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

budapest in pictures

budapest in pictures

here is the rest of budapest so you can see what i was talking about.

the budapest airport

some church

with some statue outside of it

it wouldnt be a trip if i didnt go to a wedding

a gymnasium

early morning from my hotel room

my hotel room with the tiny entrance

shot from another room in the hotel

same as before

i couldnt find any good swimming pools

a nice looking hotel

some guy who died in battle

these are the steps of parliament

the other side of what those stairs lead to

inside of the parliament dome

the crown jewels of hungary

the creepy statues from the house on haunted hill

the parliamentary room

cigar holders

the hungarian flag used to have a red star in the middle when it was under communism rule, they cut out the star as a symbol of their democracy

an eternal flame memorial for people who died protesting for democracy

the unblue danube

a hungarian florist, please notice the topless bride

the palace

i dont remember this kings name, but he liked hunting and women

another picture at the palace

the danube from the palace

parliament from the palace

this is st. stephens mausoleum, i dont know if hes in there though, i wasnt really paying attention to the tour guide

how they served wine at dinner, its a giant crystal wine bong

i got a little home sick so i went to this bar

heres me in the shower, there isnt much of a optical illusion here, the shower head hit me right above the naval, so showering was a little difficult

i thought it would be easier to take a bath, but after i saw this, i thought it would be easier to have the ugly water cascade off me rather than sit in it

on the last night we had dinner on a river boat, here is the main bridge between buda and pest

the palace lit up at night

parliament at night

parliament at night

and parliament at night

ill be home on friday

jacob

budapest in words

Everything has gone good so far. Although I had to get up at 0530. That sucked. I had a layover delay for 5 hours in DFW. I can't think of a better place than 'D' terminal to be stuck. Walked around, had cousins bbq, rode the sky train, read a maxim, did some homework. Saw my first ever white family traveling with a nanny, yeah she was colored. And the mom was really young looked mid twenties like us. The nanny got lunch, played with the kids, disciplined them. If you're not going to parent your children, then be an aunt or an uncle where you can have all the fun and give them back when you are done. I fucking hate white people. When we finally get on the plane and start to backup after being delayed for 1 hour in the plane, as we are doing that the plane starts bumping like trying to reverse with the parking brake on. Go back to terminal get that fixed. Turned out to be hydraulic problem. So I napped through the entire waiting period but when we actually take off I was awake and that's when Anton Weismann decided to talk to me and we proceeded to talk for the next ten hours. I'll explain him in another blog. While in Zurich, thats where are flight from Dallas and to Budapest connected, we had another delay, this time only 5 minutes. With all the delays we missed our flight on malev, which is the Hungarian airline, we were put on the Swiss airline, and it was actually a pink airplane, with hot stewardesses. On a 1 hour flight we got drink, meal and dessert, pretty damn sweet if you ask me. We finally got to Budapest, an older airport that has been remolded, went through customs, which was easy, I thought they were going to ask questions but they just scanned it and stamped it, my passport that is. The drive to the airport was fairly uneventful. You know how soccer player's uniforms are covered in sponsorships, that's kind of how the city is, everything is covered in advertisements. The hotel is pretty nice, 7 floors, and 3 are dedicated to conference rooms. They have a gym and sauna, solarium, juice bar. Okay stuff, kind of old equipment. Saturday night we had drinks in the lobby, bit burger beer, went to dinner had some gausser beer and some goulash. Took some pictures of things. Passed out about 830 in the night, I had been up for like 30 hours. Got up at 4, watched a few episodes of the office, did some homework. They have an mtv like channel here called viva, pretty good; they show pop video from the US, UK, and Germany. No djs and no idiotic tween shows. Had some breakfast, very westernized except for the cereal, that was very much a muessel, grains, seeds, those kinds of things. Sunday we set up shop and I finished all of my programming homework for the day. Sunday night had some more bit burger beer and had some hotel goulash, everyone said I have to have Hungarian goulash; well I've had some that was similar to chile Colorado and some that was similar to caldo de res. There are only so many ways to make a beef stew if you ask me. Still good don't get me wrong. Monday we moved shop and set it back up, we had some pre conference duties. Lunch is provided and it's a mix of foods. Turkey schnitzel, French fries, different kinds of breads, different kinds of cheeses to more eastern foods. Lots of salted meats, beef, pork, and wild game. Everything is super salty, but it's not so salty that it makes your thirsty if that makes sense. I guess because things here are not processed for longevity with preservatives. So even though it's not healthy it's not bad for you, if you'll allow me to say that. Some of the other things were beef tongue, poultry paste in pasta, Indonesian backed noodles. I drank tap water because the WHO said it was okay, but they don't really offer tap water for consumption here. If you want something to drink it comes in a glass bottle, coke, coke light, fanta, and sprite, made with sugar and not carbonated, so like above, not healthy but not bad for you. They are also big into mineral water and sparkling water as well as ginger ale. Sunday night I had dinner in the hotel restaurant, had another bowl of goulash and I sat across from a very particular women. I women who I had had an encounter with earlier in the day. She had a service dog with her, but she was neither blind nor deaf, I'm not going to extrapolate what could have been wrong with her, but she seemed very lonely so I'm wondering if it's possible it's her only companion so she just put the sweater on the dog, I'll probably get some ill karma my way for that, but that's what I thought. I bring her up because she was complaining that her food did not have any pork cracklings on it. She ordered a dish that was supposed to come with pork cracklings but it didn't have any(according to her). Now when you say pork cracklings to me, I think chicharron or pork rinds and I associate those with Mexicans and or poor people, again more karma my way. Well, the waiter here, and they are all super service men, they have a napkin on their wrist at all times, if you do anything improper they will correct you, he attempts to point out that the cracklings are in fact there on her plate. The waiter only speaks German and Hungarian and this woman is speaking only English. "Listen she says, don't you remember when your grandmother made pork cracklings for you, and they were so warm and tasty, yadda yadda yadda" the waiter has no idea what is going on and goes and gets the head waiter. I knew it was him because his name tag said so. He too points out the pork cracklings are in fact on the dish already. She continues to talk but she mumbles out of existence like Milton from office space. They bring her out an entire dish and put them on the food, what they brought out looked more like bacon bits than anything else, so I'm sure she was still disappointed. That's my story for that. Today is Tuesday 230 in the afternoon 530 in the morning Arizona time for all of you. Conference is in full effect, I was able to throw down some troubleshooting skills, proud of myself for that. Monday night I went to the gym and got my work out on. My team is made up of old people and we are still fighting jet lag a little bit, but they didn't want to go out after their lobby beer. I had a lowen-weisse, very tasty. So I thought to myself there are two million people here, little old ladies walk around I should be okay. So I went for a walk. Went down the Danube River. You know the song blue Danube, the river is more brown now than anything, but still nice. Took some pictures of buildings and other things. Went to gyro shop and ordered something like a jackass American. I wasn't exactly sure what I ordered, but I totally butchered the pronunciation, it was in Hungarian or German, I had to say it a few times each time changing the emphasis on a different syllable. But I got through it. I ordered some kind of hamburger, one of the most greasy salty things I have ever had, but again, I wasn't super thirsty afterwards nor was there a super heavy feeling in my stomach either, not healthy but not bad for you. When I went to get something to drink, I pointed at the water and tried to pronounce it, water, aqua, agua, tried them all. Then they told me the price, (and how most Mexicans look at you in el Paso when they don't know what you are saying, I was like a dear in headlights when they were telling me the cost) so I motioned for them to write it out, the one guy was like ugh, stupid American, at least in his eyes that's what he said. Then as I was fumbling around for the 220 forints, I handed them 250 and they got mad because I missed the 20 dollar coin in my hand, but there was another guy behind counter, younger much cooler, he motioned for me to put my hand out and he gave me back the 50 and took the 20, then said that was it with his hands. What a nice guy. Note to self: I need to throw down some serious Rosetta stone skills when I get back home. So now it's our coffee break time, so I'll continue writing at a later time. Tuesday night was our ice breaker dinner, there wasn't much ice breaking going on most people here know one another already so I just hung out with the Germans and the Americans. The food was pretty good, I had the Hungarian equivalent of hash browns and they had chicken pancakes, those were really good. Wine and beer were also good. Called it a night pretty early. Wednesday was our cultural tour, we went to the parliament house and to the palace, and we went to the hills of Buda and the town of pest. Budapest is actually two cites, with their names combined. After that we were taken to what looked like an old winery. And were treated to an outstanding dinner, first was some creamy chicken vegetable soup and wine, next were dinner and wine, followed by dessert and coffee. We had musicians the whole night and yes they played the Hungarian dance it was awesome and we had dancers, and more wine. So far it's Thursday and we haven't done much today our coffee break had some really good pastries. Part of my lunch included pork knuckles and they were really good. Hopefully I can get some shopping done tonight, I have over 20 grand in my pocket right now but most stores close at dusk, which sucks. But that's about it for now, either ill get back to work; I'll do some homework or ill go watch football. Football is always on here. I went out to dinner as it turns out that night, got on the city tram, which I didn't pay for and walked around until we found a restaurant. We went to club mode or mode bar, something like that. I had some kind of pasta in truffle sauce, I would describe it as delightful if I spoke like that, but I don't, it was pretty good. Next we went back to the hotel and I watched some more office and passed out. Friday morning was wrap up day and we stopped working at 1200. For our Friday lunch they served alcohol. We finished packing all the servers and whatnot around 1500, just in time for the out briefing. They gave us a group picture told us we did well and not to enjoy how easy going this conference went and that Croatia should be much more hectic. Whatever we had a three hour break between the briefing and dinner so I got back on the tram and walked like a son of a bitch to the market. Its very similar to the Juarez market, supermarket in the middle and stores surrounding that. Bought lots of gifts and saw quite a few of the other guys there. Walked back to the hotel got changed and got on a bus to take us to dinner. We were having dinner on a river boat on the Danube. More buffet and the alcohol was flowing, they didn't allow you to have an empty glass. Several of the nations brought liquor from their nations. I was warned not to attempt an "around the world", which means going to each country doing a shot and then moving on to the next country, especially since my I had to get up for my flight the next day before 4am. I had about 5 drinks, just enough for happy time. Went home watched some tv and packed by bags. Got up and went to the airport the next day. The airport wasn't even open yet, note to all of you, if you ever get the chance to fly international carriers, do it. Because the service is much better. Stewardesses are hotter, nicer, more service oriented. And pretty much no matter the length of the flight, you will get food and drink. It might be a little bit more expensive but I think its worth it. Because of my pat down three times in Frankfurt I will also be doing a narrative on the TSAs of the world, so I wont describe that process. The flight home was okay. I watched three movies, surfs up, the guardian, and oceans thirteen. Awhile back I ordered a sleep mask and I bought a green one. I tried to buy the most masculine one, but it was hard, most of the options were pink, or rind stones, or leopard print on the website. I really needed it though, because the assbags sitting to the left and the right of me kept their window shades up, theres nothing to see at 37000 feet and since I was traveling west I had about 22 hours of sunshine, so a light blocking mask was wonderful. The food was okay, some beef thing, and a vegetable pizza. Got to dfw and chilled in the admirals club for awhile, got on my plane for Tucson and lucked out I had the whole row to myself, legs up sleep mask on, zzzzzzzzzzs. Woke up just as we were landing. Got my luggage said my goodbyes and went to my cousins for some food and to give my cousins their presents. Stayed up until about 10, which was about 31 hours after I started my journey then slept for 12 hours. So all and all not a bad trip, since this is by far the longest blog of all time, I don't feel like rereading it for continuity, so sorry if I got onto tangents early. But we are closely approaching 2500 words, so thanks for reading. In the following weeks, youll see Budapest in pictures, anton wiesmann, tsas of the world, 3^rd house guest, and southern Arizona racquetball championship 07. Ill be home in 2 weeks again.

I bought a pair of air jordans and now I have a 2' vertical, way to go me

jacob