columbus day

columbus day

I had another 3 day weekend and utep had another home game so I went home. Got home around 10 and went over to Hemingway's. juse, Richard, bob, luis, guns, Carla, drew, hash, alexa, luis' sisters, and bobby all showed up. It was nice to see all of them. I had never talked with bobby before, but we were able to have pretentious ive been abroad conversations. Hemingways has upgraded their beer selection nicely, I had a very good double chocolate bock, which got passed around like your loose sister. Saturday morning watched a little bit of espn game day then went to smokeys with my mom. Saturday afternoon went tailgating. The saddest thing in the world happened when the library lawn was conveniently closed for seeding and aeration.

So we were forced to tailgate besides the brumbelow building. It blowed hard
I made the trek over cardiac hill to see my family and eat their food. I got to see franky c. hadn't seen him in ages. Came back didnt see any fraternity, but saw a bunch of my old golf course buddies. Some of them are there now, others aren't, either way I was welcomed with open arms. We were playing Tulsa that night and like the previous games against smu and nmsu it went down to the wire. But we won. Paul brought along his annoying girlfriend. Who apparently graduated from hanks in 2001, but I had never seen her before in my life. I guess she wasn't into fine arts or AP. Afterwards everyone went to hemingways to hang out, I went out with someones girlfriend. I didn't know she was someones girlfriend. But her boyfriend called during our meal and I didn't know she was your girlfriend, but if you have a girlfriend and don't tell anyone and you are someones girlfriend but don't tell anyone, how would I know, and if I didn't know then im going to flirt. So now I know, but not before everyone made fun of me. Oh well. Sunday kinda sucked we had to go move furniture, because my mom's cousins parents died and so they were cleaning out their house. We had about 3 hours of chitting and chatting and only 30 minutes of work. I was getting kinda agitated because I had homework to do, so I got things going, and we ended up taking more stuff they we had planned too, and we ended up just putting it in the garage which made zekey extremely happy. Afterwards we had a party at the house. Chicken, ribs, and brisket mmmm bitch. I met two more cousins from Lubbock, theyre in high school, but new cousins are new cousins and I'll take that. Sunday night, drew, hash, alexa and I went to see death at a funeral. Extremely funny british comedy, Netflix it, youll like it. Monday was a non-holiday for everyone who doesn't work in the government, so I just chilled at home did homework, watched some girls kiss online, checked for cancer. Got on the road about 3 and was home by 8, I drove kind of slow. Another short story but that's all I have to say. See you next week.

jacob

3rd house guest

3rd house guest

the week after budapest my third house guest came to visit. his name is oscar venegas. none of you know him and he doesnt even read this thing, but hes my third house guest in two years so ill write about it. he and i were in the same major at utep and we worked together as interns at varay in el paso. he came in town for a dod career fair they were having here in town. he was poised to arrive at 7am which i didnt mind because thats later than i normally get up but he didnt end up getting here until about 11. no big deal, we went to a restaurant here called buffalo wild wings, you may know it as bw3, if you know it at all. i had the absolute coldest beer ive ever had, there were frozen beer chips, thats how cold it was. after that we went to play golf on the the bases' golf course. a pretty nice course that backs up to the mountain, dry , but nice. its not paved and just about every hole has warning signs for rattlesnakes, but i didnt see any. i ended up shooting 104, which is bad for me, but i only play golf once or twice a year, so no big deal. i hadnt seen skeelo, as he is affectionately known, in almost two years, but like most of my friends we just pick up where we left off, we were making fun of our old bosses and coworkers, making fun of el paso and all of the crappy legislators that run the place. and for whatever reason every other word out of our mouths was a curse word. maybe because skeelo is in the army, i dont know why, but when were together, its just a one big r-rated event. after golf we went to a restaurant called el paso. its a bbq chain from phoenix, pretty good stuff, they serve beer in these huge goblets, i had the dr. pepper steak, it wasnt bad, wasnt good either. after that we just called it a night. the next day was his career fair, and like most career fairs they tell you to post your resume online. unless you are planning to move to sierra vista, they didnt really want to see you, and if you didnt have a top secret clearance then you were also out of luck. so he turned in a bunch of resumes but i dont think he heard anything back. after that we went to applebees and i had the all you could eat soup and salad. pretty good stuff, but it takes so long for them to bring your seconds that you lose your appetite. i could probably put away 4 of their soups and 4 of their salads, but i was "done" after two. they also faild to bring me a spoon both times. skeelo took off after that and i went home and did homework. he has a radar detector and got home in about 3.5 hours, not too bad for 311 mile journey. that was my tale for my third guest, i would love for you to be my fourth guest. youd get your own blog, think about it...

v/r

jacob

p.s. skeelo is now working on ft. bliss maintaining sms servers. im not going to bother explaining that to you.

tsas of the world

well weve finally come to the end of the budapest blogs and before you know it the croatia blogs will be before us. since it is my duty to fight with tsa i thought i would let you all know about the tsas ive encountered overseas. going to budapest was no big deal, regular american stuff, xray, shoes off, and the like. same goes for zurich, except for the shoes. an interesting fact about the shoe bomber was told to me by my friend amanda. it turns out that there would have been no way for him to ignite the c4 he had on his shoes because it takes an extreme amount of energy to do so. an energy source that no one would be able to sneak aboard. but thanks to him ill forever have to stand on dirty tile or dirty carpet barefoot before getting on my plane. on the way back we had to go through hungarian customs since we had an international departure. the tsa of hungary was not a very high tech operatiom. but they did have a woman who if you squinted you could imagine her with rollers, an ashy cigarette, slippers, and an appron. she had on a uniform, but this is how i pictured her afterhours. she was handing out laundry baskets for us to put our things in. they werent really worried about laptops or the 3oz liquid ban. it took all of 200 seconds to get through their security. now when we fly in america once your in the terminal you are considered secure, this holds true for the airports where you make your connecting flight. not so in germany. you have to leave the terminal and re-enter security. this is a more high-tech job, but its only a 2 man job. one person looks at the x-ray, the other wands you down. no metal detectors here. when it was my turn, i removed my laptop, took off my shoes, emptied my pockets, took out my bag of permissable liquids and proceeded to receive a healthy pat-down. i was wanded and when the wand beeped on my belt buckle, i was placed up against the wall and got a good massage via laytex gloves. he did everything except go in my underwear. i didnt react, but i was thinking, "hello, how are you, how are things down inside my pants" i was able to control the blushing in my face, the entire security line was watching the show. so after play-time i was collecting my things and the officer said he wanted to look through my bag. "sure go for it", whats this, mp3 player, whats this, camera, whats this, charger for said mp3 player, whats this, eyeglass case, whats this, neck pillow, whys it hard, it has a built in massager, im going to have to run these through again. okay! so where are you coming from, where are you going, i gave appropriate answers, even i know when not to jack with people. okay well can we re-run your laptop, sure! okay well can we sit you down for some questions or will you miss your flight? (thank god my flight was in 25 minutes) i said no and showed him my itenerary and he ughhed, shrugged, and let me be. well i thought the worse was over, but then i got to the AA ticket counter. i still had hungarian tickets and i had to have them changed over. but not before i went throught the manifest gestapo and his checks and balances. name please, passport, why are you late, where are you coming from, where are you going, where did you pack your bags, what time did you pack your bags, has anyone asked you to carry anything on for them, have you been in possesion of your bags at all times. i passed that test, and finally it was on to the ticketing agent. hi, thanks for flying american, have a wonderful flight, i grumble grumble grumbled. 11 hours later back in the US and A. got off the plane in DFW and everyone was running to passport check. i thought that was strange and continued to stroll lazily with my 3 foot gait. turns out, every international flight into dallas on american comes in at or around 3pm. there were about 50 booths with 2 checkers per booth to handle this mess. the lines are split, US and A and all others, but the snake line has about 11 turns in it and i was at the end which wasnt even in the roped section yet. got to the passport checker and he asked all his question, who what where why, why when why again, quietly said DoD contractor and all questioning ceased. then he said welcome home. and i dont know why that has stuck with me even a month later now. im sure he says that 1000 times a day, didnt really care about me, didnt say it in a caring manner, but i just really felt welcomed for some strange reason. after that we went down to the basement to gather our luggage and turn in our immigration forms. that was a cluster-fuck, no lines and no questioning, just pushing and fighting with everyone else trying to re-check their baggage. so back up to the terminal area, and some how or another found myself in another security line. all of my teammates are in the platinum club, so they were able to go to the shorter security line. i am still stearage and had to wait in the schmuck line. standard operating procedure, except i had to go through one of those new air machines. its a new machine by GE that shoots air on you from all different directions and I guess depending on the air analysis or if the air bounces off you in a funny direction you are sequestered. i passed and was able to go about my business. having had the oportunity to try out other tsas im not sure whos the best and whose the worst. budapest is clearly the easiest, but it didnt feel real secure. frankfurt was naughty naughty, and the US and A were jerks like always. so i guess that means the matter is inconclusive to date. i guess the american one is my favorite because i know what to expect and if need be i can explain my way out of something. im not sure what to expect on future trips, all i know is that i cant speak the language anywhere.

2007 is the greatest collegiate football season of all time,

egg

Anton Weismann

Anton Weismann talked for just about 10 hours straight. He is the guy i sat next to on my flight to zurich. He talked because he likes to hear his voice, so I can tell. I didn't really say much over the course of the flight, just mostly nodded and smiled kind of like we do with girls, don't care what they are saying just them keep talking and they'll like you all the while. So first Anton broke into how American sucks. This is the third time this year an American flight has been delayed and he doesn't know why he continues to fly them. He says the airline needs to be nationalized like every other country. His favorite is the German Lufthansa; they really know how to treat you even if you are in the last row of steerage. He bashed bush for awhile, complaining about us being in Iraq and all that kind of stuff. But then he praised him for having balls and never backing down from his decisions and being ballsy, he was really focused on balls. Then he talked about Kiev and all the things he was going to do there, he was going to be there for two weeks visiting his family and possibly looking for a place to live. He's part Ukrainian, on his mother's side, he hails from north Dakota, went to UND where he was a starting forward on the fighting Sioux hockey team. He was never that good enough for the NHL so he focused on his studies. He was finance major and he has his MBA in finance. He worked for some French energy company can't remember the name. Now he works for Halliburton, so I wasn't too sure why he bashed bush so much. Halliburton is doing wonderful thanks to bush and Cheney. He speaks 11 languages so he says; I say he speaks a little bit of maybe 7. If you can speak a little Italian you can speak a little Spanish, if you can speak a little Russian you can speak in Eastern Europe that is my opinion. He talked about he started school in 1949 yadda yadda yadda, join the marines when he was 17, lost his virginity to a 31 yr old Jamaican whore in Jamaica. Yadda yadda yadda, lived on a boat the rest of his enlistment. Going to retire in Ukraine. During the 1^st movie, Shrek III an message came on stating there was a medical situation and if anyone was a trained medical profession, he calmly stated that that Mexican woman over there is. Then a little bit later on the pilot came over asking if anyone spoke Turkish or Arabic. He stated ohh that guy over there can. So I don't know if he just pre-interviewed everyone before the trip or just talked to everyone on the plane. (He got up several times, it wasn't just a straight 600 minute conversation) he spoke with all the flight attendants and got lots of juicy details. Why we had to go back to the gate after initially pulling away. He told me which of the flight attendants were cool and which ones were bitches. The guy was the only cool one. He actually broke conversation to watch a 60 minutes documentary on the release of holocaust documents from the German archives. He didn't watch any of Shrek III but he watched a lot of the second movie, I don't know what it was, but it was about a girl's basketball coach in Oklahoma and how he took them to state title, I'm not sure what it was called but I saw it the first few times, hoosiers, glory road, coach carter, air bud. He thought it was cute. Then we got breakfast but it wasn't up to his liking, on Lufthansa you get an omelet and fresh fruit and coffee, yadda yadda yadda. On American we got a thing of yogurt, orange juice, and croissant with jam and jelly. It's a pretty kick ass continental breakfast if you ask me. He wasn't happy. As I scroll my eyes up I see I didn't talk about dinner, we had the choice of lasagna with a roll, Caesar salad, and lemon cookies or chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. I had the former he had the latter, he complained of course because he had to pay for the red wine with dinner, he said it should be complimentary, he also didn't like that he didn't get a cognac after dinner. He would later go on a tangent comparing wine at dinner and after dinner coffee and cognac on par with sex. I have no such working knowledge of any of those things, so that was lost on me. And I guess that's about it for my seat partner, I don't know why I remember so much, this being my 4^th day since I saw him, and I haven't gone gay for anton, I guess with nothing else to do for ten hours I just paid attention. So ill never see him again nor can I picture his face anymore, funny how something like that happens; the face thing.

The schick quarto is crap, stay with Gillette mach 3 turbo,

jacob