Some Catching Up to Do

Hello all!

It has been weeks upon weeks and I wanted to assure you I am alive and kicking darn near everything. This will be exceedingly haphazard, but I figured it would be a start.

The reason for the long absence has been the uptick in adventure lately. Working our way backwards, I am presently mired in the midst of finals. Everything should be wrapped up by Monday, unless my presentation is picked up and I get to do it all over again, but this time in front of several members of the Bureau of Transportation and related agencies. I doubt that will happen, but you never know.

Before that we were partying hard with the McBeth’s for both Thanksgiving and Thanksgivingston. There will be a detailed post next week covering the wonderful food and good times had there.

I’m sure there were things before that, but at the moment I can’t remember them. There have been a few promising applications sent out, most notably to the Pedestrian Advisory Committee and America Walks.

There will also be news on our Christmas preparations. We have lights up at the moment, but we still need to craft a tree and maybe some other things out of construction paper. There will probably also be some baked goods. We do things right.

Anyway, really just wanted to say hang in there. There will be real news up here at some point.

Until then

Turkey Team

Welcome Thanksgiving! We have turkey town in effect and our apartment is gearing up for the holiday. We left up the orange lights on account of them being the best and there may be a few more turkeys before November is over. We apparently love to do crafts, again on account of them being the best, but probably also because we are adults.

First up is Tam’s turkey. He is a rather large, but an elegant friend with tiny feet. He has a sweet pilgrim hat. After him comes my Captain Gorton inspired turkey. He knows all about the rainy season and he is ready. Oh, also don’t be alarmed. His butt is not on fire. Those are some sweet tail feathers. Not flames.

Finally, we have our next attempt at cupcakes. These may not have turned out as well, but that is mostly because I was involved. Our decorating hit a bit of a wall when we ran out of Thanksgiving themed ideas. This happened after the third cupcake. I have no idea what is relevant to this holiday. We have autumn leaves, a native american, pilgrim hat, turkeys both standing and cooked, and then we ran into some problems. You may also find the number 8, pac man, a gravy boat, a gourd, and the x-men logo. Hooray for Thanksgiving!

So we are living up November, happy autumns!

Sony Only Has Been Defeated

Sony Only (now featuring Samsung) has changed its name to Encore Audio. I have campaigned long and hard on this crucial issue and I bring good news to my followers: this travesty has at long last been addressed. I know it was tough, but you stuck by me as I spoke on this topic for hours on end, some might even say ranted on the subject, in my attempt to break through to the public and bring some pressure to bear on this shop sign. No longer will our neighborhood be a place of misdirection and confusion. Embrace the clarity my friends and rejoice.

I can almost guarantee that my posts will get more inane as the rainy season drags on…sorry. Stout hearts and stoic faces.

Welcome to the Rainy Season

We are now into the winter season, meaning everyday will have some rain. Some days it will rain three or four different times, but you can always count on at least one. Goodbye sun. Goodnight moon. We will see you next year. Me and my soppy bike will hope to see you again soon before we go crazy. There will be 40 days of rainfall for the last two months of the year. There will be 65 hours of daylight in December.

Boooooooooo

A Little Background on Who I Am

A text from my Dad:

“Just wanted to let you know I had the Mike breakfast this morning - yellow cake, chocolate frosting.”

How am I ever going to convince any future kids to eat healthy? On what grounds could I possibly exude any moral authority in this endeavor?

Me - You need to eat a nutritional breakfast.

Kid - But I saw you just put starburst in your Marshmallow Blasted Fruit Loops!

Me - Ummm…I added more fruit?

Woo Woo!

I am officially published! Sage publications has finished the 2010 Encyclopedia of Geography and I am the co-author of one of its articles!

From May to July 2008, Euan Hague and I worked on a foundation article for the relatively new field of mobilities. So while it isn’t terribly cutting or incisive, it is the base article that many authors may use as a jumping off point for other papers.

Now to the weird part. For some reason, maybe it’s just too common of a name, but they put my full name. Including middle. It looks super awkward to me. Euan Hague and Michael Christopher Armstrong. Kinda weird.

Whatever. Exciting times. It is a bit difficult at the moment to access, but I am working on it. If you are a student of a school that has library access to the sage articles database you can search for me, but otherwise it is a bit tough. The entire encyclopedia in hard copy is around $800.

I’ll try to figure something out. But anyway…Woo!

Halloween Festivities

Halloween is in full swing! We have our spooky lights up, we have pumpkins carved, cupcakes baked, cider has been poured and we are ready!

Pumpkin carving was the name of the game last night and this was our first real attempt together. I had carved my first one in years last year with Nate and Dana, and this was Tammy’s first one in forever. So as you can guess, the pressure was on. We spent quite a while working on templates, conceptual ideas that were well beyond our technical abilities. My first inclination was to make a Magneto pumpkin and Tammy was talking up Scott Pilgrim pumpkin. As reality set in, we decided on simpler subjects. She would go for more traditional monster pumpkin and I, for some reason, decided on less traditional raccoon pumpkin. As you can see, the finished products were Frankenstein (10 points to Tam for succeeding in monster category) and vaguely bear shaped (6 points for adorable, but misguided).

Tammy also gets extra points for making amazing orange cupcakes, although the decorating part has been called into question (primarily the one in the bottom left that is a vampire). They were super delicious though.

The lights are finally staying up all night, which is great news. They are a lot like a baby, although in the opposite direction. You can finally get some sleep when the baby sleeps through the night, and we can finally sleep now that the lights are staying up through the night. It was not pleasant when the strands would fall around 3AM, knocking over anything and everything in its path. Anyway, on to parts that have less terrible analogies.

We are also watching Buffy, which is a solid Halloween time series. I have forced many shows upon Tam so far, so we decided to work our way through one of her old favorites. We’re about halfway through season 1, and the effects are delightfully cheesy. The show managed to become remarkably dated (I love seeing the mid 90s version of a laptop) but it’s been fun.

Anyway, it’s been a pretty enjoyable October thus far, we still have the holiday itself coming up, and Sam and Melody are coming out here in a week or two. Should be a strong finish. Hope everyone is having equally fun October days out there, and let me know if you have competition to put our pumpkins to the test. Can you top the FrankenBear duo?