce a sleep-like state, but after failing to locate suitable drinking buddies I settled for an evening of admiring Natalie Portman’s (acting) in Garden State, and now, at nearly 3:30 AM, have spent almost a half hour attempting to put together just two coherent paragraphs. At this rate future activities may be limited to finger painting and playdough.

I’m probably the last person on earth to hear about this site, but on the off chance that one or two others haven’t seen it, postsecret.blogspot.com is a site where people send a postcard with a secret that they’ve never told anyone else. It’s incredible how real some of these are. And of course, some of them are just goofy:

From an email I wrote in January 1998:

“Keep in touch, ’cause otherwise we’ll be out of touch.”

And the scary thing is, I’m pretty sure I’m getting dumber as I get older.

Aaron came to town for the weekend, and as always happens when he’s around events were slightly out of the ordinary. Friday night we met up with the Mormon twins at the local church for some evening basketball, and didn’t leave until three hours later. By that point Aaron had a spasming back and Dave had some pain in his elbow from knocking one of my teeth slightly askew. I had made the mistake of running seven miles prior to Aaron’s arrival, and as a result the evening’s activities left me capable of doing little more than curling up into the fetal position on the bathroom floor once we got home. A good time by any measure.

Aaron and I were both capable of limited movement again by noon on Saturday, so we grabbed Dave and headed for a late lunch at Zachary’s, home of the world’s finest pizza. I don’t know how it started, but somewhere between the discussion of the Meatloaf and Kenny G lookalikes sitting next to us with their rather scary dates (“Look at these girls Kenny, our years of singing are finally paying off!”) the conversation took an odd direction:

“So what about a rodeo bull versus a brown bear?”

“Woah, that’s a good one. Badger versus a wolverine?”

“Wolverine, no question. How about a rhino versus a chimpanzee, but the chimpanzee is driving a monster truck?”

…and so on, with numerous heated arguments, until finally it was decided that nothing could defeat an elephant. Unless the elephant was in a swimming pool with a great white shark. An excellent weekend indeed.