Things to do in Denver when you're Dead (from lack of sleep)

Damn, definately out of my updating groove. In that light, a few thoughts from the last couple of weeks...

- The venue for SSC is awesome. Franky and I checked it out last weekend, and the hot tub is hot, chipotle is within 5 mins of the hotel and the softness of the beds can be adjusted via a wee l'il electronic doo-dad. The hotel is essentially a big hollow cube, so let me be the first to say: Delegates of SSC 2005 - Sshhh!

- 30 Days makes for some interesting TV. Last weeks showed a mom having to get drunk 30 days straight to mirror her college-student daughter. The daughter kinda pissed me off tho - she claimed that she drank responsibly, but she also rarely remembered how she got home on the majority of the 4 nights a week she partied (which I think can best be described as the South Park "Whateva, ah do what ah want!" mentality). She said that it would take something pretty bad to happen before she would reconsider which is awesome - what'll it be, rape or alcohol poisoning?

- Dear Lord this made me laugh:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:DailyShowLance.jpg

- I promise to figure out how to do the whole "picture in a blog" thing sometime soon; until then, this also caught my eye:
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/WalmartsWoes/7.asp

Check out the bottom cartoon by David Horsey - this pretty much sums up my view of the Bible. I consider myself Christian; I believe in God, Heaven, Hell, and that the Bible contains a lot of good guides towards living a good, worthwhile life, but also that I wouldn't follow some of the stuff in there if you paid me. The Bible can be - has been - used to justify just about everything, including Capitalism, Communism, war and peace, plus just about everything inbetween (remember, 50 years ago a black person and a white person going out was against God); its a shame people forget about the whole love your neighbour thing too readily. BTW, the cartoon is pretty much accurate - check out http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/ to see for yourself.

- Isn't it odd how the whole gay marriage thing has died down since the election? Hmm? HMM?

OK, I'm out of ideas. Bye now!

Sweet, sweet things

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory rules. I enojyed the Gene Wilder original, but this one was definately a bit closer to the book. Watch out especially for the flag scene - genius.

More cool news came this week as Franky and I make plans to scope out the SSC venue next weekend. It means a couple of early starts (hell who am I kidding? If I have to leave my apartment at 4am I'm just gonna stay up and watch bad TV), but should be a good weekend. Other than that, still hitting away at various SSC-related materials and stuff.

Ended up getting Indecision 2004 on DVD today; another good move that I'm working my way through now. Also got a Stephen King novel and American Psycho, for nothing else than to stop me from watching Comedy Central so damn much.

Interesting Times

Connie has a point - it has been a while since I last posted... But hey, its not like I don't have anything to write about, y'know?

My first week in New York went really well. I looked at a few apartments and found one that was awesome - good location, close to other members on the team, cool room-mate and affordable (if a little small). I moved in at the start of my second week and have been settling in since. Wireless is just about set up, a few teething problem here and there... Other than that, things have been pretty smooth.

AIESECly, we had the Board of Directors meeting and Team Day at the start of last week, which was definately a new perspective on the organisation. Team Day was kinda weird though, I'm still not settled into the team enough to know about the dynamics and stuff like that, but that'll change over time. It was really good to see Dana, Missy, Aaron and Chris again, and to meet Sean for the first time. Then there was a few days of preliminary handover with Dana, then the Booze Cruise on Thursday... Big thanks to George for ordering my bagel for me on the way home (at 11:30pm. Why couldn't I order it myself? I can't remember!). Fun, fun night.

This week's transition with Dana was a lot of fun, it's cool to see the whole conference take shape right from the very beginning. We've been meeting every day, having conference calls, brainstorming, all that fun stuff. We met on the 4th of July for a little while as Dana had to leave this afternoon, so we did a little work then before meeting up with Carly, AliG and Kevin for drinks in the Village. Ended up on a East-side rooftop watching the fireworks, which was a very cool show. Ironically, I got more flak for wearing an IU shirt than I did for being English, but all in all a very good day.

I've been thinking about home a lot this week as well. It appears that whenever I'm out of the country the UK gets some kind of good sporting news (England won the Rugby World Cup while I was at IU, and now the 2012 Olympics). It was great to see the photos of everyone celebrating in Trafalgar Square once the news came through, which made the news of the attacks so weird coming the day after such good spirits. I was able to call or e-mail everyone I knew in London and everyone was OK, thankfully. It was awesome to see NomadLife spring into action as well to make sure everyone was alright.But London has been through a lot in recent times, and I'm sure it'll get through this as well.

Which brings us to today - Dana's headed back to Austin (and I'm sure I'll follow her at some point in the future); I'm working on a range of SSC materials for next month; I'm on the hunt for a cell phone tomorrow (my trials with Cingular online can wait for another post, but needless to say: $300 deposit? Fuck that!); and I think I'm going Kyaking on Sunday with Jen and Dan (our new Office Manager and all-around nice guy) on the Hudson River. Hurrah!