The Joes

Here's a photo of both of my friends name Joe. Joe M., you'll recoginze from the first entry. The other Joe, to the right, is the Joe of Penetrating Glimpses into the Obvious fame...

This photo was taken at my wedding, back in February 2004. For more photos, check out Joe's link above.

A Penetrating Glimpse Into The Obvious...

In conversation, oftentimes one realizes something so profoundly simple, that hasn't been realized before, that the main thought through someone's head is: DUH!

My friend Joe (not the one pictured in my first blog, I''ll see what photo I can dig up of him) and I call this a penetrating glimpse into the obvious. I had one of these today, when I realized that the word "scat," meaning offal, poo, or other *dirty* words, came from the larger word "scatalogical."

Not a profound revelation, I know, but I had never really made the connection, or even given it much thought, in the past.

Joe's penetrating glimpse into the obvious was that pickles are pickled cucumbers.

William Partridge

Here's a neat photo. It's of William Partridge, my great-great-grandfather. Born in Derryaghy, Ireland in 1852, and died in New Jersey in 1926.

Genealogy

One of my hobbies, which I started a few years ago in late 2001, is doing genealogical research. I find this stuff fascinating for a number of reasons. Here they are:

1. My family actually didn't really talk about their background/ancestors that much when I was growing up. This is now an "adult" reason to ask questions, and to learn more about where we/I came from. I always knew that my grandparents had siblings, and even met some of them when we were kids, but other than one Great-Aunt, we really didn't see them very often, or at all on my mom's side.

2. I've always been fascinated by names, old photos, and history in general. This hobby allows me to play into all three of those areas.

3. Being into Genealogy is a fun way to play detective. For instance, when I started this, I collected some of my great-grandmother's photos that my Dad had. There was one old photo, on cardboard, that I had never seen. I asked him who it was, and he told me that it was his grandmother's mother. Wow! I had never seen her photo. On the bottom of the photo was the word "Paisley." After doing this research for a bit, I learned that my great-grandmother's family was from Scotland, specifically the town of Paisley. Ergo, the photo was taken there. Because of that, I was able to figure out that the photo was taken between 1880-1885. Pretty cool!

4. I have been able to contact distant relatives, and learn about their own personal stories of the family. Granted, I wish I could have more success with this, or that more people had old photos or family material to share, but I can't have everything....

I think I may use this blog to post some old photos periodically. I may also look around for a website to host my genealogy stuff, so that perhaps some lone soul doing a Google search for their family can stumble upon my site. We'll see how that goes...

And just so you know, here's the family names associated with my direct ancestors: Lord, Sanecki, Moskwa, Partridge, Gatz (Gac in Polish), Kawa, Furgas, Flaga, Ruszala, Zlotek, Nixon, Riepe, Coulson, Fagan (or Fegan), Shields, Schulze, Hafner, Marcker, Lang, Alderdice, McHenry, Houston, Lindsay, Gibb, Fleming, Laird, Taylor, and some others that I can't remember off the top of my head...

My background on my mom's side is Polish, and on my dad's side is Irish, Scots, German, and English.

More soon!

Mike

Exercise

So, I'm 34 years old, and I used to be fairly active. I mean, I was never a sports person, but I enjoyed gym in high school, I played tennis, and always enjoyed growing up by the beach, doing ocean activities like swimming, body surfing, and the like.

A few years ago, I got a cholesterol test during a regular physical, and it was rather high. Not over 300, but close. My options were to go on medication, or change my habits to include a better diet and exercise. I obviously chose the diet and exercise, as I'd like to avoid going on any type of medication for as long as possible.

With exercising, and not eating as much like a fat bastard as I used to, I managed to drop some weight, and also put my cholesterol in a much more reasonable range, a bit below 200. However, I really don't like exercise. I have a recumbent bike, and that works for me because I can read while using it. I try to do at least a half hour a day, and keep myself active in that manner.

I just finished about a half hour of exercise, and that's about as much of my life per day as I'm willing to devote to this kind of physical activity. I know other people who love exercise. My wife is one of them, and I just don't get it. But, more power to her, and others like her. But I won't join that club... I think they have enough members anyway...

Get Arrested!

More about this later, but the season opener of Arrested Development was on last night. If you don't watch this show now, you really should...

8pm Fox on Mondays...

More later!

Mike

A normal day...

So, here's today...

Wake up.

Shower.

Go to work.

Meet with students (always fun, but can be tiring).

Come home.

Nap (I was up late last night).

Wake up again.

Eat.

Watch some TV.

Do Laundry.

Do Dishes.

Check e-mail.

Write (what I'm doing right now, in fact)

Pretty exciting, eh? Of course, with the right embelleshment, this could be a scintillating tale. But I don't have the energy to do it right now. It certainly wasn't a bad day... Just a regular good one.

Last night, we showed the film Crash for a college program. It got a great reaction from the students, which was my hope. Yes, it's a challenging film, but why not start the year with a good in your face product. Great performances all around. I highly recommend it.

Okay, it's time to check the dryer. Envy me.

A New Hope

So, it seems that NASA is finally going to get to go somewhere again. I'm no great fan of our current President, but I am glad that someone at a leadership level in the government seems to be taking an interest in having a valid, exploratory space program again.

Some critics have already said that this looks like a retread of Apollo. Personally, I feel that's a good place to start, as we haven't gone to the Moon in over 30 years, and need to rebuild that infrastructure in order to move forward. One of the positive aspects of this plan is that without a "deadline" timetable, like Apollo, there can actually be infrastructure built to make this program more sustainable over the long term.

And so we're not all totally serious here, here's a photo for you to enjoy.

In case you can't tell....

....I'm experimenting right now with the different things I can do on this blog.

NP: Adrian Belew, Mr. Music Head

I may periodically let my audience, such as it is, know what I am listening to. This will be so I can make myself appear hip and knowledgable, while I'm really just spitting back what I have been told by others...

Adrian Belew, though, is really cool. I've had the privledge to meet him a few times after concerts, and he's always been a very open, friendly person...

More later...

Mike

Here's the link to NEARFest, where I took the photo of Joe back in 2003. Magma's website seems to be offline right now, or else I'd link to them. But, I don't want to link to a dead site.

Me and a cat. I don't know how she got there... 

My first blog...

Awwww, isn't this *adorable!* It's my very own blog...

Let's throw up a photo here, just for fun...

This is Joe, a good friend, at NEARFest 2003, waiting for the French band Magma to appear.

I know I should be doing hypertext links for things, but that's just too much work for now.

Anyway, let me see if this works...