sand castles

This is part one of my two part series entitled "The Lost Posts".

When I first got to Florida for thanksgiving break my dad started in on one of his stories that I hear every time I go down.  This one is about the app that he has for his phone that lets him find things just by asking it.  For some reason the thing he always asks it about is sand castle competitions, then shows me with pride how if it were May we could go to a sand castle competition.

This time however there actually was a sand castle competition going on down at Siesta Key.  I don't think my father was prepared for me to say that I actually wanted to go, so it became kind of like that episode of Seinfeld where George drives Susan's parents out to his nonexistent house in the Hamptons.

The sand castles were pretty cool I guess, here is the one from above from behind:

I mean the detail and craftsmanship was really intricate and cool but my father was reading me the article about the competition from the newspaper and they said that in order to get the sand to stick they mix it with Elmer's glue, which hardly seems fair to me.  I mean doesn't that just make it a sculpting competition?  I feel like the whole point of a sand castle competition is dealing with the medium and it's unreliability, not just mixing it with glue.

I think it might have something to do with the fact that the sand in Sarasota is so powdery that it would be impossible to build a sandcastle sans glue, but I don't know that that's really an excuse.  Maybe Sarasota just wasn't meant to have a sand castle competition.

Here is another one I liked:

For some reason I only took the back of this one and not the front but it was a cool design.  It was a castle on the other side and it wasn't until you walked around to the back that you realized there was supposed to be this giant dragon wrapped around it.  I think I liked this one the best because it was the only one that actually had a traditional fairy tale castle as part of it.  The one above was cool because it had the M.C. Escher thing going on, but sometimes you just want a good old fashioned castle you know?

And then there was this one which I guess is supposed to be characters from some Disney movie (Madagascar?), but I thought it was Nathanael.  Just chillin' in the hot tub, making the face he makes when he's watching tv.  I mean the resemblance is uncanny!

If the artist doesn't know nathanael directly then he must have had a vision, a vision of love.  I have those every night, and every morning when I wake up to find nathanael laying in bed next to me stroking my hair.

huzzah!

In honor of getting a new phone today I am putting up this random photo that I had from some time like a month ago that I'm sure was for a post that's long since been forgotten.

But it's nice right?  Glad the fountains are working again and the scaffolding is all gone.

So yeah, my phone was kind of spazzing out and I took it Verizon today hoping they'd maybe be able to give me some suggestions to make it work.  The girl who helped me was so funny and ended up getting me a new phone which is so cool.  The biggest difference is that they changed the keyboard on the new Droid, it's so much easier to type on it.

And I finally feel like I can move forward on planning the coming weeks/months now that I have a fully functioning phone at my disposal.

ups

I've been sitting in my apt all day today listening to this on repeat while I wait for this phantom UPS delivery person who claims to be delivering parcels to my building.

The worst is that my phone is dead so even once I finally get it back it's going to have to charge for a while before it's got enough juice to turn on and yield it's bounty to me.

I think #12 sums it up

Martha Stewart

i love her.

no phone zone

source

There were better pictures pertaining to her no phone zone pledge but once i saw this one i couldn't resist.

My phone was supposed to be here yesterday.  Still no sign of it.  According to the UPS tracking number it is en route, yet I still have seen hide nor hair.

It's funny how in a lot of ways I don't miss my phone.  There are definitely times when I notice that it's not there.  I do the triple tap periodically throughout my day; right pocket for keys, left pocket for cell phone, back pocket for wallet.  I definitely catch myself each time when I tap my left pocket only to feel my own supple thigh.

and I miss having something to distract myself with when I need to feel important, but otherwise it's been very liberating to be unreachable.  Or to know that the people who really need to get in contact with me will figure out a way.

However, I was not prepared for those things that you cannot prepare for.  Things like this morning when, for the first time since I lost my phone, I actually needed to wake up at a specific time.  Not only do we not have an alarm clock in our entire apt I came to realize, we don't even have a clock.  I had to set my internal alarm clock last night and then rely on that and those two horrible cats to get me up in time for work.

Or at work today when I was trying to plan out the events of the next month and I went to look at the calendar on my phone.  Oops, no phone.  I seriously couldn't figure out a way to find a calendar.  I tried google searching for calendars and it literally drove me to the point of tears.  One of my coworkers finally pulled up a calendar on his phone and gave it to me to use.

And then there's the moment that I just had now that I'm home.  It's pretty cold in nyc right now so as I headed to the subway from work I just kept thinking how nice it would be to get home.  I considered stopping on the way home and picking up food, or stopping at the grocery store, but even taking those extra moments to be outside sounded terrible to me.  All I wanted to do was be home, and I had one of those, 'good thing I live in nyc' moments when I decided that I would just order take out.

fuck you guy that picked up my phone and then took it with him on vacation.

It literally wasn't until I had the whole stack of menus in front of me that I realized I had no way to call them.  So I guess it will be dinner of the leftover boxes of pasta and the half liter of jim beam in the freezer for me.

I know the feeling

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2010/11/tom_zelenovic_charged_with_assault_for_beating_man_on_plane_after_arguing_over_reclining_seat.php

(courtesy of Reddit.com)

I just don't understand why the seats have the recline feature at all?  Why not have the seats just be permanently slightly more reclined than they are when fully upright, but not all the way back that the persons night terror induced thrashings cause them to bounce on your lap for the entire flight. 

Furthermore, is it really necessary for everyone to get a sody pop every flight?  Half the time they are coming to collect your trash before you've even had a chance to drink whatever it is because it's already time to prepare for landing.  I think it should be each persons individual responsibility to get their apple juice before boarding the flight.

I like the way this man deals with his problems though.  When life hands you lemons, grab the guy in front of you by the ear and pull hard enough to knock his glasses off. 

totally not waterproof

source

Up until today I thought that my Terra Plana boots were waterproof.  I feel like I actually waded through ankle deep slush last winter and made it through unscathed. 

But my boots were no match for the maelstrom that is happening in nyc today.  I guess it wasn't physically as painful as when it hailed a few weeks ago, at least the temperature was above 60, but talk about driving rains and howling winds!!  I woke up this morning feeling like I was living in the mystery of irma vep. 

As much as I complain about this office job I will say it's nice to be able to take my shoes off to dry while I work instead of having to carry bags of glass bottles down a slippery narrow metal staircase all day long.