brykmantra.com

Today is 4-20, which is apparently some sort of street slang among the young folk, so check out G4TV’s celebration of the day, including reports from Amsterdam (where herbal refreshment is tolerated, though not legal), a history of the term 4-20 (invented by Baby Boomers in 76! Woo-hoo!), a review of the “trippiest” games of all times, and a showing of “The Big Lebowski”.

So like I said, check it out.

Also: Kids — Don’t do drugs!

Another reason that I haven’t posted as much lately is that, as far as commenting on national events, there’s not a lot I can say. The Virginia Tech shooting? What can I add to what’s already being said? Anna Nicole Smith and her son and her son’s death and her baby and her death and the custody battle over her baby? Too much is being said already; she needs to go away and take all her “news” with her.

The Don Imus mess? The cranky old goat probably got what he deserved, but that still doesn’t mean that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton don’t need to be put down before their stupidity causes some real damage.

That’s all that can be said.

As for personal stuff, I would just be repeating things I’ve been saying for years.

I’ll demonstrate:

We’ve had some rain today, mostly drizzle, and last week we had some flooding. We’ll take what we can get, with summer coming up; it usually gets pretty parched around here in August.

I took off from work today, because I had to do my semi-annual follow-up scan, checking up on my surgery from a year ago. I had to fast before it, which I always hate, and to make matters worse, they couldn’t start a high-contrast scan (since it involves an iodine injection), since the doctor wasn’t on the premises yet, but they assured me that he was on his way.

Thirty minutes later, they called again and found that not only was he not on his way, he didn’t even know he was supposed to be on his way.

After my Cancer Odyssey of the past year, I can only say: That’s typical.

Anyway, my lab tech was very apologetic and nice, and she gave me a movie pass for my trouble, plus a bottle of water when it was all over, since I couldn’t have any since last night. Her name was Jackie, and she’s from Wisconsin (there was time to chat, thanks to Ol’ Doc Clueless). I had to brag about my doggies, of course, and I gave her the address of my Flickr page so she could check them out.

And in case she makes it over to the blog … Hi, Jackie the Lab Tech! Welcome!

Hope you’re not too bored.

The rest of the day I did some random errands (late breakfast, pet food store, cleaners, library, Walmart), that, in simpler times, I could have easily written 800 words about, but you’ve seen it all before, so instead I’m going to spend that time doing music and working on my resume …

Oh, yes, the resume: A friend of ours works for a well-known company (I’ll call them Business Information Systems for our purposes here) that is hiring trainers, and that they give special attention to applicants with demonstrated computer knowledge (like my A+ certification), so I’m gonna check it out. Sure, I might be miserable there too, but I’ll be miserable at 50% more pay. And even if their managers are jerks, at least they’re jerks who don’t hate me yet.

I could use the head-start.

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Okay: See why I don’t do this so much these days? Because I have a steady life, and three years is plenty to describe it. But don’t worry, if I get the new job, I’ll have new things to talk about.

And a new outlook on life.

Yes, I didn’t post for two weeks, and now I’m posting twice in less than 24 hours.

Can’t be helped.

See, this is The Spook’s birthday (old college bud, in case you’re just tuning in), and I get the feeling that he’s already checked this site 10 times so far this morning, so here goes:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPOOK!

(For more info, see last year’s post …)

Anyway, I haven’t heard from The Spooker in a month or so, and he’s been in the process of moving to San Angelo — hey, they’ve got Los Lonely Boys, so surely they’ve got Internet access too, right?

So everybody leave the old boy some nice birthday wishes in the comments, and congratulate him on not having self-destructed before now …

Within one 24-hour period this week, I was contacted by unexpectedly by people I knew, and knew at one point they were going to contact me, but had now figured they gave up on the idea.

The first was Jane, someone that went to school and church with through most of our growing up, and with whom I had some cousins in common (her dad’s brother had married my dad’s sister), and who I seem to remember was briefly my girlfriend (at least in my mind) when I was about four or five. I haven’t seen or talked to her since high school, I don’t think, even though she’s lived here in the Dallas area even before I moved here in 1986. My mom told me some months ago that she had given Jane my number, and that I should expect her call, but I hadn’t heard from her until this week.

One reason that Jane was calling, besides just to get in touch with an old classmate, was to ask if I had ever searched for my birth parents — another thing she and I have in common is that we were both adopted, and through the same adoption agency. I told her that I hadn’t, but that I had done some DNA testing, and discovered some information, for the first time in my life, about my Old World heritage, and that I would highly recommend that she do the same.

The other people that I knew that I was half-surprised to hear from at this point were a couple of the Icelandic distributors of our parent company’s products, whom I met last August after the annual Super Rally, attended by our top salespeople from all over the world. In all my 12 years with the company, I’ve never really had much of an opportunity to chat with any of the foreign visitors, because I was too busy behind the scenes.

Recently, though, as you are aware if you’re a regular reader here, I’ve developed an interest in Iceland, because of my above-mentioned DNA research indicating that my male lineage is what is called Ultra-Norse, and the fact that a lot of the people in the research databases report ancestors from Iceland (as well as Norway and Scotland). I made it a point, then, to watch for the Icelandic nametag-flags during the mass-greeting phase of the tour, and to later approach those people during the slower filtering-back-to-the-buses phase — and, to my surprise, that strategy actually worked: I was able to spot the people initally, and again before they left, and they actually weren’t freaked out by this crazy American who had targeted them like a barn owl on a nest of field mice.

The Icelanders were quite friendly, an older couple, along with their daughter and son-in-law. The father, as it turns out, is an amateur genealogist (that’s very common in that small, tightly-knit country), and was especially interested in my DNA experience. They had their picture taken with me, and wrote down my email address so they could send me a copy.

Well, days turned to weeks, which turned to months, and I just decided that they must have lost my email address, and that I would probably just have to wait until next August (at earliest) to talk to them again.

Then, last week, I got a package from our corporate office. This wasn’t too unusual, but I knew I wasn’t expecting anything.

It turned out to be a photo book — and some picture postcards — of the Icelandic village of Akranes (about a hour’s drive out of Reykjavik), which, you may have guessed, was from Asmundur and Jonina, the genealogist and his wife that I met last summer. He wrote me a nice little letter, so I need to be sure to write back and thank them.

The trouble is, he didn’t give me an email address (although he said last summer he had email, and hey, Iceland has the highest percentage of Internet users in the world), so I guess I’ll have to thank him by snail-mail — even more snailish since it has to go over the Atlantic.

I’m trying to think of something to send them in return; my first thought was something stereotypically Texan — then I remembered that a big part of our distributors’ tour every year is dropping our visitors off at Southfork Ranch, with is the World Capital of Cheesy Stereotypical Texas Tourist Souvenirs, so nothing I could get them could compete with what they’ve already seen …

I’ll just have to think harder to come up with something unique …

In the meantime, it’s great to have a foreign penpal again — I haven’t done this since high school!