WG’06 – Day 1

Well, the first day of the World Gathering has come and gone. Fairly good start in my estimation. After waking up early and getting a workout in the resort’s gym (located between my room and the convention center), I walked all the way over to the convention center begin the day’s fun. On the way, I did see an odd sight. One of the Disney cast members was mowing the lawn with a self-propelled push mower. That isn’t usually weird, but he was riding on a little platform trailer thing. It made the whole contraption look like a a really practical version of a Segway. Very funny.

My first event was attending the GenX meet & greet. It was kind of cool to put some faces to names that I only knew from the Yahoo! group that we all populate. It was a pretty straightforward meeting plugging GenX events going on during the WG (especially the Pub Crawl, which I am looking forward to, hosted by my friend Reno Ron). I suppose it’s not that odd that most of the GenX events involve alcohol in some fashion. Much to the surprise of the organizers of the Meet & Greet, the room we had wasn’t big enough. We had about 120 people show up… they were out the door. Awesome.

After that, I hung out in Hospitality for a bit to soak up the atmosphere. It was neat to hang out in a different setting with Gary & Gail, two longtime Mensans who are my friends and cool pseudo-parental figureheads for a lot of us younger folk in the Greater Phoenix Mensa group. Anyone in Mensa who doesn’t know them should get to know them. Anyone not in Mensa should get to know them too, as they are two of the coolest people on earth. (Seriously, I’m not just saying that).

I then attended a piano recital by fellow GenX-er Aaron Dai. I admit, I didn’t for the whole thing, but that was not Aaron’s fault. He is a phenomenal player and I enjoyed his work. I just was running low on energy and started developing a bit of a headache. So I went back to Hospitality to recharge.

When Tony, friend and GPM LocSec (Local secretary– the guy in charge, for all the non-Mensans out there), and I couldn’t get into the Sudoku tournament (seriously… a 40-player limit? That’s cold), I had a couple extra hours to myself, so I got my car and drove off-site to a local grocery store to get a few things and take advantage of my hotel room’s sizable mini-fridge. May whatever deities exist bless the existence of the mini-fridge. It’ll cut way down on my use on the abundance of unhealthy snacks in Hospitality (and there are a lot).

Well, now, here I am in sunny Orlando, having freshly arrived for the 2006 Mensa World Gathering at the Coronado Springs resort at Walt Disney World. Pretty cool. Now to plan the trip home. (Kidding… sort of)

My drive down from Tennessee was pretty uneventful. Using a map I was able to skip downtown Nashville altogether and avoid the “spaghetti crazy” that is their freeway system. That probably shaved a good hour off of my travel time. More people should use maps. By the end of the day, I had made it to Jacksonville, FL. Unfortunately, in looking for a good hotel deal, I did not take the location of said hotel into account and ended up driving north of town to stay at the Motel 6 where I had booked a room. That’ll teach me. All that because I thought I was saving $10. I’ve gotta be more pragmatic about that stuff.

But I woke up this early and continued my trek south to stop in Titusville and visit the Kennedy Space Center. The last time I was here was in 1997 and I caught a shuttle launch in the middle of the night. That in itself was probably the coolest thing I have ever seen, but I did not hit the Visitor Center that trip because I didn’t have enough time. Yeah, it’s a hell of a tourist trap, but it was well worth it to me to do it once. Some of those sites almost brought me to tears and I have no idea why. Well, I actually have some idea, but maybe I’ll put all of that in a separate entry, along with some pictures.

In any case, I spent the day there then got to the hotel to check-in to everything. That was fast and reasonably efficient. I think the only two complaints I have are the lack of free broadband access (although $10 a day is a perfectly fair price… I’m just used to free, I guess) and the fact that my room is on the exact opposite end from the convention center and all the excitement. The lack of an efficient and available in-resort transportation system makes it a very, very long walk in the heat and humidity. In addition, my room was equidistant from both stairs and elevator in my building. The five trips I made to unload my car made me appreciate the need to invest in a hand truck… definitely as soon as I get back.

So another lazy Sunday… except for the fact that I am about 2000 miles from home.

The bed was re-inflated, so it was a much more comfortable rest. Evan popped off to church in the morning and I stayed to work on the other big computer problem, that off connecting his two printers so that both his iMac desktop and his IBM laptop can access them at will. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to solve the problem perfectly. Unfortunately, one of his printers is one of those multifunction inkjet jobs (fax/scan/copy/print) and print servers treat them like plague carriers. Inelegant as I think it is, I was able to set it up so that they are both plugged into the iMac and shared so that the laptop can print to them both. (Yay me!) I appreciate the proliferation of Apple’s Bonjour technology making that possible. As a reward, Evan let me take the now-unused print server home with me, where I can now use it to set up my laser printer at home for use with all three of my machines. (Yay Evan!) With the second desktop I got from my brother (Yay Ben!), I can now keep a Windows PC, my iBook laptop and start fiddling around with Linux on the side. I am so excited! Now if I’ll just have time between all my classes, homework, Mensa duties, my job, acting gigs, laundry– sorry. I got distracted. Back to the recent past.

My mother and I made a trip to one of Gallatin’s local grocery stores (in this case, a Kroger, the company that also owns my favorite local supermarket — Fry’s Food & Drug) so that I could stock up on a few goodies for the last leg of my drive out to Orlando. We also drove around and Mom showed me the sights of Gallatin… at least, what there was of it. She even showed where she had to go get blood drawn for her tests. Wow! (Still love you, Ma)

To be fair, my mom comes off as a bit absent-minded and goofy… and she is. But she’s my mother, not yours and it works for me. Besides, she even let me do laundry and patched a hole in one of my pocket t-shirts. Cool.

So the bed was uncomfortable. apparently it was a little low on air, so it didn’t provide as much support as it could have. No biggie, it was the first night and we can re-inflate it later.

So we took a family field trip into Nashville to visit the Frist Center, a “non-collecting institution” (their brochure). It’s an art museum with all rotating exhibitions… I guess it’s cheaper that way (and yes, it was created by the family of Senator Bill Frist — it is Tennessee, remember). They had two exhibits we were intending to see, an Egyptian artifact collection and a touring exhibit of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs. The Egyptian exhibit seemed waaay too expensive for what we could see through the window, so we opted to just see the photos.

(I’ll interrupt this narrative briefly to play on my beloved mother’s legendary inability to find her way around places. (Love you, Ma.) Even she will admit that she sucks at finding her way around. It’s become a bit of a running joke between the two of us stretching back to a fateful road trip to from our home in Pennsylvania to a family wedding in Vermont in 1984 and an unexpected side trip to Utica. But I digress. Relying solely on directions from a service like MapQuest is probably not a great idea. To be fair, I didn’t necessarily know where we were going either and the highway system within the greater Nashville area is, to paraphrase my step-dad Evan, “spaghetti crazy”. Now, back to the rest of the story.)

The photo exhibit was amazing. I can see why these all won the prize. This collection was, by their words, the most comprehensive collection available for public viewing. The infamous photo from the Vietnam War by the recently departed Eddie Adams was on display, as well as photos of union picketers beating up a scab, starving children in Ethiopia, a daring bridge rescue from the 40s of a semi truck hanging over the side of a bridge (loved that one… taken by a teenage girl with a Brownie Hawkeye). They even some of the most recent winners, including one of the second tower exploding on 9/11 and a shot of Marines unloading the coffin of a military casualty (I think it was from Iraq) off of a passenger flight with all the passengers still on board watching from the little windows. Way cool. But my personal favorite was a photo from the 1992 presidential campaign. Bill Clinton was schmoozing in New Hampshire when they stopped in an ice cream parlor. The photo is of him, resting his head on his hands on the counter conversing with a 5 year-old who was kneeling on the other side (where they access the ice cream). Very classy. That man can charm just about anyone and that kid’s shins must have been freezing.

In any case, that exhibit was a fascinating way to spend a few hours expanding my consciousness of the world outside. Nevertheless, all good things must come to an end, so we managed to find our way back to Gallatin, this time with a minimum of muss and fuss. The rest of the afternoon was pretty relaxed. I fixed up their computer issues with their network and new DSL connection (thanks a bunch, Bellsouth). A big thank you to the forums at BroadbandReports.com for providing help in that area. Then, we all took a trip out to the local Kmart, mainly because my mother also wanted to take advantage of the sales tax holiday and buy me some more clothes, bless her heart. BTW, does every state but mine do this? Get on the stick, Arizona!!

::melodrama:: Won’t someone PLEASE… think of the children?!!! ::/melodrama::

Last note… saw the first two episodes of Deadwood on DVD. Rocked!!! I totally have to see the rest of the series now. Just wish I had free cable at home.

I left Wyoming early in the morning to head on my way to parents’ new home in Gallatin, TN (a suburb of Nashville). I was kind of sad to leave my uncle this time out. I had such a good time even for those couple of days and I know he enjoyed having me there because he told me so. Repeatedly.

I spent the night in Columbia, MO about an hour east of Kansas City. I passed through Kansas City just about sunset, which was oddly coincidental because the last time I passed through KC, on a disastrous trip in 2003 to Iowa, it was also sunset. But it was uneventful this time. In the morning, I drove a little further, then stopped in at a Walmart Super Black Hole of Commerce to get a few foodstuffs and take advantage of Missouri’s sales tax holiday to buy some school supplies. (SCORE!!!)

Stopped into Metropolis, IL briefly this afternoon. How can resist swinging in to see the giant statue of Superman? Way cool.

I pulled into my folks at about 3:30 or so (TN time). They were surprised I was able to find my way to their house without using MapQuest or some other online service. Nothing ever beats stopping at a grocery store to peruse road atlases for free, baby. Their house is nice… a bit on the small side for them apparently since they are adding a sun room to the house. I am going to be sleeping on one of those AeroBeds that my mother picked up for guests. Supposedly, it’s better than sleeping on their sofa bed that they have in the guest room. We’ll see…

My uncle and I went out prairie dog hunting again. Sam was going to join us originally, but backed out at the last minute so it was just the two of us. Hunting for prairie dogs with my uncle is a lot like fishing is for normal folks — out in the middle of nowhere, just relaxing in a boat (or, in this case, his pickup truck) waiting for the plague of rodentia to show themselves out of the tiny holes they create with their miniature city of underground tunnels. I got way too much sun today, but I also lessened the prairie dog population of Wyoming by a couple dozen more. Shot a lot better last year, but for me it was far better quality to spend with the guy who had far more of a father-figure impact on my life than my own dad.

Bonding times like these are important for guys, I think. I never used to believe that, but I think that was because I spent most of my childhood buried in books. I get it now. I think that’s probably my brother maximizes the time he gets with his son — so that he has a better relationship than we did with our dad… and I’m sure he will, because I’ve seen how focused he gets on a good cause and his son is definitely the best cause yet.

I took this photo yesterday while on the first leg of my road trip to Orlando. Okay, so it’s not too winding in this photo, but believe me it had quite a few turns on the way.

I am currently lounging in relaxation at my uncle’s house in Wyoming. The trip was uneventful save for some rain and a rather extreme lack of sleep. It was an unsuccessful attempt to sleep between getting off of work at 6:30am on Sunday morning and leaving at about 12:30pm that same day and continued driving until I stopped in Santa Fe when I started hallucinating on the road. Never a safe bet.

There were a couple of odd (read “funny”) things I saw on the way up here:

1) On a railroad trestle I passed under in Pueblo, CO, someone spray painted “DANNY GLOVER!!!” on the side. I wish I could’ve gotten a pic of that because it was so absurd to see that there of all places. Maybe I should propose a Photoshop contest for that on Something Awful or Worth1000.

2) I passed one of these on I-25:

This is actually just an industrial concrete pumping truck. Nothing too special, except that the brand name made me laugh in a geeky high-school loser fashion.

“Putzmeister“. ‘Nuff said.

Anyways, I made it up here late yesterday afternoon and after a good night’s sleep, I was able to settle down for a good day’s slacking off. Although there was a new wrinkle in the household: a last-minute addition in the form of an exchange student from Serbia! Apparently, some friends of my aunt and uncle were supposed to host him for a year and he was going to finish high school. But due to some background check glitches, they were cancelled at the last minute and my aunt and uncle agreed to host him instead. Sam (a nickname instead of Vladimir) is a nice enough kid, looking to finish high school and college and eventually join the Marines. Since his student visa is only for a year, I’m not sure how he’ll do that, but more power to him.

So he will still be living here for a while after I’m gone. In the meantime, Sam, my uncle Bob and I all went out to the rifle range for a little while today to give Sam his first real exposure to guns and their proper handling. He didn’t do too bad for his first day and I’m sure that he’ll improve over the year. My uncle taught me how to handle guns and he’s the only one in the world I feel completely safe around when he’s holding a firearm. In fact, this is the only place I ever go shooting because I prefer not to own a gun at home. It makes it a real treat to spend time with Uncle Bob doing something we both enjoy and makes it a real vacation for me.

And one last brief bit of good family news. I spoke to my brother today and he and his wife have sold their house. Even with the downturn in the real estate market in Phoenix and nationwide, their place was only on the market for about 1-1/2 days before they got an offer for the full asking price of the house. Everything is coming up roses for them pretty much and they’re moving to Albuquerque next month. They’ll even be moving practically debt-free, having only the mortgage on their new house to pay. Bravo… you lucky bastard.