I am now officially one week into my new job and by all accounts it was a great first week. I’m impressed with the level of talent and the magnitude of their operation at the new company. I’m also fascinated by learning all about the model (this is the first consumer-facing company I’ve worked for) and I think it’s great when friends from around the country call or IM me because they just heard or saw an ad. Besides all the new challenges of the new gig I think the one that will take the most getting used to is the commute. The new company is downtown and while I could drive and park I’ve opted to take the train. This allows me to feel self-righteous about my new, small carbon footprint AND allows me to play “who smells like urine?” on the Green Line. It’s win-win for everyone expect the guy that actually smells like urine. The whole train experience is worthy of it’s own post so I won’t go into too much detail here other than to say how nice it is to be able to get so close to people so early in the morning. Besides the humanity the biggest issue with taking the train also means my life is on much more of a schedule and this is what really takes getting used to. In order to get to work a reasonable time I need to catch the 7:20 am train which means I need to be out of the house by 7:10 am. 7:10 am seems like a fine time except the dog still expects his one hour walk in the morning so this means we need to be out walking by 5:30am in order for this new schedule to work. Have you ever seen 5:30am? More importantly have you ever walked through the woods at 5:30 am? It’s really dark the only things that are awake in the woods at that hour are generally things I prefer not to hang out with. In fact there are no normal people walking at 5:30 am in the morning and it’s hard to not feel like a complete crazy person out walking in the pitch black with a lamp strapped to my head. But sanity is no match for me and so with an eager pup and head lamp into the woods we go and I’m proud to say that not once were we attacked by bears and not once did I miss my train.

I’ve been on a quest to finish an Einstein Biography by the time my vacation ends. I am half-way through and the contrasts between Einstein’s life and mine are striking. By age 16 Einstein had formulated his first “thought experiment” concerning relativity. He imagined that he was riding along a light beam. At age 32 he had produced the famous formula E=MC^2 and at age 36 Einstein delivered his General Theory on Relativity. To put this in context: At age 16 had formulated a way to get vodka out of my parent’s liquor cabinet and most of my “thought experiments” should probably be kept private. It was another 3 years before I learned how to keep hard alcohol down or mix it with anything. At age 32 I had just graduated from University after producing what is now known as the “Kai=16 years to get through College” formula (the actual formula looks something like: kai=rollins(university of the yucatan)+umass+ccsn+unlv+middlesex+bu).” At age 36 I had nearly completed graduate school and was about to deliver my famous “General Theory of Massive Student Loans” which states that kids should finish school while their parents still pay for such things.

So it is clear that Albert Einstein and I shared many commonalties but I think the one thing that draws the closest comparison is Einstein’s lovable habit of forgetting his house keys, locking himself out of his house and office, forgetting his wallet and/or money when he went out and, my personal favorite, signing correspondence as the person he was actually addressing. For anyone that knows me knows that I have made an art form out of forgetting things and locking myself out of things and … I forget but there was something else.

Sincerely,
Dear Blog Reader

After a lot of discussion about where to spend a few days of vacation we finally settled on the fine Canadian Province of Quebec. Specifically Eastman Quebec. Fortunately the U.S. dollar has rebounded against recently and is once again strong against the Canadian dollar, meaning that the universe has righted itself and life can carry on as usual. When the the U.S. dollar was trading at 1:1 with the Canadian dollar I knew that things were seriously out of control. So we decided that Quebec would be a great place to spend $.72 and get a $1.00 worth of value for a few days while we finish off a couple of books and generally disengage. We had talked to Mally’s breeder and she graciously agreed to take him for us while we were on vacation… this is a win-win. We win because we know that he is being well taken care of and the price is right (free) and he wins because he gets to hang out with his mother, aunt, sister and a couple of other relative dogs. I expect to get him back fully tuckered out and ready to sleep for a couple of days straight. So off we go to Woodstock, Vermont to drop Mally off with his breeder. She and her husband live outside of Woodstock in a beautiful area surrounded by rolling hills, old stone walls and dirt roads. In all a gorgeous area, except when the frost o nthe dirt road starts to melt and the back roads turn into a slushy death-trap. You see where this is going? It wasn’t long before our car got thoroughly swamped in the muck and refused to budge. I tried every trick I knew but in the end all I ended up with was a light covering in fresh Vermont mud. We were roughly half a mile from the breeders house so after 30 minutes of trying to dig ourselves out I finally made the distress call to get pulled out. For those that don’t know getting a car stuck and having to ask for help is a serious violation of the man code requires serious deliberation. I had no choice. Luckily our dog’s breeder lives on a farm and her husband used to own a garage so he was fully outfitted to help the pathetic likes of me. After towing us out of the muck he help me as we had to remove all of the car tires to clean and remove the thousands of small rocks that had lodged themselves in the wheels and made driving sound like we were tearing the car in two pieces. To say we were thankfully is an understatement. Unfortunately it added two hours to our journey but, alas, we made it safe-and-sound and am now broadcasting live from Orford, Quebec. As a side note do not come to Orford looking for late-night eats: Literally everything shuts down at 8pm.