This is your life.

If you were ever a pre-teen girl, you remember playing MASH. I do/was not but I was playing a web-based version in an attempt to win a free burrito. You basically input several options for mate, job, city, etc. and this nifty tool determines how your life will end up. So, without further ado, I give you my future:

Congrats on your future union with Bobbie the
Bookworm—you two will be so cute together!
Picture it: riding around town in/on your ‘70s
Super Car with your pet Puppy in the back
barking at passersby. You’ve worked so hard
in your job as a(n) B-Movie Star that you’ve
saved up enough to spend your free time
Running Ultra-Marathons and buy a(n)
Apartment in London, England! Not bad!
But beware: Your in-laws are going to “drop in”
at least 9 times a year. When it’s your time to
go, everyone will remember the last thing you
said: “Draw!” For now, get out there and enjoy
a Single Taco + Naked Burrito Craft 2 at
Qdoba as much as you can!

Freedomburger!

A while back, I talked about my newfound love for the turntable. Since then, I've been slowly building my record collection. I tend to stop by record stores occasionally and even thrift stores, though they can be sort of hit or miss or miss or miss. However, on a recent visit to a local thrift store with my girlfriend, Mindy, I stumbled across this gem:



No, your eyes are not deceiving you. That is Freedomburger by the New York Rock Ensemble. At first, the sheer hilarity of both the album title and the cover artwork overwhelmed me, but I didn't want to waste my $1.99 on what was going to be, in all likelihood, terrible music (this was something that someone just gave away to the thrift store, remember). I hemmed and hawed for a while until Mindy finally convinced me to buy it. Who knows how or why. After carrying it around the store for bit though, I got to thinking: "Man, I love freedom", "What's in a freedomburger?", and "Why didn't Washington captain a giant burger across the Delaware?". So I bought it.

I got it home and threw it on the record player. In my head, I was envisioning some sort of American gastrointestinal disaster but I instead got an earful of some amazing vintage rock! I just had the great sound and songs that you feel like you've been listening to your whole life.

Currently, the full extent of my knowledge of the New York Rock Ensemble has been garnered from Wikipedia. The band was started by 3 students at Juilliard in the mid 60's and they were known for turning classical music pieces into rock songs and for using classical instruments in rock and roll. Sadly, Freedomburger was their last album. The one modern connection that was made to the band is that one of the founding members wrote the theme music for The X-files.

They recently re-released Freedomburger on CD so now you can head on over and check out some samples. My favorites from the album are "I'm Sending a Friend to You" and "Carry Me Up". I was so surprised by how much I loved this album. Perhaps it was because I went in with rather low expectations, or perhaps I should trust my thrift store radar more often.

Sleepless in Southampton

(writer's prerogative; I'm actually near Oxford but that doesn't have the ring)

I'm just wrapping up another exciting business trip to the UK and its 2am and I'm completely wired for no reason. My flight back is at 7:30am which necessitated me setting my alarm for 3am (awake, shower, drive, return rental car, wade through Heathrow...) so it looks like I won't be getting much sleep tonight. This leads me to ponder my problems with jet lag.

On my several unplanned European vacations lately, my sleep pattern has gone as follows.

Night 1: Spent on a plane. Main flight duration about 6-8 hours. Lights on and activity on the plane for 2-3 of those hours. Day 1 I'm pretty wiped.
Night 2: Usually accidentally fall asleep at 8pm or whenever I get into the hotel because I'm exhausted from the long night before. Sleep great, wake up early.
Nights 3-last: Tired early, go to bed at a reasonable time, but as the days go on, I wake up around 4am for around an hour and this gets progressively earlier and longer in subsequent nights.
Return day: Wake up early, catch a flight, gain ~8 hours and have an absurdly long day. Turn into a zombie around 7pm back home. Literally. Eating brains.
Days back home: Wake up at 4am and get tired at 8pm. These get progressively later over the course of 3-4 days.

The primary question is, why do I wake up in the middle of the night while I'm overseas? This usually doesn't go away over the course of a week either but I get tired and wake up at the appropriate times. 4am in Europe corresponds to about 7-8pm back home. What is usually happening then that I so urgently need to be awake then? A follow up to this is, why do I not feel the least bit tired during the days when I have been awake for a sizable portion of the evening? Back home, if I don't get 8 (and preferably 9) good hours at night, its tough getting up in the morning and I often feel tired throughout the day.

On the plus side, all of the extra time awake lets me get caught up on my reading (What Would Google Do?, My Life on the Run) and movies (Hitch, Amelie, Up in the Air, The Informant!). It's like the universe is saying, "Here is some bonus time in life, but the catch is that it is dark out, everything is closed, everyone else is unconscious, and you're in an area that you're not familiar with. Enjoy!" Oh, silly Universe...